It’s no secret that a great sales team can be the difference between your company making money or not. What seems to be a challenge for a lot of companies is hiring, developing and retaining the right sales people for their specific organization.
Does the Job Fit? In addition to the individual’s resume, you most likely will review their W2 for the past year’s performance. You’ll want to conduct a behavioral interview, and check references. Also consider having your candidates take a validated (Why assessments need to be validated EEOC ) pre-hire Sales Assessment like the one we use. If it’s properly applied, a solid sales assessment can be a powerful decision support tool.
What are the key elements of a solid Sales assessment?
Behaviors explain how the individual will interact with people, team mates, other employees and customers.
Specifically, it should cover:
How the person responds to problems and challenges
How they influence others to their point of view
How they respond to the pace of the environment
How they respond to rules and procedures set by others
Behavioral Selling Overview – How effective is the person at each phase of the sales cycle? The lower the score, the greater challenge the individual may have delivering specific behavior required for success with the specific phase.
Motivators and Driving Forces explains why an individual gets out of bed in the morning. What excites them to go to work.
Acumen Indicators point to an individuals ability to make good judgments and quick decisions within the sales environment. Can they do the job?
Competencies clarify an individual’s major strengths. Where do they naturally focus most of their time?
The Proof
One of my clients spent a lot of money hiring a Sales Manager. A Psychologist conducted a four-hour psychological evaluation on the individual. The result was that the Sales Manager did not post one sale on the books in two years (thank goodness, the CEO and COO were selling during that time)
When the CEO got ready to hire his next Sales Manager he called me so we assessed several candidates. I then helped the CEO understand how each person would operate in the role as well as how they would interact with him, the sales team and customers. The result is that the Sales Manager has increased sales for the company consistently over the past three years and also built an amazing sales team.
Another example
A Sales Manager needed to hire another sales person. They went through their general interviews, etc. and called me to conduct a Sales assessment on the individual. The individual had a very low understanding of the Sales cycle. The assessment also uncovered that the sales person was not motivated by money. In this particular industry, the sales cycle can be long so the individuals need to be able to manage their time and resources wisely to stay on track. These two key items for this specific client were enough for them to decide to pass on the individual.
Hiring for any position can be difficult under the best circumstances. Hiring good people can help your company or hurt your company. Why not give yourself every advantage to get the Sales people that are right for you? You can by using a validated pre-hire Sales assessment. You’ll thank me once the contract is signed and the money is in the bank!