sales talent assesment compared to psychometrics

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Competitive Analysis

Comparing standard Psychometric models of Personality

Analysis with Sales Talent Assessment

There are many variants of psychometric instrument and even more variants of report that can be produced from these instruments. However, regardless of who designs and publishes the psychometric instruments, or which type of report is produced, from a sales perspective all psychometrics suffer from three core flaws:

1. Psychometrics are not, and cannot be, role-specific.

The title ‘sales’ encompasses a very wide variety of disciplines, each of which requires a completely different set of skills and competencies. Each set of skills and competencies defines, or bounds, a unique ‘role’. Clearly there are some base skills and competencies required to be a sales person, as there are to be a doctor; however, sales, like medicine, requires specialist skills and competencies to be developed and learned to be able to perform any specific role at the highest level.

For example, would you ask an eye surgeon to fix a kidney problem – maybe they could muddle through – but the risk of failure is significantly higher. In the same way, would you ask a transactional (technical product-focused) sales person to sell the next $3bn outsourcing deal that comes along? Here, you would clearly recognise that the risk of failure is significantly higher – but in the reports of many psychometric instruments, their core ‘sales’ capabilities may appear quite similar as they are both ‘Hunters’.

The gradations between different sales roles can appear at first glance to be quite small, yet to maximise success, each requires a unique mix of skills and


competencies. In field sales alone, research carried out by SalesAssessment.com has identified in excess of 35 different core roles (with 10 currently deliverable). Additional variances can then sometimes occur based on sector specific requirements, where capabilities over and above those of a ‘vanilla’ sales person in the same role may be required.

2. Psychometrics require interpretation and feed-back from qualified consultants.

This requires the person interpreting the report to know your business and the role of each sales person intimately. Why? Because the information provided is ‘sales generic’ and it is left to you the user to select the elements you feel are most likely to be relevant to you (or your sales role). Alternatively you can engage an expensive qualified consultant to help you make sense of the data in terms of how well one sales person is going to create revenue compared to another. But how well does the expensive consultant know your sales needs, or your role?

There is a further risk associated with this process in that to have any form of like-for-like comparison, the same consultant needs to carry out all of the interpretations, to avoid the risk of human perception variance. This is where two people see the same thing (in this case the report’s findings) differently – which is not an uncommon phenomenon. Also, where the sales people are known to the consultant, personal feelings towards an individual can ‘colour’ the interpretation of the psychometric report, however hard the consultant tries to remain impartial.

3. There is no standard for what ‘good’ looks like.

No matter how much psychometric companies say they can show you what you should be looking for – this is only ever at the most superficial level. Often this is as

“…personal feelings towards an individual can ‘colour’ the interpretation

of the psychometric report…”


crude as “we can indicate who is most likely to be a good Hunter, and who a good Farmer” – which, as discussed previously, is far too crude a measure for achieving real sales success.

Additionally, they are not multidimensional in that they can only measure behavioural traits in an individual – they do not, and cannot, measure ‘hard skills’. Yet as a result of the findings from psychometrics, millions of dollars is spent every year on training programmes to improve performance. This is a real schizophrenic reaction to a behavioural analysis. Sure – perhaps you could put in place some behavioural coaching – whether targeted to what is required for your role or not – but how can you develop training needs from these reports – when training is primarily designed to improve hard job related skills – and these are not even being measured?

So – what makes Sales Talent Assessment so different? Operating exclusively in the sales space, Sales Talent Assessment is a robust and highly accurate online assessment tool that enables you to compare the capabilities, skills, critical reasoning and motivators of your current sales people – or prospective new hires – with those of a global ‘High-Performer’ for the same role. This opens the door to an entirely new level of sales performance, with McKinsey & Co reporting the difference between a High-Performer and the average to be up to 67%.

1. Sales Talent Assessment is role specific.

Ensuring the right person is in the right role is a vital component of every organisation’s talent management strategy: not only is this the key to optimizing the performance and return from your sales operations, it also facilitates retention of top talent.

“Ensuring the right person is in the right role is a vital component of

every organisation’s talent management strategy.”

67%


Not all sales roles are the same. For instance, Sales Managers requires an entirely different set of skills to perform in the role compared with the members of the teams they manage. A Strategic Selling role is fundamentally different in approach from Solution Selling, although both require high-calibre people.

Thus, each role demands its own specific set of competencies and skills.

2. Sales Talent Assessment is designed for use by business managers

Here at SalesAssessment.com we understand the challenges that Sales Leaders face. The need to deliver the numbers with increasing certainty. The constant search for the right people and the very real risks involved in hiring the wrong ones. The drive to keep the customer satisfied….

This is why all our reports are designed with an optimal range indicator on each skill, competency, and critical reasoning element – aligned specifically for just that role. This way – you don’t need any specialist knowledge – and even better – because the benchmark is pre-set role by role, the results will be objective and directly comparable, one against another, removing the risk of human error from the results.

3. Sales Talent Assessment contains a standard view of what ‘good’ looks like.

Here at SalesAssessment.com we can help you ensure you have the right people for the job by assessing all your existing sales people and your prospective new hires against an authoritative and entirely objective, role- specific benchmark, with each candidate’s results compared with the results we would see in a global ‘High-Performer’ – and we can do this specifically for the sales roles that best suit the needs of your organization. This online assessment process is predictive – with a high degree of accuracy – of a potential new hire’s revenue performance in any specific sales role.

“…all our reports are designed with an optimal range indicator on each

skill, competency, and critical reasoning element – aligned specifically

for just that role.”


The assessment process is rigorous without being off-putting and can be conducted in a candidate’s native language for increased convenience and reliability of results.

Beyond assessing a candidate’s immediate suitability for a specific sales role, the results offer employers further valuable insight into what we call ‘maximum headroom’ – the potential for each individual to develop within a specific sales role and their capacity to progress towards global ‘High-Performer’ status.

The Sales Talent Assessment process enables our clients to be confident that they are consistently hiring the best available sales talent to suit the needs of their sales organisation with the minimum amount of risk.

Predictive validity of Sales Talent Assessment is very high, almost the same as a three-day assessment centre (independently assessed by SHL in 2007).

This means that approximately 88% of sales people assessed through Sales Talent Assessment can do the sales job you want doing at the level of revenue performance we predict. A three-day assessment centre costing at least 10 times more per candidate is only 4% more predictive. Psychometric assessment has much lower predictive validity as shown in the chart below (shown as Personality Composites). Other assessments such as DISC, Insights, etc, are even lower (shown as Single Personality Scales).

“A three-day assessment centre costing at least 10 times more per

candidate is only 4% more predictive.”


“Independently assessed by SHL in 2007 as the most predictively

accurate on-line sales assessment available on the market.”


The Sales Talent Insight Suite from SalesAssessment.com.

Find out more. Contact us today: [email protected]


Making sense of sales talent

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sales talent assesment compared to psychometrics

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