assessment

Kathryn Davis published an article warning that companies proceed with caution before they use personality tests. While she cites ‘no adverse impact’ and ‘questions that could violate privacy’ or ‘questions that could uncover mental disorders’, she really questions whether personality tests are worth the risk.

When you build a world-class sales recruiting process and use a best in class sales specific assessment, you can’t lose. You’ll consistently attract, identify, hire and retain stronger salespeople than ever before.

Are you getting the intelligence you need to select the right salespeople for your company?

The only suitable measures are to correlate performance to the hiring recommendation using the manager’s measure of success – whether the salesperson is meeting or exceeding expectations, however different they may be from company to company, industry to industry, group to group and position to position.

One end user assessed only 6 of their people. They cherry picked – their 3 best and 3 worst. They wanted to internally validate the results against some existing people that they knew. They also assessed those six using a popular behavioral styles test which is not sales specific. They said that the behavioral styles test pegged these people perfectly. But in this case, ‘pegged’ means the assessments described the people; their tendencies and behaviors, how they were perceived as people, but not how they would perform in the field or whether they should have been hired.

Would you like to know why your salespeople don’t become stronger more quickly? Why they don’t change? Whether there’s hope? How much they can improve? What it will take?

Praise the individual. Reinforce the success. Repetition is required to lock in a new behavior. Work even more closely with this salesperson to be certain that he/she continues to achieve as a result of this wonderful breakthrough.

In the May 13 post, More Hirable Sales Candidates, there were some controversial comments posted by a disgruntled sales candidate who didn’t get a job and blamed the assessment. As long as we’re on the subject of disgruntled, perhaps we should discuss the very small minority of clients who actually dislike the findings of the sales force evaluation. It happens very infrequently, only two or three times each year; but when it does, there are usually similar circumstances:

The job market is getting tighter, but more so in certain cities and especially in certain industries. With the shrinking supply of candidates, those companies in industries that salespeople find less desirable are seeing fewer applicants as candidates opt for more desirable jobs. Industries that may find themselves having a more difficult time attracting hirable sales candidates are insurance, financial services, telecommunications and others. What can you do if the flow of candidates has slowed? The only things that need to change are:

If you want to take full advantage of the power of the assessment, you must be certain that the ad will attract, not repel, the candidates you targeted.