assessment

  • How to Identify Candidates Who Will Succeed in Your Sales Roles

    • February 9, 2024
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force
    sales hiring efficiency

    Suppose you have a project or task that you don’t particularly enjoy doing, but despite your lackluster feeling, must complete it. Do you seek out the most efficient way to complete the project or task, or default to the most inefficient way to complete it?

    Let’s take recruiting, selecting and hiring salespeople.  For HR, that’s part of their job.  Despite how important new salespeople are to the future of a company, Sales Leadership attempts to get recruiting over with as quickly as possible, often prioritizing speed to hire over cost to hire, talent and capabilities.  Why?  They aren’t using the most efficient process and tools to hire the best salespeople.

    I’m hiring a salesperson for a client and using my time-tested process which we also train clients to use (so that WE DON’T have to recruit!).  My experience shows that 10% of the candidates will be viable but, of more importance, how do we know which 10% to focus on?  The stats for the first week were:

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  • Made Up Sales Statistics and Their Contrast to Real Data

    • February 2, 2023
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    A sales consultant who knows that I geek out on sales data read that 84% of salespeople suck because they don’t enjoy what they do.  A huge percentage of salespeople do actually suck but the actual number is closer to 75%.  Is it really because they don’t enjoy selling?

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  • The Difference Between OMG and Extended DISC Assessments

    • October 7, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    When it comes to sales assessments, things are also not what they appear to be.  For example, take the FinXS Extended DISC which, at first glance, appears to have much in common with Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Salesperson Evaluations and Sales Candidate Assessments.  But are they the same, similar, or is it more like the Chinese rip-off?

    Let’s take a look under the hoods of both assessments and then you can decide.  We’ll begin with a comparison of the two respective dashboards.

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  • Top 10 Reasons Not to Test Your Sales Candidates

    • October 5, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Testing is not only normal, it’s expected.

    So why in the world is it so difficult to get Sales Leaders and HR professionals to test sales candidates?

    We hear everything, including this week’s top 10 reasons for not assessing:

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  • The New York Times’ Misleading Article on Assessments and Their Use Cases

    • March 3, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    The New York Times, which is often accused of publishing fake news, published an interesting article comparing personality tests to astrology.  The story included specific assessments like The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, The Hartman Personality Profile (Color Code), Plum, and DiSC.  Myers-Briggs reports on sixteen dimensions of personality, the Hartman Profile has four dimensions of personality, Plum uses AI to predict cultural awareness, teamwork and communications, and DiSC has four dimensions of behavioral styles.

    I had so many reactions to this article and I have attempted to collect and assemble them into a coherent article that I believe will be worth your while.

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  • The Science Behind One Company’s Top Sales Performers and Why They’re So Much Better

    • January 16, 2020
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    There are comparisons of apples to oranges, red or green, black or white, stop and go, and the most relevant and current of all, liberals to conservatives.

    In today’s article, I’ll share a hot/cold comparison of my own, but this one is about sales candidates.  Back on January 9, my article about why 3 good salespeople failed and 3 so-so candidates succeeded, used the results of a top/bottom analysis to identify the reasons why.  

    Those results were unusual because many of  the differentiators came from outside the 21 Sales Core Competencies.  What does it look like when the differentiators come from within the 21 Sales Core Competencies?  Take a look at this top/bottom analysis and you’ll quickly see the difference!

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  • Your Last Chance to Make a Good First Impression

    • June 14, 2019
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    Most salespeople don’t take first impressions seriously enough. If they did, their first impressions would be much more favorable.

    I can still remember my first (unintentional) lesson about first impressions.  My family was gathered at my grandfather’s house to watch the debut of the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan show.  It was February 9, 1964 and at 8 years old, I was one of seventy-three million people watching the show that night.  I was as excited about this show as I would be later that same year when I attended my first Red Sox baseball game at Fenway Park.  That is pretty excited! 

    Sitting on the carpet, I was completely focused on seeing and hearing The Beatles play five of their hit songs, but my mother was doing color commentary from the plastic covered sofa behind me.

    She said, “He’s cleaner than the other 3”, referring to Paul McCartney, who had straighter teeth, and a face more suitable for the mop top hair style shared by the four of them.

    There it was, my first lesson in judging people by how they looked, and more specifically, what “clean” did and did not look like.

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  • When Sales Leaders Don’t Lead With Their Strengths

    • November 5, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I received a request for all of my articles to date which reference Objective Management Group’s Sales VP/Director Assessment.  I conducted a quick search and found – what?  None!  Out of nearly 1,000 articles, I hadn’t referenced OMG’s Sales VP/Director Assessment even once!  I’ll fix that right now.

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  • How Soon Should You Make Changes to Your Sales Force?

    • June 28, 2012
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    This month’s newsletter from IDC’s Sales Advisory Group lists 5 things which a new Sales VP should do.  Some of them are good, but others not so much.  Among their points were some that have nothing to do with being new, plus one with which I am in complete disagreement.  Consider 4 of their 5 bullet points below:

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  • The Sales Force with Over Achievers That Don’t

    • March 26, 2009
    • Posted by: Dave Kurlan
    • Category: Understanding the Sales Force

    I heard about a CEO who told one of my colleagues that all of his salespeople over achieve.  In the same phone conversation he mentioned that sales are down 20%.  Can you imagine where sales would be if his salespeople under achieved?  

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