Matching people to sales jobs: stop hammering round pegs into square holes.

• Position: New Products

In this 20 years in sales training and sales development consulting, Jim Schneider, has never seen anything like it.

What he is referring to is the interest on the part of the financial services industry in improving sales productivity by matching sales and service employees more closely to the roles for which they are best suited.

"A lot of banks have experienced the problems of a mismatch between employees and jobs, and now they are anxious to prevent that sort of thing from happening again," says Schneider, who is president and CEO of Schneider Sales Management Inc., Englewood, Colo.

In an effort to fulfill this new need, the company is offering what it calls a "sales and service personnel assessment instrument" entitled Schneider Optimum Performance Profile. Job candidates take the profile by accessing an Internet website. The test results provide the bank with recommendations as to what type of sales job that candidate would be best suited for and gives a customized "behavioral" guide that the supervisor can use as the basis for structuring the job interview. The test results also suggest the type of training and supervision that the candidate might need in the recommended job.

Schneider says that with reduced staffing, most banking institutions today are struggling with four issues involving how to:

* Maintain their sales revenue with fewer people.

* Determine which employees to retain in which job roles.

* Identify which employees can handle multiple job roles to pick up the slack for downsized employees.

* Select supervisors who can inspire employees to work effectively for more hours or for less money.

The...