Talent
As customer demands and expectations continue to shift, companies must constantly review their talent, to ensure they have A-players in customer-facing roles. Furthermore, they must create the right performance conditions to ensure these individuals are enabled to deliver the right experiences along the customer’s life cycle.

Components Include:
Employee Experience Design
For B2B commercial professionals, the labor market continues to be competitive. An effectively designed employee experience helps companies attract and retain A-players.
- What It Is – A strategic plan that outlines the right things companies must do to effectively assess, recruit, onboard, develop, and retain a team of A-Player talent.
- Why It’s Important – This is where the direction of the company’s Talent department is determined. This supports all revenue generating functions such as Marketing, Sales, Customer Success (CS), and Customer Experience (CX). A well-thought-out Talent Strategy supplies the people required to execute the go-to-market plans. The objective is to create the ideal Employee Experience (EX) for the team.
- How to Use It – The ideal Employee Experience must be implemented, monitored, and optimized based on employee and customer feedback.
Talent Planning
Creating a plan for which types of roles each function will need, over varied timeframes allows the commercial leadership team to develop a plan on how to source, deploy, and retain the right people.
- What It Is – This is the tactical execution of the Talent Strategy.
- Why It’s Important – Tactics involve doing things right. And with the right strategy, a brilliant plan is executed brilliantly. Talent Planning, therefore, provides the tactical execution plan by function so that the organization is both efficient and effective.
- How to Use It – Planning helps put the right people in the right roles.
Role Profiles, Scorecards, & Descriptions
Clear role descriptions and scorecards help attract and retain A-Players for every role. They align the team on what they do, and where they rely on other functions for support.
- What It Is – Develop the profile for an “A-Player” in each key revenue growth role. The primary focus is on Marketing, Sales, Customer Success (CS), and Customer Experience (CX).
- Why It’s Important – Documented profiles define a clear picture of what a great employee looks like. Once this is understood and agreed upon, all other Talent management activities will proceed with effective results. For example, the organization will source, recruit, and hire the best people.
- How to Use It – Descriptions are established and periodically reviewed to ensure they are aligned to customer needs and market realities.
Assessments
Identifying the right person for each role is too important to be left to chance. A robust assessment of leaders and individual contributors by an impartial third party can ensure people are in the most effective role.
- What It Is – Assess each individual in each key functional role against a customized profile to identify strengths and gaps using the Top-Grading Methodology.
- Why It’s Important – SBI developed the process, which we have since expanded to other commercial functions. This approach compares competencies, accountabilities, and the intangible aspects of emotional intelligence and field presence. The end result is a holistic view of the candidate. This ultimately reduces employee ramp-to-productivity and employee churn by assuring role fitness up-front in the process.
- How to Use It – Market leaders use talent assessments to make promotion, retention, and offboarding decisions. An effective assessment is the basis for an individual development plan, which helps individuals succeed in their current and future roles.