Assessment Centers: An Untapped Resource For Global Salesforce Management

Abstract

The decisions surrounding salesforce hiring, career development and promotion choices have traditionally been left to the creativity and subjective judgement of marketing managers with very few decision aids from which to draw. As salesforce management became a task requiring an increasingly international focus, the complexity of the decisions and the cultural sensitivity required have left the management of the global salesforce as a very challenging function within the multinational firm. The assessment center, a structured means of evaluating potential new sales recruits and candidates for promotion and transfer, is offered as a tool to begin to address the above problem.