One of the most fundamental aspects of an effective sales personality test is it’s flexibility to allow for the fact that sales roles can and do differ dramatically. The old adage that ‘sales is sales’, was and always will be wrong. Anyone who doubts this merely has to think about the differences between selling in a B2C role vs a B2B environment. Even within a single company, when selling the same products to the very same customers, some sales roles need sales hunters and some need sales farmers. The widespread use of these labels to describe different sales personalities is, in my opinion, evidence of a more nuanced view in the minds of sales leadership of what it takes to succeed in sales.
These differences in sales roles and the resulting need for different combinations of personality traits is the reason that SalesTestOnline.com is customized to your specific needs. This is one of the key reasons why it works so well. When a sales person takes our test, rather than the hiring manager receiving something vague about the candidate being ‘typical of successful sales people within your industry’ or similarly useless verbiage, our system provides a rating of how close the sales person is to the needs of that specific role. Obviously this type of specific rating is far more useful to the hiring manager when he/she is evaluating numerous candidates.
Quite often when we discuss this critical customization feature of our service the prospective client assumes that the test will differ from role to role. In fact our sales test stays the same no matter what role the candidate is being considered for. The following explains this and the reasons why it makes perfect sense.
In order to understand why our test remains the same even for different roles, one must first understand the aspect of the candidate that is measured. When selecting sales people you can for example quite easily measure certain things about the candidate’s experience, education, training and familiarity with your business or industry. As well there are many ways to identify the candidate’s sales skills and their relevance to the role for which you are recruiting. Not only are all of these factors readily identifiable, but for the most part, if a candidate is lacking in these areas they can be taught.
Experienced sales recruiters and sales hiring managers know that sales people rarely fail due a lack of skills, product knowledge and the factors mentioned above. Failure in sales is almost always because the sales candidate lacks the necessary personality traits for the role, such as drive, sense of urgency and natural self-motivation. This is what they want and need to uncover in sales candidates and this is what our test identifies.
The reason our test does not change from role to role is because we are always attempting to identify the personality traits and motivational style of the person. The test could be likened to the ‘camera that takes the picture’ because it is able to clearly and accurately identify these personality and motivational aspects of the candidate. Of course when looking at the candidate’s test results we look at them in relation to how they match what the role requires. Knowing what the role requires, we are able to accurately attach a Suitability Rating to the candidates’ test results. As mentioned above, this is not some ‘general sales fit score’. This is a score that is directly related to the requirements of the position and provides a sense of how much potential they have for success in that role.
In our many studies of client sales teams over the years these Suitability Rating scores have proven to be highly predictive of the success of sales candidates. In a recent example, we looked at the test results of the top 100 most successful reps in a sales force of about 1000. This particular sales force hires very strong closers. 72% of these top performers scored Excellent or Good on their Suitability Rating score, conclusively proving that an Excellent or Good Rating is highly predictive of success.
Learn More about our Sales Personality Test
If you wish to discuss your specific sales hiring challenges or would like to learn more about the process and benefits of our customization feature I would enjoy hearing from you.
