Sometimes the only thing some salespeople can sell is themselves.
Sales Temperament Assessment™
A sales assessment that will dramatically improve
your odds of hiring top performers!
If you’re like most sales managers, you probably feel that the most difficult and frustrating part of your job is recruiting top salespeople. Because the success of the company’s operation rests on the quality of its sales team, it’s imperative that the right person is hired for the position.
As you know, hiring mistakes can be very costly. While you may discover you’ve got a good salesperson very quickly, it often takes several months to a year before you know you’ve got a non-performer.
During that time you’ve paid salaries, expenses, and other costs. This can add up to thousands and thousands of dollars and doesn’t take into consideration the lost business a bad hire can cost you.
Stop Hiring Poor Performers
There are three reasons why the next salesperson you hire is likely to be a poor performer.
Reason #1: Can’t Sell
Sometimes the only thing some salespeople can sell is themselves. These folks will sell you on hiring them by telling you what you want to hear and what they will do for you and your company. They are charming, outgoing, pleasant folks with a genuine like for people.
They’re often good talkers, and that’s the problem. Too much talk, too little results.
Because these people are so likeable, once you hire them you’ll find it hard to cut your losses and let them go and will end up investing too much time and money trying to get results.
Chances are, you may already have one or two of them on your sales team now. Our sales assessment test can help you find out who they are.
Reason #2: Wrong Sales Environment
Then there’s the salesperson who has great credentials and a good track record but in another field. Beware! Just because the person was successful selling in another field doesn’t necessarily mean he’ll work out for you. That’s because not every salesperson can sell everything.
The person who’s great at selling tangible products may fail miserably when forced to sell intangibles and vice versa.
The guy who is great at making cold calls and opening new accounts may be poor at developing long-term relationships and getting more business from existing accounts.
And then there’s the gal who’s loved by her existing customers but who can’t find new business for love or money.
That’s because these people are in the wrong sales environment, selling the wrong things. You’ve got a square peg in a round hole. Our sales test will help identify the square pegs.
Reason #3: Won’t Sell
Finally there are the people who simply shouldn’t be in sales at all but you hire them anyway. You’re desperate to fill a sales position and this person has come along. It’s a matter of the wrong person being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
They are like a fish out of water. Even with proper training, these people will succeed only by forcing themselves to do the job. No matter what training, coaching, and support you provide, they just don’t seem to get it. They try hard but will never really get out of the starting block despite all your efforts.
Left alone, these people usually survive about a year before moving along to another unsuspecting company. In the meantime, you’ve been picking up the tab for the compensation, expenses, and lost potential business.
Our sales assessment will help identify these people before you hire them.
The High Cost of a Bad Hire
We’ve all heard of the customer from hell, but some of us end up hiring a salesperson from the same place. Of course, none of us sets out to hire the wrong person, but occasionally it happens that we end up with the salesperson from hell. This is the person who looked good and sounded good during the brief hiring process but ends up either not performing or wreaking havoc within the organization.
Some of these people aren’t the salesperson from hell, they’re just non-performers. Their references often check out because their former employers still like them and don’t want to give them a poor recommendation.
This can happen when you don’t take the time to hire smart and you try to plug a round peg into a square hole. When this type of mismatch occurs, grief follows and takes the form of:
- lost and missed opportunities
- unhappy or lost clients
- wasted time
- demoralized staff
- lawsuits
- lost money
...and more.
Many managers, in an attempt to either save time or money, have no formal hiring process in place. This is often a false economy and may result in the hiring of an unsuitable candidate.
By the time you’ve figured out that the person isn’t going to work out, too much time and money has been wasted. This is time and money that could be better used impacting your bottom line in a more profitable manner.
It can take a new salesperson, even a seasoned one, several months to a year to become productive. You can usually tell pretty quickly if you have a winner, but it could take upwards to a year before you decide you have a non-performer. That’s yet another reason to spend the time to hire smart instead of hiring quick.
Staff turnover can be a financial black hole. Whether you fire poor performers or they leave on their own, they have to be replaced. This means running expensive recruitment ads, spending time interviewing and doing reference checks, providing training, and many other time- and money-consuming activities.
Our sales assessment test can help you avoid costly hiring mistakes.
Criteria for Assessing Candidates
There’s no foolproof way of finding top sales performers. When hiring a salesperson, you are basically looking for three things:
Ability: Can the person do the job?
Character: Does the person have the drive, desire, and discipline?
Temperament: How will the person do the job?
The interview process can usually help you find the answers to the first two qualities. The third ingredient for selling success — temperament — is harder to assess and that's where our sales assessment can help.
Assessing the Third Ingredient for Selling Success
The Sales Temperament Assessment (STA) is a sales test designed to measure the basic temperamental qualities that make up a successful salesperson:
- Competitiveness
- Sociability
- Drive
- Independence
Here are some of the things the Sales Temperament Assessment can reveal about salespeople:
- Are they competitive, ambitious, decisive?
- How competitive are they?
- Are they sociable, persuasive, optimistic?
- How good are they at pushing for results?
- Will they be overly social or talkative?
- Will they shy away from objections?
- Are they persistent?
- How persistent are they?
- Will they be comfortable making cold calls?
- How likely are they to close a sale?
- Are they suited to sell what you want sold?
These are some of the things you want to find out before you hire someone, not after.
Our sales assessment can help you make a better match between the person and the job.
The Sales Temperament Assessment is a simple, easy-to-complete online sales assessment test that is used to determine whether a person is temperamentally suited for a particular selling situation.
Making a Better Match
If you’ve been in sales and sales management long enough, you’ve learned that when it comes to salespeople, one size doesn’t fit all. We’ve yet to find a salesperson that fits seamlessly into every type of sales environment. Some sales styles are better than others, depending upon the sales situation.
Different selling situations require different temperaments. The same temperament that allows a person to naturally do cold calls, open new accounts, or pioneer new sales areas isn’t appropriate for a sales situation that requires the nurturing of existing accounts, retail selling, team selling, or a high degree of client service.
Of the 18 sales styles we’ve identified:
- 8 have a high probability of success (depending upon your selling environment)
- 4 are more appropriate for the retail environment
- 4 are going to look and sound good but usually don’t perform
- 2 should be avoided in all but the most specialized selling situations.
The Sales Temperament Assessment can help you identify who’s what!
The ten-page sales assessment (see sample) can assist you to make a better fit between the candidate and the job and help avoid putting a square or oval peg into a round hole. A square peg is someone who simply shouldn’t be in sales at all while an oval peg is someone who will probably do well in sales but not necessarily the specific type of selling you want done — sort of a poor fit versus a bad fit.
As mentioned above, there are the people who simply shouldn’t be in sales. Their temperament is such that it’s unnatural for them to do what must be done in order to succeed in sales. Even with proper training, these people will succeed only by forcing themselves to do the job and people with this amount of drive, desire, and discipline are rare. Most will stay with you until they can find an easier job or one better suited to their temperament.
Our sales assessment test won’t solve all your hiring problems. Used in conjunction with good interviewing techniques and thorough reference checking, you can improve your odds of hiring a top performer.
The Sales Temperament Assessment is an inexpensive, cost-effective, independent, second opinion as to the suitability of an individual’s temperament and how well he or she might perform in your particular sales environment.
Why is Temperament Important?
If a person has the right temperament for a particular selling situation, it will be natural for the individual to do what is required to succeed. If the right temperament is combined with proper sales and product knowledge training, the person can be a top producer.
However, if a person’s temperament is not well suited for a particular sales situation, he or she will not find the job enjoyable but more of a chore, and who likes doing chores? The individual may succeed in the position, but it will take a lot of effort. It would be better for the person to find a sales position more suited to his or her temperament.
Temperament versus Personality
Temperament is similar to personality in that both are developed at a very early age and generally don’t change very much over the years. Think of personality as being the distinctive qualities or characteristics of a person, while temperament is a measure of how that person naturally responds and reacts to the world around him or her.
Simply put, personality is who you are and temperament is how you act and respond.
Sales Suitability Summary
Most companies who provide similar sales assessment services simply send you the results and let you come to your own conclusion. The Sales Temperament Assessment is one of a very few sales assessments that will give you a rating as to the suitability of a candidate.
This section of the sales assessment provides two ratings and will tell you, on a scale of one to ten:
- the person’s suitability for sales in general, and
- the person’s suitability for your particular sales situation.
These two ratings are then combined to give you an indication as to whether the person:
- has the potential to be a top performer
- has the potential to be a good performer
- may perform well with a minimum of supervision
- may succeed if given proper guidance and coaching
- is unlikely to succeed in sales.
Fine-Tune Your Existing Sales Team
The Sales Temperament Assessment can also help you fine-tune your existing sales team. Here are just a few of the ways our clients have used our sales test to their advantage:
- Companies put their entire sales team through the sales assessment to confirm they have round pegs in round holes (the right job match). Those salespeople whose basic selling styles are at odds with the company’s sales environment are counselled on how they can adjust the way they sell for greater success.
- Companies who pair up an outside salesperson with an inside support person use the sales test to ensure the two people complement each other. This results in a stronger, more productive team and more profitable sales.
- Companies use the sales assessment test on all their top salespeople so they can develop a profile of what to look for when hiring new salespeople.
- Let’s face it, every company has its underachievers. Some companies do the Sales Temperament Assessment on their underachievers for the same reason they profile their top performers — to know what to watch out for when trying to avoid hiring poor sales performers.
How Much Does It Cost?
Your investment in the Sales Temperament Assessment is USD$75 per assessment which, compared to the high cost of hiring a poor performer, is an incredible value. Volume pricing is available.
Getting Started
It’s easy to get started. Within minutes you can be using the Sales Temperament Assessment to assess your candidates. Here’s the process in a nutshell:
- Create your online account.
- Log in to your account and complete the Selling Environment form.
- Your account is now activated and you can purchase Access Codes.
- You assign an assessment to your candidate.
- Your candidate either completes the assessment immediately at your location, or you email him the information that will allow him to complete the assessment from any computer that has Internet access.
- The results are emailed to you within minutes of completion. The assessment is also stored in your account for one year.
Create your online account now.
Questions? Check out our FAQ section or contact us.
