You’re a Lousy Judge of Character*
*but you’ll be a good one when you use a sales test
After I wrote that title about being a bad judge of character I thought about softening it but then I had a change of heart. After all, this article is about a bitter truth so in that context being told right off the bat that you are a lousy judge of character does seem to fit. If it is any consolation it is not meant as a personal slight but a comment on a flawed process.
If your job entails interviewing and hiring sales candidates then obviously a core requirement of your job is to learn about, and to understand, what makes those candidates tick. Sure, you can verify facts like education, skills and experience, but that’s not what I’m talking about. If you’ve been hiring sales people for any length of time at all you already know that while important, these things rarely have much to do with sales success.
No, what you need to judge is their character; motivational traits, drive, sense of urgency and myriad other personality aspects of the candidate that ultimately determine how they match the requirements of the role. It is this that inevitably determines their sales success or failure.
Are you still with me? If so, then you are also painfully aware that relying on face-to-face interviews with sales candidates in order to obtain an accurate measure of this is much easier said than done. Why is that?
The overriding reason is that interviews are just not an effective way to evaluate job candidates, especially candidates for sales roles. This is not just my opinion. This has been the topic of many research studies and articles by numerous highly respected experts. This New York Times article by Jason Dana, Professor of Management and Marketing at Yale School of Business explains this issue very nicely: The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews.
Management’s use of interviews as a selection tool is so entrenched in our hiring methods, systems and procedures that, despite all the evidence demonstrating that interviews are a waste of time, it is simply not realistic to think that you or anyone else is going to stop conducting them. So if as I suspect, you will continue to interview sales people, all the while operating in the knowledge that the process itself is fatally flawed, the question is what, if anything, do you intend to do about it?
You certainly have the option of maintaining the status quo in the mindset that ‘it is what it is’. You have to admit though, that if you were stuck with a ‘flawed process’ in any other area of your business, and particularly one with such costly implications, that you wouldn’t waste a minute before getting to work trying to find a way to fix it or work around it.
On the other hand, adding a highly accurate and proven sales assessment test such as SalesTestOnline.com is fast, easy and very economical. The sales assessment will cut through the typical role-playing at which candidates are so effective and that would normally fool you. Instead, you’ll operate with a clear and precise picture of the real person behind the façade. Not only will you have a full picture of the candidate’s critical sales abilities, (ie. prospecting, closing, sense of urgency) but you’ll also have a very full understanding of strengths and weaknesses and other red flags. More than just leveling the ‘interview playing field’, you will find yourself back in command of the situation.
In other words, if you use our sales assessment test when interviewing sales people you will become a very good judge of character. Isn’t that how you see yourself?