- October 7, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
This is gonna be fun!
In 2005, GM produced four mini-vans known as the Buick Terraza, Chevrolet Uplander, Pontiac Montana SV6 and Saturn Relay. These four cars were exactly the same, with the brand logos being the only differentiators.
Today, some Luxury car companies dress up the cars from their primary brands as Toyota is known to do with its Lexuses, Nissan with its Infinities, Honda with its Acuras, and Ford with its Lincolns. But we all know this.
What about something you might not know? With Eddie Van Halen’s passing yesterday, I was thinking about great guitarists and that led me to who actually manufactured your well-known Japanese guitar brand?
And then there are the cheap Chinese rip-offs of quality American products.
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.
FinxS Extended DISC Objective Management Group Salesperson Evaluation
While they don’t look the same, the FinxS Extended DISC has copied 8 of the 21 Sales Competencies that OMG measures, as well as 5 of the underlying attributes from other competencies. So on the surface it appears to measure 13 of the competencies that OMG measures. But does it really? Let’s dig deeper.
DISC assessments have four dimensions, one for each letter in its name. For those who aren’t familiar, they include Dominance, Influence, Steadiness and Compliance. While there are some variations to the questions and formats of the various DISC tests, what they all have in common is that the questions are asked in a social context. This particular assessment also asks some questions in the context of selling. You can see some DISC questions here.
All of OMG’s questions are asked in the context of selling; what you do, how you do it, when you do it, what causes you to do it, how you think about it, what you believe, etc. None of the questions are in a social context because people act and behave differently in social settings than they do in business settings.
From 30,000 feet, the first question that must be asked is how in the world does the FinxS Extended DISC arrive at findings like Prospecting, Qualifying, Handling Objections or Sales Process from a DISC assessment with only the four dimensions?
The quick answer is that they can’t! If you dig deeper into the FinxS Extended DISC report, they actually measure something quite different from what their summary says.
For example, look at this description of the prospecting finding:
See it? Whether one scores low or high, it’s about a mindset, not a sales capability or competency. So what does FinxS Extended DISC mean when they refer to a prospecting mindset? Let’s dig further! This is their description of the Hunter mindset.
Huh? It’s instant gratification! I’m not kidding! It gets worse. Let’s dig further! This is their description of what the Prospecting score actually measures:
That’s right – it has nothing at all to do with prospecting. They are lying to you in their dashboard summary!
For comparison, look at what OMG measures for the Prospecting or, as OMG calls it, the Hunting competency:
It should be obvious that OMG’s prospecting competency is all about hunting for new business, right? So you might be thinking I picked Prospecting because that’s the FinxS Extended DISC score that’s easiest for me to debunk. Think again.
What if we repeat this process with Qualifying? This is the Qualifying score in the FinxS Extended DISC:
Whether the salesperson has a high or low score, they are telling you that it’s about uncovering whether the prospect is a good fit through questioning and listening.
They are talking about a mindset again – this time it’s about finding the truth:
Okay. So in a social setting, perhaps that’s asking a question like, “Where are you?” “Who are you with?” “When will you be home?” Is that really the same as Qualifying an opportunity? And what are they actually measuring?
Once again, what they can actually measure has nothing to do with qualifying a sales opportunity. And the best part is that they are reusing Hunter! Remember? Instant gratification! You can’t make this stuff up!
And what does OMG measure and report on for the Qualifying competency?
Does that look like finding the truth? It looks exactly like what a salesperson must do when qualifying an opportunity.
I can do this for all 18 of their supposed sales scores but all you need to know is this. As with ALL personality and behavioral assessments passing themselves off as sales assessments so as to compete with OMG, they lie. They have no ability to measure a sales competency. You can’t report on what you can’t measure and personality and behavorial styles assessments simply can’t measure sales capabilities.
The assessment business has much in common with both the Chinese rip-off model as well as the Japanese guitar manufacturing model. The FinxS Extended DISC is like the Chinese rip-off because it appears to be measuring the same things, but upon closer inspection it measures little of what it purports to measure. Other assessments fall under the Japanese model. For example, 16PF is an assessment that most people haven’t heard of yet they produce more assessments than anyone else, but under different brand names! Consultants can design an assessment and use the underlying 16PF, choose which of their findings to include, and then call those findings whatever they choose! The lie!
If you want to evaluate your sales force and learn why they aren’t performing as well as you need them to, or assess your sales candidates to identify those who will succeed in your business, stop messing around with imposters and get the real deal. Objective Management Group (OMG) has been named the Top Sales Assessment in the world for nine straight years. It’s hard to argue with that. It’s even harder to argue with the science. It’s the only sales assessment that has been validated using predictive validity. That means that OMG’s findings have been correlated to on the job performance. Try doing that with a personality or behavioral styles assessment!
Knowledge is power. Now you have the knowledge to choose the proper tool to evaluate your current sales team for development purposes, and to assess sales candidates for selection purposes.