The decision to use a sales assessment test is more often than not instigated by a negative experience. Typically we are contacted by hiring managers that are fed up with being burned by sales candidates who interview well but cannot actually sell. At other times retention and job turnover is the big issue that causes them to seek us out. Accurately identifying sales potential and lowering turnover are without doubt at the top of the list when it comes to why one uses SalesTestOnline.com. There are however quite a few other very valuable benefits that you may not have considered. Here are just a few:
Ensuring the success of less than ideal candidates
If the talent pool you have to choose from is very weak you’ll inevitably have to hire less than ideal candidates. This is increasingly an issue in tight job markets and has always been the case for those businesses whose sales roles are unappealing to many, such as those who hire for straight commission sales environments. Used in this scenario, a sales assessment provides an understanding about how to train, manage and motivate the new rep. Rather than waiting for months to pass by in order to act on your observations, the in depth results of a sales assessment test are available to you even prior to onboarding. Most sales failures in these situations occur in the first 30-60 days. By starting off with a thorough understanding of the new hire you can give them the best shot at some early success. Early successes tend to spur the new rep on thereby increasing their chances of further success.
A More Efficient Hiring Process
Unlike the expensive paper and pencil tests of ‘ancient times’, inexpensive web based sales tests can be administered to most or all applicants before you need to interview or even speak to the candidate. This means that you can devote your precious face to face interview time to only those candidates whose test results have shown they have high potential. Even your interviews and reference checks will be more efficient because you can focus your questioning and probing on areas that the sales test has uncovered.
Time Savings
Using a sales assessment test will save you a great deal of time in a number of different ways. First and most obviously, hiring high potential sales people means you will avoid the massive amount of time that is wasted when trying to motivate and develop a rep who was basically a bad hire. For those reps you do hire who are a good fit, the sales assessment spells out how to manage, motivate and train the person, effectively shortening the time it takes to get them up to speed. As mentioned above, using sales assessments means the hiring process is far more efficient and will speed up the time it takes to separate the ‘wheat from the chaff’. This is particularly critical since it gives you a time advantage over your competitors who are also trying to hire the top reps.
Lower Training Costs
No one should question whether the time and money devoted to training new reps makes good business sense, however most would agree that trying to ‘make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear’ is a recipe for failure and therefore a bad bet. This is especially true today when manager’s time is stretched to the limit and training budgets are constrained. Isn’t it just logical and sensible to start off with the right ‘sales material’ before you start to develop that person? If you are going to expend time, effort and money you will get a far greater return by focusing these valuable resources on a rep that is the right fit in the first place.
Higher Sales and Higher Profits
You probably thought of this one but I mention it here because this is THE fundamental reason to use a sales assessment test. It is really a very simple equation: the right person in your sales role = higher sales = higher profits!
