Commercial Growth
Sales team assessment or commercial diagnostic: which one answers your question?
8 mins read
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Choose the assessment by the question you need answered. A sales team assessment answers questions about people. A commercial diagnostic answers why the whole engine is underperforming.
A sales team assessment is the right buy when the question is about skills, roles, hiring or coaching needs, and the rest of the commercial system is working.
A commercial diagnostic is the right buy when growth has slowed and nobody can say where the cause sits. Causes often sit between functions, where a sales-only review doesn't look.
Some situations need both. Diagnose the system first, then assess the people against the process you've agreed.
Whichever you buy, decide in advance who will act on the findings. A diagnosis on its own changes nothing.
A sales team assessment and a commercial diagnostic answer different questions. A sales team assessment tells you about your people: their skills, how they sell, and where coaching or hiring would help. A commercial diagnostic tells you why the commercial engine as a whole is underperforming, when the cause might sit in go-to-market, data, process or leadership as much as in the sales team.
Buying the wrong one is an expensive way to get a confident answer to the wrong question. This guide is for a CEO, managing director or CRO choosing between the two. It covers what each measures, when each is the right buy, how to brief it, and when you need both.
The question decides the assessment
Start with the question you'd ask if you could only ask one.
"Are these the right people, in the right roles, with the right skills?" That's a sales team assessment.
"Why is growth slower than the plan, and what would fixing it be worth?" That's a commercial diagnostic.
"We've changed the process. Can the team now sell this way?" That's a sales team assessment, measured against the new process.
"Leadership and the front line describe different businesses. Which one is right?" That's a commercial diagnostic.
If you can't decide which question is yours, that's a sign the cause may sit beyond the team. When you don't know where the problem sits, assessing one function first narrows the search before you know where to look.
What a sales team assessment measures
A sales team assessment looks at the people who sell and the people who manage them. Depending on the provider, it can include:
skills and behaviour against a sales competency model;
sales role or psychometric profiles;
observed calls or deal reviews;
manager coaching quality;
hiring fit for open roles.
These tools have real value. The CIPD's guidance on selection says standardised tests and tests of cognitive ability "can be good predictors of job performance". It adds that skill-based assessments predict job performance better than traditional approaches. Gartner's 2025 survey of 243 sales leaders found that 74% said seller skills would need to change significantly to meet future revenue goals. Most sales leaders have a real skills question to ask.
The limits are just as clear. The CIPD says test results "should never be the sole basis for a selection decision". The British Psychological Society's code of practice says tests should be used "in conjunction with other assessment methods". Neither body is talking about sales specifically, but the principle carries over: an assessment of individuals answers questions about individuals.
A sales team assessment is the right buy when:
your sales process is defined and managers inspect deals against it;
lead quality and marketing handoffs aren't in dispute;
the question is coaching, role design or hiring.
If you already know the issue is coaching on live opportunities, our guide to sales coaching for complex deals covers what that work should change.
What a commercial diagnostic measures
A commercial diagnostic looks at the whole system that produces revenue: customers, go-to-market, sales process, data and forecasting, and the people and leadership running them. It asks where performance is being lost and why, then ranks what to change.
The case for looking wider is that causes often sit between functions.
Marketing and sales: Gartner's 2024 survey of 412 marketing and sales leaders found that 80% of key commercial activities were missing input from one of the two functions. 90% of the executives said their priorities conflicted.
Lead definitions: in Gartner's 2025 survey, 49% of sales leaders said their definition of a qualified lead differed greatly from marketing's.
A review of the sales team alone wouldn't look at either.
McKinsey made the same point in 2015 about how companies assess commercial capability. It found they "typically look at individual rather than true institutional capabilities such as tools, methodologies, core processes, and systems". The Deming Institute puts the older version of the argument plainly: when results are set mainly by the system, rating and ranking the people inside it misleads.
A commercial diagnostic is the right buy when:
growth has slowed and the explanations conflict;
the forecast isn't trusted;
you're about to fund a transformation and need to know what to fix first;
a new owner, CRO or plan means you need an objective view of what the engine can carry.
Side by side
Sales team assessment | Commercial diagnostic | |
|---|---|---|
The question | Are these the right people with the right skills? | Why is the commercial engine underperforming, and what is it worth to fix? |
Scope | Sellers and sales managers | Customer, go-to-market, sales, data and people across functions |
Evidence | Tests, profiles, observed calls, manager input | Pipeline and velocity data, interviews, a cross-functional workshop, benchmarks |
Output | Individual and team capability gaps, coaching or hiring plans | Ranked constraints, their likely commercial impact, a prioritised plan |
Best when | The system works and the question is people | The cause is unclear or sits between functions |
Risk if misused | Blames individuals for a system problem | Too broad if the question really is one hire or one skill |
Signs the cause sits outside the sales team
Before you commission a sales team assessment, check for these signs. If two or more are true, start with the system.
Different teams give different reasons for the same shortfall.
Sales and marketing disagree about what counts as a qualified lead.
Win rates differ sharply by segment or product, but not by seller.
Good sellers who join the team perform worse than they did before.
The forecast changes late in the quarter, whoever owns the deals.
Customers leave or shrink for reasons outside the sales conversation.
Each of these points to the conditions the team works in, rather than the people. As the Deming Institute's guidance puts it, before blaming a person, ask why the process let the error happen.
How Merlin5 approaches the diagnostic
Merlin5's Growth Assessor™ is built for the second question.
Before the workshop: leadership interviews come first, with an hour from each leader.
The workshop: two hours, with sales, marketing, operations, finance and leadership in one session, answering around 80 questions.
Timing: three weeks at most from start to recommendations.
It covers the five capability areas of the Vital 5™ and the strategy above them, benchmarked against world-class practice.
It starts from a Sales Velocity Analysis™ baseline of opportunities, deal value, win rate and cycle length, so recommendations can be valued against the four drivers explained in our sales velocity formula guide. The Growth Assessor™ page also says plainly that delivering the plan is a separate decision, and that some organisations carry it out themselves.
The two can work together. When Littlefish's new CRO wanted to know whether the commercial operating model could support its ambition to double in size, the work combined the Growth Assessor™ with sales effectiveness reviews, leadership interviews and customer feedback. BPP started with four questions about sales productivity, growth constraints, capability and investment return, and only then decided where to act.
When you need both, in order
Run the diagnostic first when the cause is unclear, then assess the people against the process and standards you agree as a result. Assessing sellers against a process that's about to change measures them against the wrong standard.
Run the sales team assessment first only when the system is sound and the question is clearly about people. A quick check is whether managers can inspect a live deal against agreed stage criteria today. If they can't, fix that before you judge the team.
How to brief either one
Whichever you buy, put these in the brief:
The question, in one sentence, and the decision it will inform.
Who takes part, and how much of their time it needs.
The evidence the provider will use, and which data you'll provide.
The output, including whether findings are ranked by commercial impact or simply listed.
The owner who will act on the findings, and by when.
The American Society for Quality makes the last point in its guidance on root cause analysis: finding the cause "will not produce any results" on its own. It has to be part of a wider effort to improve. If you're a PE operating partner running this inside a portfolio company, our guide to identifying revenue growth constraints covers the evidence to request in the first week.
Where to start
Write down the one question you need answered, and the decision it feeds.
Check the six signs above. Two or more suggest a system cause.
Choose the assessment that answers that question, and name the person who will act on what it finds.
Frequently asked questions
Is a sales team assessment a waste of money?
No. It's the right tool for questions about skills, roles, coaching and hiring. It's the wrong tool for finding out why growth has slowed when the cause may sit outside the team.
How long does a commercial diagnostic take?
It depends on the scope. Merlin5's Growth Assessor™ takes three weeks at most from start to recommendations, with two hours of workshop time from the team and an hour each from the leaders who are interviewed.
Can we run a commercial diagnostic ourselves?
You can, but it's hard to be objective about a system you run. The benefit of an outside view is that it can test leadership's view against the front line's without either side marking its own work.
What should the output look like?
A short list of constraints, ranked by their likely impact, with the evidence behind each and a named owner for the next step. A long list of observations is a sign the diagnostic stopped too early.
Sources
CIPD, "Selection methods" factsheet, accessed 15 November 2026. https://www.cipd.org/uk/knowledge/factsheets/selection-factsheet/
The British Psychological Society, "Code of Good Practice for Psychological Testing", Psychological Testing Centre. https://cms.bps.org.uk/sites/default/files/2022-07/ptc09_code_of_good_practice_amended.pdf
Gartner, "Gartner Survey Reveals Less Than Half of CSOs Report Their Organization Met Several 2024 Strategic Goals", press release, 21 May 2025. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-21-gartner-survey-reveals-less-than-half-of-csos-report-their-organization-met-several-2024-strategic-goals
Gartner, "Gartner Survey Reveals Marketing and Sales Functions Collaborate on Only Three Out of 15 Commercial Activities", press release, 4 June 2024. https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-06-03-gartner-survey-reveals-marketing-and-sales-functions-collaborate-on-only-three-out-of-15-commercial-activities
McKinsey & Company, "Building marketing and sales capabilities to beat the market", 1 March 2015. https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/building-marketing-and-sales-capabilities-to-beat-the-market
The W. Edwards Deming Institute, "Red Bead Experiment", accessed 15 November 2026. https://deming.org/explore/red-bead-experiment/
The W. Edwards Deming Institute, "Managers Must Understand that Blaming Employees Doesn't Help", 5 October 2021. https://deming.org/managers-must-understand-that-blaming-employees-doesnt-help/
ASQ, "What is Root Cause Analysis (RCA)?", accessed 15 November 2026. https://asq.org/quality-resources/root-cause-analysis
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WRITTEN BY
Chris Thomas