Can Sales Candidate Assessments Drive Results?

That’s the claim made by one assessment company – that their sales assessments drive results.  Well, do they?  The obvious answer is “No, they don’t.”

They claimed that salespeople who scored highest on their assessments had 69% higher close rates.  That’s impressive, right?  But their assessment didn’t drive the results. Those salespeople drove the results.  Their assessment simply indicated that those salespeople would be more successful.  That is what an assessment is supposed to do!  They could just as easily said, “Our assessments do what they’re supposed to do!”

So let’s take a closer look at a 69% higher close.  It means that if the salespeople with a lower score close 1 of every 10 opportunities, then the strong salespeople, who scored highest on the assessment, will close 69% more of their 10 opportunities, or 1.69.  It’s not nearly as impressive as it sounds, is it?

So how do their claims compare with Objective Management Group’s (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessments?

We’ll start with the easy statistics.

1. 92% of the sales candidates we recommend that are also hired rise to the top half of their sales forces within one year.

2. 75% of the sales candidates we don’t recommend, that are hired anyway, fail within the first six months.

Now, let’s dive a bit deeper.

One study across multiple industries with clients who use Objective Management Group’s Sales Candidate Assessments had the following highlights after two years:

• Managers were able to recognize how much stronger the candidates were as early as the first interview;
• New salespeople ramped up and built leveragable pipelines much more quickly than salespeople who were hired using other methods;
• The quality of their pipelines were significantly better than salespeople who were already in place;
• Conversion ratios varied depending upon industry but the salespeople hired using OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessment averaged a 2x improvement.  That’s not twice the ratio of salespeople with lower scores, those who shouldn’t be hired. No,  it’s twice the ratio of the veteran salespeople who were already succeeding!
• The revenue generated by these salespeople was a 3x improvement!  Not only were they closing twice as many opportunities, but the opportunities were significantly larger!

Does OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessment drive results?  No.  The people it recommends do.  One reason for its success and highly predictive nature is how our complimentary customization allows the client and OMG to finely tune the criteria to fit the industry, business, role, market, decision maker, competition, pricing, sales cycle, sales management, expectations and impact of your brand.

Can any other sales assessment really come close to OMG’s accuracy and Predictive Validity?  Not yet.  And since we continue to add breakthrough predictors of success rather than sit on our laurels, it’s not likely that anyone ever will.  At least not on my watch!