Tweet

Stupid Choices in the Selection of Sales Assessments

Written by: Dave Kurlan

Article Overview: When you use an assessment in the sales recruiting process, it must be customizable so that criteria unique to your business, like I described above, can be factored in. That way, in addition to whether the candidate meets our criteria of a successful salesperson, we must be able to determine whether the candidate will be able to succeed in the face of the company's unique challenges.

Stupid Choices in the Selection of Sales Assessments

We had a conversation with someone who was using the CPQ Assessment. The person who was providing it to them claims it is a sales assessment but it's a personality test marketed as a sales assessment. If you're not familiar with my series on this then click here. They were also told that it was predictive, especially with insurance salespeople, and that they could use the same criteria for selecting their salespeople (selling a business consulting package to CEO's) as is used for hiring life insurance salespeople. Yeah, right.

Let's compare the life insurance (LI) sale and this business consulting package sale (BCP):

•LI is a must have while the BCP is a nice to have.

•People need but don't want LI while CEO's want but don't need BCP.

•LI salespeople are selling a traditional why you should buy from me vs them. The BCP salesperson is selling the more difficult why should you buy at all.

•The LI sale is to any consumer while the BCP sale is to CEO's

•The LI salesperson is selling a guaranteed result while the best our BCP salesperson can offer is hope.

•The LI salesperson is more often selling a term policy for as little as $10 per month while the BCP salesperson is selling a package for $12,000 or $1000 per month.

•The LI prospect knows that LI is needed, it's only a question of who to get it from. The BCP prospect does not know and may not even agree that the consulting is needed and needs to be convinced of why it's important to have in the first place.

•The LI sales cycle is a 2-call close and the BCP sales cycle is a 1-call close.

•The LI salesperson is selling a commodity with a lot of competition. The BCP salesperson is selling a consulting service with little to no competition.

•The LI salesperson typcially has a sales manager for coaching, motivation and accountability. The BCP salesperson will be working out of a home office with no sales manager.

Aside from the fact that 90% of the salespeople hired for life insurance sales turnover in the first year, is there anything similar about the sales challenges the LI salesperson and the BCP salesperson must face?

When you use an assessment in the sales recruiting process, it must be customizable so that criteria unique to your business, like I described above, can be factored in. That way, in addition to whether the candidate meets our criteria of a successful salesperson, we must be able to determine whether the candidate will be able to succeed in the face of the company's unique challenges.

Would you use an assessment whose claim to fame was insurance sales (think 90% turnover) to hire salespeople for a key position in your company?

Related Articles
  Are you making the most of Psychometric Assessments?
  How to be More Effective Selecting Sales Candidates
  Why OMG's Sales Candidate Assessments Can't Help These Companies
  Sales Experts Disagree on the Right Way to Train Salespeople
  Misleading Statistics and Hiring the Wrong Salespeople

Article Tags: ceo, commodity, consulting service, conversation with someone, insurance, insurance salespeople, life insurance, personality test, salesperson, selling a business



Related Forum Posts
Re: Google Pagerank update inprogress - In the past few updates I have seen several of my sites with very little content or links that I never do anything with gain PR, while the sites I work on all the time stay the same or lower. Stupid if you ask me!
Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing
Re: Online Sales and Marketing vs Traditional - [quote="ltrahan":31w9r2iz]Hi Evan, I am noticing that many of the posts in the Sales/Marketing section deal with online marketing, SEM and and SEO and Affiliates. I was wondering if it might be a good idea to separate that section into two; 1) Online Sales and Marketing; 2) Traditional Sales and Marketing[/quote:31w9r2iz] I second the request...
Hello From Marietta GA! - Hello All! My name is Tim Naylor and I am in Direct Sales! I am glad I have found EC's sites and I hope to learn and share a lot!
taxes in canada - Well in Canada we only have a few provinces and the Sales tax is slightly different. Here in Ontario the Goods & Services tax has reduced to 5% from 7% in the last year due to the promises made by the government in place.


Share this article with your friends. Fund someone's dream.

Leave a comment below or share on the left and you'll help support entrepreneurs in Africa through our partnership with Kiva. Over $50,000 raised and counting - Please keep sharing! Learn more.

Tweet

Newsletter

Get advice & tips from famous business
owners, new articles by entrepreneur
experts, my latest website updates, &
special sneak peaks at what's to come!

Name:
Email:

Popular Articles

Gas bills go up by 18% can we take any more

Executive Blind Spots

Let's Skip the Offshore Horror Stories

Suggestions

Email us your ideas on how to make our
website more valuable! Thank you Sharon
from Toronto Salsa Lessons / Classes for
your suggestions to make the newsletter
look like the website and profile younger
entrepreneurs like Jennifer Lopez.