Tag: SALES HIRING ASSESSMENTS

Competency-Based SaaS Sales Interviews: How to Assess Skills Effectively

Posted on by Nick Mann

Once you’ve narrowed your SaaS sales candidate pool down to a select group of individuals, it’s time to find the best of the best. Remember that it’s not just about choosing the top candidate during SaaS sales interviews. You need to find the top candidate for your sales team.

To truly understand how they would perform in your sales environment, it’s helpful to take a competency-based approach, which involves assessing a candidate’s skills and abilities by asking questions that require specific examples that draw from past experiences.

Here’s a streamlined three-step process I suggest doing that.

Define Your Company’s Core SaaS Sales Competencies

Before you do anything else, a necessary first step is to identify what your company’s core competencies are in regard to SaaS sales.

There will likely be some overlap between most SaaS companies. HubSpot, for example, lists the top four competencies as being:

  • Foundational sales knowledge
  • Communication skills
  • Willingness to learn
  • Attention to detail

They also provide a list of other core competencies that are extremely important.

Here at HireDNA, we analyze SaaS sales candidates across 21 selling competencies — some of which include coachability, the ability to hunt, the drive to succeed, and the ability to close deals.

The bottom line is that each sales team will be a little different. So you’ll want to figure out the exact traits and characteristics you want to focus on above all else.

Create a Top 10 List of Core Saas Sales Competencies

After defining your specific core SaaS sales competencies, the next step is to determine which 10 are the most important and rank them in order of importance.

Here’s an example of what that may look like:

  1. Foundational sales/product knowledge
  2. Communication skills
  3. Willingness to learn
  4. Coachability
  5. Ability to hunt
  6. Relationship-building
  7. Negotiating skills
  8. Ability to handle rejection
  9. Drive to succeed
  10. Emotional intelligence

Remember that you can always change your core competencies, as well as their order later on. But having a tangible list like this should help you articulate which competencies hold the most value and will help guide you on the next step.

Create Relevant Interview Questions Based on Core SaaS Sales Competencies

Once you have a definitive list of core SaaS sales competencies, it’s time to use them to develop a series of interview questions that your team can reference.

“Competency-based interviews rely on the assumption that past successful or unsuccessful job scenarios provide evidence of compatibility with a position’s requisites,” explains Job Test Prep.

By asking targeted competency-based questions that require candidates to call upon their work experience, it allows you to better understand their thought process, how they would act if hired on to your SaaS sales team, and generally gauge their overall abilities. This isn’t to say that competency-based interviews tell 100% of the story, but they’re fairly accurate for the most part and should help you forecast how successful a potential candidate would be.

Here are a few examples based on the top 10 list above.

When assessing foundational sales/product knowledge, you could ask:

  • How do you learn and stay informed about the features of a SaaS product you’re selling?
  • Tell me about a specific time when you used your knowledge to close a deal.

When assessing relationship-building, you could ask:

  • Can you tell me about a time when you successfully built a strong relationship with a SaaS customer, and how did you leverage that relationship to instill loyalty?
  • What were the specific steps you took and the challenges you faced along the way?

When assessing a rep’s ability to handle rejection, you could ask:

  • Can you tell me about a particular time when you faced an especially difficult rejection?
  • How did you overcome it?

Repeat this process until you have a fully fleshed-out list of competency-based questions for SaaS sales interviews that look something like this.

Integrate Core Competency Questions into Interviews

At this point, the heavy lifting is over, and you should have a tangible list of questions that zero in on essential SaaS sales competencies. It’s just a matter of providing your recruiting team with a list of those questions and having them use them during interviews.

This offers two main benefits, with the first being that it allows you to efficiently learn about each SaaS sales candidate’s core competencies and determine whether or not they’re a good fit for your company.

The other key benefit is that it allows you to standardize your sales hiring process, which is extremely important to finding elite candidates.

“In non-standardized interviews, there may be a set of questions guiding the conversation, but there is little consistency across the experience for candidates,” writes The Harvard Business School. “Often this is where unconscious bias can manifest itself and candidates don’t have the same opportunity to effectively tell their story and showcase their fit for a role.”

“In a standardized interview, each candidate is asked the same questions in the same order. HBS Professor Francesca Gino notes that this type of interview process helps to reduce bias by focusing on the factors that have a direct impact on performance.'”

Not to mention that it makes your interviewer’s life easier when they have a list of questions for quick reference to guide them through the hiring process. Rather than blindly feeling their way through an interview, having a sense of structure like this should help make things go smoother.

Wrapping Up

Traditional interviewing can tell you a lot about a candidate. But in my opinion, one of the best ways to truly get a sense of how someone would perform in your unique SaaS sales environment is by taking a competency-based approach.

Fortunately, this is pretty straightforward and simply involves a three-step process of 1) identifying which core competencies are most essential to SaaS sales success, 2) creating relevant questions around those competencies, and 3) effectively integrating those questions into your interviewing.

If you’re looking to find truly elite SaaS sales reps, I suggest using the OMG sales candidae assessment. Backed by science and predictive validity, this assessment targets critical sales competencies, and 91% of recommended and hired candidates have positive on the job performance.

Measuring Sales Potential: Unleash Your Team’s Best with Top Sales Assessment Tools

Posted on by Nick Mann

Here are a few sobering stats. 74% of salespeople fail. 20% of salespeople do okay but could use improvement. And only a tiny fraction of salespeople are considered “elite” at just 6%.

This means that taking a conventional approach to sales hiring where you choose candidates based merely on their resume, previous positions, education, etc. is likely to end up with mediocre results at best. The numbers just aren’t in your favor.

That’s why a growing number of sales leaders are using sales assessment tools that implement science-based techniques to objectively determine who’s the best fit for a role and who possesses the right hard skills, as well as the right soft skills.

Why Should You Use Top Sales Assessment Tools?

A lot of candidates can look great on paper. Maybe they’ve got a robust resume jam-packed with impressive credentials, a stellar track record, and have been employed by industry standouts.

That’s great, but can they actually sell?

More specifically, can they sell effectively in your unique sales environment? And do they have the specific personality traits that it takes to succeed with your company?

These aren’t questions that can’t necessarily be answered by looking at a resume. That’s where sales assessment tools come in.

Designed to evaluate and measure the performance, skills, and capabilities of prospective salespeople, these tools offer several distinct benefits.

  • They allow you to objectively analyze candidates using quantifiable data
  • You can easily identify each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses
  • They offer scores for an easy comparison of different sales candidates
  • You can avoid bias that naturally creeps in
  • They can be customized for your specific sales environment
  • They streamline the sales hiring process as a whole, freeing up more time for you to focus on core business activities (this is especially important for smaller businesses that lack a dedicated hiring team)

And with many of the top sales assessment tools boasting remarkable numbers in terms of the results they help achieve, it’s easy to see why this technology has become so popular in recent years.

With that said, here are my top sales assessment tools, including core features, benefits, and more.

The Original Sales Candidate Assessment By Objective Management Group

One of the biggest selling points of The Sales Candidate Assessment is the massive volume of data behind it. As of late 2023, it’s been used by over 37,000 companies to make over 111,000 hires across 200 different industries.

For this reason, it’s been one of the most consistently reliable sales assessment tools and can be used by a wide variety of companies in multiple industries. As I mentioned earlier, a big reason for the success of these assessments is that they can be customized for each unique selling environment. And that’s certainly the case with The OMG Sales Candidate Assessment.

“Your customized Role Specification allows you to specify the unique requirements of your position. Candidates are then assessed against your criteria to create a recommendation custom-tailored to your needs.”

In terms of insights it provides, you can assess:

  • A candidate’s will to sell
  • Their “sales DNA,” meaning whether or not they have the traits to produce positive outcomes
  • Their core competencies, such as qualifying and closing leads
  • How trainable they are
  • Where they rank in comparison to other candidates (their sales percentile)

This combined with the simplicity and intuitiveness of using The OMG Sales Candidate Assessment, and it’s a tool that many sales leaders can greatly benefit from.

The DriveTest By Sales Drive

This tool also has a lot of data behind it, with 150,000 sales assessments being administered to date. One of the main reasons why we like The DriveTest is because it’s so simple and straightforward.

First, you give the test to potential sales candidates, where The DriveTest analyzes essential factors like critical personality traits needed to thrive in sales and non-teachable traits, including achievement, competitiveness, and optimism.

The test also includes 42 forced-choice questions, where “candidates must choose between three options that sound equally positive, making this sales personality test very difficult to fake.”

Then, The DriveTest will provide you with a color-coded scale that measures each trait, while also quantifying the score from 1 to 5. This simple rating allows you to instantly assess each candidate and see how they stack up against other applicants.

From there, it’s just a matter of using this data to decide who’s the best fit for your sales team. Note that candidates who receive a score of 4 to 5 in “the green range” are nearly twice as likely to become sales leaders.

The Caliper Profile By Talogy

The first thing to note about The Caliper Profile is that it not only helps you hire elite salespeople, but it also helps you manage them post-hire so they reach their full potential.

In their own words, ” The Caliper Profile is a unique talent solution in that you can use your assessment data even after the hire is made. By using your new hire’s profile data, you are able to explore areas of opportunity and growth to develop them further.”

And that’s important because continued salesperson development is crucial to staying on top of your industry and winning against competitors.

I also like the thoroughness of this sales assessment tool, as it analyzes a staggering 280 behaviors, 56 competencies, and 21 behavioral traits.

So as you can see, it’s highly comprehensive and capable of providing a 360-view of sales candidates.

One area The Caliper Profile really focuses on is mental toughness, where it looks at:

  • Level-headedness
  • Stress tolerance
  • Resiliency
  • Energy/persistence
  • Self-structure

As you probably know, being mentally tough is an incredibly value trait to have in salespeople. Being able to deal with consistent rejection and the overall ups and downs of the position is essential to long-term success. The Caliper Profile gives you a crystal clear view of how each candidate fairs in this area.

Besides that, it can uncover a candidate’s most natural behaviors, along with behaviors to investigate.

Here’s an example.

Put this all together, and The Caliper Profile is definitely a sales assessment to consider.

The Predictive Talent Assessment By Chally

Next is The Predictive Talent Assessment, which, right off the bat, has some great numbers in terms of the impact it can have. According to Chally, hiring managers who use it see:

  • 46% faster time to hire
  • 43% lower cost per hire
  • Salespeople that are 21% more likely to reach their sales goals

Some particular things to note about this tool is that it analyzes 138 sales competencies, with that number still growing. It’s highly customizable, allowing you to find elite salespeople across a wide variety of industries and specific sales roles. There’s a “large database spanning five decades with normative samples of over 600,000 adults with broad representation of race, ethnicity, age, gender, national origin, and global geography.”

Also, The Predictive Talent Assessment offers clear, simple reporting along with recommendations on how to properly utilize the information to make smart sales hiring decisions.

There are a few different types of assessments you can perform with this tool, including the Best Fit Sales report, which indicates which candidate is best suited for the position you’re hiring for, and the Motivations and Habits Report, which lets you know how a candidate approaches sales situations.

And my personal favorite is the Individual Strengths Report, which breaks down core competencies and shows what percentile a candidate is when compared to other respondents.

Although this sales assessment tool isn’t quite as thorough as some of the others on this list like The Original Sales Assessment, it’s still more than sufficient for many hiring managers.

SalesGenomix

Perhaps the most impressive thing about SalesGenomix is that it’s an assessment tool that’s built around 20 years of field research, involving half a million sales professionals. As I’ve mentioned before, the more data that goes into analyzing salespeople, the more reliably you can predict their likelihood of succeeding in your unique sales environment.

So that’s one of the main reasons why SalesGenomix made the list.

Another benefit is that it looks at 140 different sales attributes and can assess a candidate’s qualifications across 14 sales roles, including sales management. Whether you need to hire someone for an entry-level sales position or someone for a senior leadership position, you can do so confidently with this tool.

Besides that, SalesGenomix is great if you have a candidate that has performed well in one role but they’re applying for a different one. If you’ve been reading the HireDNA blog for a while, you may know that I’m a big proponent of hiring sales professionals who are great at selling but don’t necessarily have direct experience with the specific role at hand.

I find that true skills and talent usually transfer, and most elite salespeople can quickly learn a new role. With SalesGenomix, you can “rate the success potential of a given candidate across a dozen or so sales roles. So you can confidently make hiring decisions even when a promising candidate has limited experience at the role you are trying to fill.”

Besides that, this assessment has the ability to test your existing sales team when you want to promote from within. This comes in handy for succession planning or if you simply don’t want to look externally every time you need to make a hire.

TestGorilla

While the final tool on this list isn’t specifically geared toward sales hiring, as it works for several types of careers, you can most definitely use it for assessing sales candidates. And the overall simplicity and effectiveness of the platform combined with how much time it can save make it a great choice, in my opinion.

Some of TestGorilla’s main selling points besides its simplicity is its ability to drastically lower unconscious bias and offer an amazing customer experience — both of which are vital for creating a winning company.

To use TestGorilla, you first choose an assessment name and job role.

Then you choose the best tests from the company’s large archive of tests and add custom questions if you want.

From there, you invite candidates to participate and analyze the results.

An added plus is that if you ever want to hire for other positions outside of sales, such as a bookkeeper or developer, everything is ready to go with TestGorilla.

Building a Winning Team with Top Sales Assessment Tools

In today’s hyper-competitive business world, “relying on a hunch” with sales hiring just won’t cut it. To give yourself the best chance of success, it’s critical to rely on science and data to accurately predict how a candidate will perform in your unique sales environment.

Each of these sales assessment tools offers different features, but all bring something valuable to the table. So if you’ve been considering implementing this type of software, these are good places to start. The OMG Sales Candidate Assessment in particular is one of the best pound-for-pound, with 92% of recommended candidates reaching the top half of the sales force.

Why Companies That Use a Sales Assessment Have Reps That Are 24% More Likely to Exceed Performance Goals

Posted on by hiredna

When it comes to sales candidates, what you see isn’t always what you get. One study found that nearly four out of five sales resumes are misleading, and up to 46% contain straight-up lies! This isn’t to say all sales candidates are deliberately trying to be deceptive. But the fact of the matter is that you simply can’t take everything at face value. That’s where a sales assessment comes in.

Though not a magic bullet, there’s a solid body of evidence that shows effectively using a sales assessment can have a dramatic impact on recruiting, with companies that use it having a noticeable advantage over those that don’t. Allow me to explain.

Some Eye-Opening Stats

Most sales recruiters acknowledge that sales assessments have some type of impact on recruiting. But many don’t realize the extent of the impact. So let’s quantify.

One of the most telling studies comes from Aberdeen Group, which found “organizations that use pre-hire assessments are 24% more likely to have employees who exceed performance goals.” That alone I found to be highly impressive and, right off the bat, it shows the correlation between evaluating the skills a potential candidate claims and making smart hiring decisions.

But that’s not all.

Additional research found that “hiring managers who utilize pre-employment assessments report 36% more satisfaction with their final decision than those who don’t.”

So not only are salespeople who are hired after completing a sales assessment far more likely to thrive, hiring managers are far more likely to be satisfied with their decision.

Why is a Sales Assessment So Beneficial?

Again, a sales assessment isn’t a cure-all, and there’s no guarantee that by using one you’ll find the perfect salesperson 100% of the time. But there’s no denying that it can be an immensely helpful tool. I think Aberdeen Group summarizes it well with this quote.

“While this technology might not predict every facet of an employee’s tenure with a company, it certainly is an improvement over making hiring decisions based on interviews, references, resumes, and/or gut feel — together or separately.” By objectively evaluating a sales candidate’s knowledge and skills, you can approach recruiting much more confidently than in the past. And the odds of the person you hire working out long-term are much higher.

But what are some specific reasons why companies that use a sales assessment have reps that are much more likely to exceed their performance goals? Here are three of the biggest.

You Can Verify a Sales Candidate’s Claims

Perhaps the most obvious benefit is that this tool gives you a means of “fact-checking” a sales candidate to ensure they truly possess the skills they claim to have on their resume. Going back to the data in the intro, the majority of resumes are misleading, and, unfortunately, close to half contain some type of lie. So you shouldn’t assume that every candidate you encounter is as good as they say they are.

But with a sales assessment, you can see exactly what they bring to the table. And because all candidates answer the same questions and perform the same tasks in their assessment, you can accurately compare each one side-by-side to see who’s the best fit for your company.

You Can Get a Feel for a Sales Candidate’s Personality

Besides finding someone with the right hard skills, it’s also important to take soft skills like communication, problem-solving, and organization into account. While you can get a general sense of a candidate’s personality through interactions and interviewing, this doesn’t always tell the whole story.

Another big advantage of a sales assessment is that it goes beyond traditional interviewing where you can ask questions to gauge their personality and see how good of a match they would be for the specific role and your overall company culture.

You Can Eliminate Bias

One reason why some sales recruiters make the wrong hire is that they “fall in love” with a particular candidate, even if they’re not the optimal choice. Say, for example, a candidate is incredibly charismatic, shares the same interest, and went to your same college. There’s a good chance you would be compelled to hire them over another candidate that didn’t check these boxes even if they’re not objectively the better fit.

At the end of the day, human bias is always a factor and can easily cloud a recruiter’s judgment. The great thing about a sales assessment is that it eliminates bias so each candidate can be evaluated objectively.

Sales Assessment Tools to Use

At this point, I think we can agree that, when used correctly, a sales assessment can be a huge asset. But what specific tool should you use?

One that many sales recruiters have success with is HireDNA, which offers the industry’s number one skills assessment solution. Here’s an overview of what HireDNA has to offer.

With it, you can assess core selling competencies like lead hunting, the ability to reach decision-makers, relationship-building, and more.

You can also measure “sales DNA competencies,” such as being able to control emotions, comfortably discuss money, and handle rejection, as well as development traits like the will to sell and coachability.

Aftering setting up your ideal candidate profile, you can use HireDNA to filter and screen candidates 10x faster, and recruiters that use it are able to eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes. You can get a full overview of HireDNA and learn more about it here.

Wrapping Up

Sales recruiting isn’t something you want to leave to chance. Fortunately, technology like a sales assessment has created a framework that allows you to evaluate potential candidates from all angles while eliminating many of the inefficiencies that recruiters had to deal with in the past. With a clear correlation between using a sales assessment and reps exceeding their goals, it’s definitely a technology worth implementing if you haven’t done so already.

Ready to take the next step? Schedule a live HireDNA demo today.

82% of Companies Use a Pre-Employment Assessment Test: Should You?

Posted on by hiredna

A pre-employment assessment test is nothing new for high-level sales positions. They’ve been used for years to analyze candidates like account managers, regional sales managers, chief sales officers, and so on.

But in recent years, a growing number of companies have been using pre-employment assessment tests for nearly all positions, such as basic sales reps. The question is, does this make sense for your company? And if so, how should you approach it?

82% of Companies Now Use a Pre-Employment Assessment Test

A few years back, SHRM wrote a fascinating article about the rise of predictive assessments that referenced multiple studies on the topic. In it, SHRM writes, “according to the Talent Board’s 2016 Candidate Experience Research report, 82% of companies are using some form of pre-employment assessment test, and how they use assessments is evolving.

20 Reasons to Use Skill Assessment Tests | TalentLyft

Two particular types of popular screens are job simulations (54% of respondents are using these, according to the Talent Board study) and culture fit (51% using, a 22% increase from the Board’s 2014 study. While assessments once primarily were used for executive and mid-level leadership positions, today they’re commonly used for hourly and entry-level jobs.”

Note that the data SHRM referenced was from 2016. So it’s likely that even more companies are using a pre-employment assessment test in 2022. And with screening technology continually advancing and improving, this is a trend that’s likely to continue.

This brings me to my next point.

Is a Pre-Employment Assessment Test Right for You?

Let me first say that there’s no magic bullet for sales hiring, and you can never be 100% sure that a candidate will work out. That said, a pre-employment assessment test is pound-for-pound one of the most effective tools available for improving your sales hiring success rate.

When utilized correctly, a pre-employment assessment test offers a wide range of benefits, including:

  • Quickly testing a candidate’s true abilities
  • Determining how good of a fit they are for a particular sales position
  • Determining how good of a cultural fit they are
  • Differentiating between two similarly skilled candidates to figure out who’s better
  • Efficiently filtering through a high volume of candidates
  • Reducing or even eliminating bias
  • Spending less time performing manual assessment tasks

Not only that, pre-employment assessments often improve the candidate’s experience because it gives them a fair chance to showcase their talents. When you put it all together, it’s easy to see why this is such a popular sales hiring tool and why an increasing number of companies are choosing to use it.

For that reason, I truly believe the vast majority of sales recruiters can benefit from using a pre-employment assessment test. If you’ve been considering using one but haven’t gotten around to it, now is a great time to do so.

How Should You Approach Pre-Employment Assessment Testing?

There are several ways to go about it. SHRM lists some specific types of tests and testing methods, including:

  • Cognitive ability tests
  • Personality tests
  • Aptitude tests
  • Honesty and integrity tests

For some companies, a pre-employment assessment test could be something as simple as asking a few cognitive questions regarding IQ, verbal ability, and deductive reasoning, along with some basic personality questions involving motivations, communication skills, and attitude. If you’re simply looking to uncover the essentials to better determine how good of a fit a particular candidate would be for a sales position, this can be sufficient.

But if you want to go a bit deeper (which is ideal in today’s competitive sales world), it’s usually best to use pre-employment testing software, as it streamlines the process and adds a level of objectivity that’s hard to achieve with conventional, manual techniques. Also, today’s software is highly advanced and capable of producing detailed data to help you make the best choice through visual reports.

Using HireDNA as an Assessment Tool

One particular platform that’s helpful for many sales recruiters is HireDNA, which both generates and screens candidates.

First, HireDNA uses intelligent matching that analyzes 20 key data points to find top-tier candidates that are perfect fits for the specific role and your hiring criteria. For example, this software looks at things like role, culture, and experience fit and provides a quantifiable number of how qualified a particular candidate is.

From there, HireDNA screens the candidates using a science-backed assessment and matching algorithm to objectively predict success before hiring. This takes the guesswork out of the process and is a highly accurate way to assess each candidate’s selling skills and overall capabilities. In turn, this filters out individuals who wouldn’t be a good fit and ensures only the highest quality standards.

In terms of effectiveness, 92% of candidates recommended through HireDNA go on to reach the top of the sales force during their first year, and 96% of hiring mistakes are eliminated. Besides, that turnover is reduced by a third on average.

Wrapping Up

Candidate testing has evolved dramatically in recent years. It’s gone from primarily testing higher-level positions to testing candidates at all levels. With 82% of companies now implementing some form of candidate testing, it’s clear that it’s working and can be quite effective. It’s just a matter of finding the right pre-employment assessment test for your company.

While simply asking a few questions can certainly work for making a basic assessment, most sales recruiters see the most success using a technology sales recruiting platform like HireDNA that features intelligent matching and science-based assessments because of the high accuracy and ability to consistently predict success. To learn more about HireDNA and see it in action, you can request a live demo today.

How to Avoid Costly Sales Rep Hiring Mistakes

Posted on by hiredna

Hiring salespeople is typically among a company’s largest budget items, and the cost of a bad hire is immense. The average cost of a bad sales hire is more than $115,000, while the cost of a bad sales management hire can reach as high as  $3.5 million, as outlined in our recent blog post on hiring effective sales managers.

These numbers represent average costs; you can use this free Hiring Mistake Calculator to determine your organization’s specific bad hire impact, including your cost of recruitment, development and lost business.

And that’s strictly from a mathematical perspective – the overall impact is compounded when you factor in the loss of resources devoted to the bad hire, lowered team morale and performance, and the damage to your brand reputation among your clients and prospects. 

In this blog post, we examine why the wrong sales reps are hired so often, and what smart sales leaders are doing to reduce the risk and impact of hiring mistakes.

Wrong People Are Hired 77% of the Time

According to a recent evaluation by Objective Management Group (OMG), the wrong salespeople are hired 77% of the time. According to OMG, these bad hires: 

  • Make excuses for their lack of performance (60%)
  • Lack commitment to sales success (37%)
  • Are not motivated to achieve sales success (20%)

How to Avoid a Bad Sales Hire

When OMG compared data between all salespeople and the lowest-performing 50%, they found that the most significant differentiator among “good” and “bad” hires was their Sales DNA – the unique set of  traits and behaviors that influence a rep’s performance. 97% of weak salespeople lack the minimum required Sales DNA for success in their roles. 

In a detailed white paper exploring the science behind salesperson selection, OMG outlined five key components of a rep’s Sales DNA that signal a potential bad hire: 

  • Need to Be Liked – While it’s important for a sales rep to be likable, reps who demonstrate a need for approval usually have difficulty facing potential challenges like confrontation, rejection, and asking tough but necessary questions.
  • Tendency to Become Emotional – Reps with higher emotional involvement may struggle to listen and remain focused on the prospect, which can result in missing important details or losing control of a conversation.
  • Self-Limiting Beliefs – Ineffective sales reps exhibit a number of self-limiting beliefs that can sabotage their selling process, such as “I don’t like making cold calls” or “It’s impolite to ask a lot of questions.”
  • Bad Empathy – Sales reps who make their own major purchases using a non-supportive buy cycle (comparison shopping, heavy research, long decision timeframes, etc.) are more likely to empathize with prospects who engage in the same behavior, and are less effective at helping prospects move forward with the purchase decision.
  • Discomfort Discussing Money – When sales reps are uncomfortable asking questions about budget or a prospect’s financial position, they are unable to ask the necessary questions or make suggestions on solving potential budget-related objections.

Science-based sales assessments that identify a candidate’s Sales DNA, along with other sales competencies, can help sales leaders determine a candidate’s likelihood of success before making a costly hiring mistake. 

Build A Winning Sales Team

At HireDNA, we offer a range of science-based recruiting and assessment solutions for companies looking to hire and retain top sales talent. We help sales leaders determine candidates’ Sales DNA, among other competencies, and avoid costly hiring mistakes.

Why Choose Us?                

  • Our predictive candidate assessments eliminate 96% of hiring mistakes
  • Businesses hire 50% faster when they work with us
  • We have an 80% success rate for placements across organizations

Using Assessments to Develop Your Sales Team

Posted on by hiredna

When you have a high-growth business plan, you need a sales plan that can match it – one that will equip your reps to handle shifting market trends, meet evolving customer demands, and maximize effectiveness.

Creating that kind of winning sales plan starts with an in-depth understanding of the current-state of your sales people, process, management, and tools. Using a sales team assessment tool can help you identify critical skill gaps in your sales force, assess how your sales structure aligns with your business goals, and identify key strategies to keep your sales team competitive and ready to drive next level results.

The sales assessment should also answer crucial questions like, Are we reaching the right decision makers? Can we close more sales? Do our systems and processes support a high-performance sales organization? What must we change to improve? How long will that take? And what will the impact be?

Not All Sales Assessment Tools Are Created Equal

The most effective tools, like Objective Management Group’s Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis (SEIA), use proven, scientific processes to collect and analyze data about your people, processes, systems, and management.

A recent Harvard Business Review report demonstrated that a scientific approach to sales force effectiveness – emphasizing data, analysis, processes and tools – can create dramatic results, including increasing rep productivity by as much as 200%. Our Science Behind Sales Success white paper provides a more detailed look at the effectiveness of this scientific approach.

The Benefits of a Sales Team Assessment

The results from a sales team assessment will not only help you better understand how your team is performing, but will also provide a prioritized game plan to help you improve. For example, if your sales team assessment reveals that your salespeople seem to hit their goals consistently but narrowly, this could indicate a need for a more consultative selling approach, or adjustments to your overall sales process. On the other hand, inconsistent sales and routinely missed sales goals could indicate a need for more training and coaching, as well as improvements to your sales recruiting and hiring process.

Your sales team assessment results should provide you with accurate data on your strengths, clearly defined weaknesses, and help you identify key opportunities for growth.

Identifying Weaknesses and Capitalizing on Strengths

One of the biggest benefits of a comprehensive sales team assessment is identifying the areas of your sales force that may be hindering your overall success. Tools like the Objective Management Group SEIA and Improve use the data collected from individual evaluations to reveal hidden problems in multiple areas, including weaknesses common to your salespeople, problems with your hiring criteria, and business being lost as a result of these challenges. You’ll gain a deeper understanding of the changes that must be made to your sales management systems, and what steps you should take to help your salespeople reach their potential.

A sales team assessment tool will also inform you about your team’s greatest strengths, and show you how to capitalize on those strengths to meet your overall sales and business goals. It’s no secret that people are more effective and productive when they’re able to tap into their natural talents and abilities. Your sales team assessment results will help you uncover those unique individual abilities, learn what motivates your team, and show you strategies for developing a strong sales culture that encourages people to bring their very best.

Developing Goals for the Future

Businesses change rapidly in the modern market, and you need to stay focused on your business strategy while also monitoring your sales team for inconsistencies, declines in performance, or shifting customer trends that may be causing them issues. Do you hire top talent regularly? What type of recruiting strategy do you use to find the best sales representatives? What type of compensation structure do you use to attract and retain top-performing sales reps?

Making business decisions backed by solid data is a great way to move your business forward with increased confidence. If you are curious about potential ways to enhance the effectiveness of your sales team, use our online Sales Readiness Assessment tool for a quick snapshot of your current status. Ready to go deeper? Schedule a consultation for our in-depth Sales Effectiveness and Improvement Analysis service to get a detailed playbook for driving sales effectiveness and performance.

Accelerate New Sales Hire Ramp-Up

Posted on by hiredna

Get actional tips to accelerate new hire ramp-up and maximize ROI. 

Many sales organizations have a typical ramp-up time of six months or more for a new sales rep. Reducing the amount of time needed to get new hires up to speed and closing their first sale is key to maximizing an organization’s investment. But how do sales organizations accelerate their new hire ramp up and still ensure their sales reps will be successful? Research shows that a well-defined and comprehensive onboarding program can speed up ramp time and improve performance by 11.5 percent. 

1.     Define Your Sales Strategy

Objective: Successful new hire ramp-up begins prior to hiring by having a clearly defined sales strategy, processes and tools in place within your sales organization.

Procedure: Identify and set a clear sales strategy for your sales organization. Establish sales goals and metrics. Develop a compensation plan that benefits both your sales rep and your organization. Document the sales process and procedures for generating new leads. Implement effective sales tools.

2.     Hire the Right Candidates

Objective: Effective hiring begins by having an ideal sales candidate profile for which to measure applicants against.

Procedure: Identify your sales candidate profile including education, sales experience, sales performance, sales competencies and behaviors. During your interview process, ask behavioral questions to help assess whether or not the candidate has the skills, attitude and competencies needed for the sales role. Behavioral questions are designed to evaluate a candidate’s suitability based on how they behaved in similar situations in previous positions.

3.     Deliver Comprehensive Sales Training

Objective: Comprehensive sales training sets new hire expectations and enables them to be successful.

Procedure:  Develop a comprehensive training program that includes both instructor-led and online courses. Training should cover a broad range of topics including products and services, tools and systems, and soft-skills they will need while interacting with customers. Sales training should be an ongoing and structured process. Let your new hires know upfront that your organization is committed to their success.

4.     Provide Coaching and Mentoring

Objective: Ongoing coaching and mentoring are vital to motivating and empowering sales reps once their new hire training is complete.

Procedure: Coaching and mentoring provides benefits to both the trainer and the new sales rep. The coach or mentor is given an opportunity to display their knowledge and skill within the company. This creates a sense of empowerment and increases retention for top sales reps. The new sales rep benefits by learning the intricacies of the sales process, inside organizational knowledge and the best way to interact with target customers from an experienced sales rep. Mentoring and coaching take place in a real sales environment with new hires learning the best sales practices. This results in a shortened learning curve and a faster ramp-up.

5.     Create Personal Development Plans

Objective: Provide new sales reps with ongoing feedback on performance goals and metrics to enable them to track their progress, issues and wins.

Procedure: Creating a personal development plan (PDP) provides a roadmap for new sales employees. The plan includes measurable goals and a timeline for achieving those goals. Review the PDP with new hires at specific intervals (30, 60, 90 days) to track how they are performing against sales goals. Sales managers should recognize early wins to reinforce the sales reps’ performance and address any issues to keep them from becoming discouraged.

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These five tips can help your organization accelerate ramp-up times, create motivated sales reps and increase retention. Interested in a thorough evaluation of your talent acquisition and new hire ramp-up process? Revecent can complete an analysis of your company’s hiring and onboarding strategies to identify areas of improvement. Request a consult now and start seeing powerful results.

We help companies get their solutions in the hands of more customers faster with a high-performance sales team built for success. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization recruit, train, equip and manage your sales force. 

Pre-employment Assessments: Identify Top Candidates, Save Money and Reduce Turnover

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Pre-employment sales assessments play an important role in the overall hiring process.

They help organizations identify candidates that are most likely to excel in their sales role. Pre-employment assessments also provide additional benefits like decreasing time and cost in the candidate hiring process, reducing turnover and improving morale. These added benefits are crucial to sales organizations as they are facing an average annual turnover in their sales force of 25 – 30 percent, according to Harvard Business Review. This equates to hiring and training an entire sales organization approximately every four years. Talk about expensive!

There are a variety of pre-employment assessment tests organizations can use to screen potential candidates: personality, cognitive, skills and job knowledge, just to name a few.  According to the HireRight 2016 Annual Employment Screening Benchmark Survey:

“Sixty-five percent of businesses that responded planned to make investments in improving their ability to find qualified job candidates.”

But how do you know which assessment(s) your sales organization should implement? Below are a few tips on how to determine which pre-employment assessments would be best for your sales organization

1.   Valid

Analysis: Pre-employment assessments must be valid for the open sales role.

Methodology: Ensure that tests measure specific job-related abilities or skills. Assessment results should be quantifiable and predict the success or failure of the candidate’s future job performance. Sales organizations should be able to demonstrate that candidates who do well on the test perform well in their sales job, versus those that do not perform well.

2.   Relevant

Analysis: Pre-employment assessments must measure skills, abilities or characteristics that are relevant to the job the candidate is applying for.

Methodology: A simple way for organizations to verify relevancy on a pre-employment assessment is to perform a Job Requirement Analysis against the sales position being filled. Once an analysis has been completed of the objectives, skills and abilities needed to complete the sales role, organizations will be able to quickly identify appropriate and relevant pre-employment tests.

3.   Reliable

Analysis: Pre-employment assessments must provide consistent results.

Methodology: For a pre-employment assessment to be reliable in measuring a specific job skill or ability, a candidate’s score should be consistent each time they take the test. Significant variances in a candidate’s test results decreases the value of the assessment predicting future job performance. 

4.   Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO)

Analysis: Pre-employment assessments must meet all EEO laws.

Methodology: Periodically, pre-employment tests are challenged in court. Organizations must verify their tests do not violate local, state or federal EEO laws, including Title VII

These are just a few tips sales organizations should be aware of prior to implementing pre-employment assessments. Revecent’s Sales Consultants can help your organization assess, recruit and optimize sales talent to accelerate revenue growth.

Interested in an evaluation of your organization’s pre-employment assessment process? Revecent can complete an analysis of your sales force hiring strategy to identify areas of strength and areas of opportunities. Request a consult now and start seeing powerful results.

Revecent is a national sales recruiting and sales enablement consulting firm. We help technology and professional service companies recruit and optimize sales talent to accelerate growth. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization’s sales team exceed expectations.

3 Proven Techniques for Assessing Sales Candidates

Posted on by hiredna

The hiring process for filling sales positions can be a lengthy and time-consuming process. 

According to a recent study on Global Recruiting Trends by LinkedIn:

“Finding suitable candidates is the biggest obstacle (46 percent) for hiring.”

Thus, the ability to identify early on whether a candidate is ideal for your organization is imperative for saving time and resources. One way to manage this is through screening candidates to identify their potential to fulfill your sales role prior to moving them into the interview process.

Did you know? A recent study of nearly 20,000 businesses

determined 46 percent of all new hires fail within their first

18 months, and 89 percent of the time it’s for attitude not skill.

Below are three screening techniques that can help your organization save time and resources by qualifying candidates and gauging compatibility prior to moving forward.

1.     Attitude Assessment Screening

Approach: During the screening process, ask the candidate what their expectations are for the sales position.

Analysis: Identifying the candidate’s attitude and aptitude for the role is equally as important as uncovering their qualifications or skillsets. Understanding the candidate’s mindset regarding the sales position is critical for ensuring whether or not they will fit into your organization’s culture and sales force. Poor attitudes can be destructive to overall team morale. 

2.     Behavioral Assessment Screening

Approach: Ask the candidate to complete a behavioral profile assessment as part of your organization’s screening process.

Analysis: A behavioral profile can provide your organization with information on how your job candidate will act or respond in different scenarios. The assessment can help identify what motivates a candidate, how they address problems and what their stress triggers are. While there is no one-size-fits-all behavior profile, assessment results can assist in identifying candidates that will mesh well and add value to your sales force. It can also help identify areas to focus on during the onboarding process for the candidate.

3.     Sales Assessment Screening

Approach: As part of your pre-screening interview process, ask your candidates to complete an online Sales Candidate Assessment.

Analysis: A sales candidate assessment can help your organization predict the candidate’s sales performance and role compatibility. Sales assessment data can identify a candidate’s natural selling

ability, communication style, strengths and areas for improvement. Sales managers can use the sales assessment data to provide coaching and guidance for new hires.

Above are just a few examples of screening techniques that can be used to identify the potential in your sales candidates. Revecent’s Sales Enablement Consultants can help your organization assess, recruit and optimize sales talent to accelerate revenue growth. 

Interested in an evaluation of your organization’s candidate screening process? Revecent can complete an analysis of your sales force hiring strategy to identify areas of strength and areas of opportunities.  Request a consult now and start seeing powerful results.Revecent is a national sales recruiting and sales enablement consulting firm. We help technology and professional service companies recruit and optimize sales talent to accelerate growth. Contact us today to see how we can help your organization’s sales team exceed expectations.