When someone is consistently meeting face-to-face with target buyers, presence and soft skills are everything. They must be strong communicators, motivators, active listeners, speakers, and carry themselves with a sense of emotional maturity. Typically, these representatives work outside their own company’s offices, attending various meetings and events throughout their work day. Unless clients make a complaint, it’ll be difficult for employers to know when their outside sales reps aren’t performing up to speed, that is until their numbers start dropping. You can alleviate this possibility however by implementing a sales personality test into your hiring strategy whenever a new position opens up.
Sales has one of the highest turnover rates out of every professionally operating sector; this is because it’s very difficult to know whether an employee will be suited for its demands simply by reading a resume, or even conducting an interview. Furthermore, many prospective employees will play up the persona they believe their interviewers want to see making it very challenging for managers to cut through facades. Outside sales positions can appear prestigious, exciting, and fun, attracting applicants from all corners of the industry. However, they’re also stressful and usually it isn’t until after someone is hired that their true sales personality emerges within these positions.
Thankfully, there are tools hiring managers can use to their advantage when faced with filling yet another open position; sales personality tests created by companies like SalesTestOnline for example provide an accurate map showing whether a prospective employee embodies essential sales traits. First the company will research the job you are hiring for, establishing a benchmark profile; this target can further be custom created by having your top employees in similar positions take mock interviews. Then applicants take the ten-minute test and are immediately compared against this profile, displaying whether they have what it takes to find success working for you.
Because sales assessment testing is designed by industrial psychologists, they boast a 90% accuracy rate, and because they don’t ask questions directly related to sales, applicants are more likely to answer them authentically. Test results are sent immediately to your hiring committee, allowing them to filter through applications quicker. They can choose to look at only the resumes of those who scored over a certain percentage – making the process more dependable and streamlined. Furthermore, the test can be taken at any time of the day in six different languages, making it accessible and non-invasive
The soft skills of an outside sales representative will determine whether you keep existing clients, and whether new clients remain loyal to you. It’s therefore imperative that you hire the right person the first time around. Choose a sales personality test to help make sales hiring more transparent, informing your decisions based on accuracy rather than pure instinct which can be coloured by your own professional bias. You’ll also be more likely to find someone that will remain with your company for a long time, keeping those targets up and business moving steadily.
