As a sales management consultant, I find it frustrating when a company spends a lot of time and money hiring someone. And then when he or she doesn’t work out well, the company has the person do our assessment to see if the person is suitable for sales. Guess what? In many cases, the sales…
Category Archives: Candidate Testing
Set the Candidate’s Expectations About Pre-Employment Testing
One of the best times to mention a pre-employment assessment is right up front in your hiring process. Letting candidates know that they will be asked to go through an assessment as part of your hiring process has a number of advantages: 1. It positions you as being very professional in your desire to hire the…
Why Use the Sales Temperament Assessment?
With the hard cost of hiring a salesperson ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 or more, and the soft costs of a mis-hire estimated as being 2.5 times the annual compensation package you offer, making the right hiring decision is critical. Psychological profile tests, such as our Sales Temperament Assessment (STA), can be a valuable cost-saving…
Using Auditions Instead of Role-Plays
Here’s an interesting way to find out if a sales candidate really knows how to sell or is just telling you he does. Anybody can talk a good talk but can they walk the walk. Here’s a neat way to find out. Get the candidate to audition for you. An audition is simply an extension…
Role-Playing and Sales Simulations
I’m not a big fan of asking the candidate to “sell” me something like a pen, a coffee cup, a glass or whatever. Most salespeople don’t like role-playing at the best of times and a job interview is certainly not the best of times. That said, over the years, I have come to realize that…
Competency Testing
As a sales manager, one of your responsibilities is to hire people who will get the job done properly. However, finding competent salespeople is easier said than done. There is no process in place to certify that a person is capable of performing as a salesperson. While there is no single secret to finding competent…
Assessments are NOT the Total Answer
Sales assessment tests, ours or anyone else’s, are an addition to and not a substitute for, a well-conceived and properly executed hiring process. You should never hire or fire anyone solely on the basis of this type of testing. However, it does act as an excellent selection tool. At best, the results will confirm your…
Determining Who’s Pre-Wired for Sales
I just put the October issue of our SalesTalk newsletter to bed. As is often the case, the essence of the article came as a result of a conversation I had with a client. He was lamenting the problems of finding people who (a) want to be in sales and (b) would be good at…
Sales Assessment Tests — Why Bother?
I always delight in telling people that there are two types of sales managers in this world: those who have hired a dud and those who are going to hire a dud One of the most critical functions you perform as a sales manager is putting together the sales team. The right people, working together,…
