- August 17, 2006
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Last week I wrote about OMG’s assessment going head to head with the most popular personality test. Today I’ll provide the clients’ comments and insights to this comparison.
I asked them how they felt about the intelligence we provided and one manager said, “Oh shit!” Another one said he “wanted to throw up” and a third asked “why I felt our assessment was better than the other one?”
They recognized that the personality test, while providing great insights into their communication styles and tendencies, is not predictive of sales performance or success and does not identify the likely problems a salesperson will encounter in the field.
“Could we have been this far off the track in our selection or is your assessment that good,” they asked.
The bottom line is that all of the major validated personality tests and behavioral styles tests provide useful, accurate information about what makes people tick. They stop far short of being predictive of sales performance.
They asked, “What about the customization? Did we make selections that caused these people to look as if they didn’t fit? Did we make the hiring criteria too difficult?”
These people were so weak that only one of the four would have been recommended if we removed all of their criteria and all but the most lenient of ours.
They asked, “If we raise the bar and actually look for people who would meet this criteria, would we be able to find any?”
Of course. The pool is smaller but they’re out there. It requires changes to the hiring process and the effective implementation of the assessment. But when you build a world-class sales recruiting process and use a best in class sales specific assessment, you can’t lose. You’ll consistently attract, identify, hire and retain stronger salespeople than ever before.
