Let’s Do a Summary:
This post is a summary and index of the past four articles on how to choose the best sales-hire pre-employment assessment.
What has the goal been? It is simple: with the wide array of sales assessments on the market, how do we go about choosing the best one to help us find sales candidates who are not only a good fit for our company and product, but who have the personality traits and capabilities to be successful selling for us?
Here is what we have looked at so far:
It is important to start with the right goals in your sales hiring process. Your goal is not just to fill a position. It is not just to find a cultural “fit” for the entire organization. It is to use a tool that will help predict a good fit for the sales position you need to fill. That (fitting to a specific position) also meets EEOC requirements for using assessments. On top of that, it should help you learn where the stress areas are for a candidate. It helps you onboard, mentor and coach much better. It will also help both the new hire and the team to succeed financially, as well as decrease costly turnover and the number of heartbreaking separations.
This post takes the things we learned in Part 1 (above) and goes deeper into what separates sales assessments from other pre-hire assessments: the fact that Sales is a very unique job. Not only is it “mission critical,’ to a business organization, but it also requires a defined set of personality traits and experiences to produce financial and personal success. The assessment you choose must help you identify these traits and their strengths and weaknesses in the candidates before you hire them.
We discuss the critical need for the sales recruiters to use an excellent sales assessment. It is not enough just to rely on a general hiring assessment like so many companies use for most recruiting. We encourage sales leaders to seek and implement a sales-hire assessment that offers good scientific predictability on whether a candidate is likely be successful in these areas: prospecting, setting appointments, handling rejection, selling face to face and closing sales. A dynamic sales culture depends on these skills. A winning assessment not only finds a fit for the company, it also helps identify a fit for the sales culture.
In this post we get down to the nuts and bolts of various types of pre-hire assessments. Should it be an easy test or a difficult test? A short one or a long one? Is it easily “faked” or basically fake-proof? How valid is it? Has the validity been tested scientifically? How was it tested? What kinds of reports does it deliver? Are they useful to you, as a sales leader?
All of these considerations are important when you choose your sales-hire assessment:
- Understanding the outcome you really want
- Getting great front-line salespeople
- Pushing for the real outcome you need
- Understanding how the best sales assessments work
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