Sales Assessments

Sales generation is the most critical activity within any commercial organisation. Yet identifying and retaining high performing sales talent continues to elude many organisations. Getting it right when it comes to hiring your sales team is critical. A successful sales person will not only enable your organisation to ride out economic uncertainties but will ensure you are ready to seize the opportunities that present during the recovery. Hiring high-performing sales professionals - first time and every time - is the ultimate goal.

For many years people have been searching for the perfect sales assessment tool. At Barrett we continually research across the world for the best sales assessments. All this research has revealed that the perfect sales assessment tool does not exist.  Trying to measure all the things we want to know about sales people and leaders with one assessment is unrealistic and virtually impossible.  However, what we do know is that the latest research into modern sales assessments is showing subtle difference between:

• Influence and Negotiation
• Impact and Credibility
• Initiation and Social Leverage
• Resilience and Self Belief

We are now seeing more purpose built sales assessment tools such as SPI-Q and SPQ*Gold which are designed to measures key qualities such as:

• Creating Compelling Relationships – measuring the preferences the individual has when working with clients and developing relationships
• Perceptive Reasoning  – measuring how the individual processes information and makes judgments relating to client issues and solutions
• Channelled Energy – measuring the motivators and levers which drive the individual to succeed
• Contact Initiation – measuring the emotional response to prospecting and the amount of initiative, energy and drive devoted to proactive prospecting as well as the amount of energy spent in coping with inhibiting influences such as fear.

Effectively predicting sales success is critical to any business' success and using well designed, rigorous psychometric assessments as part of a sales selection process can really boost our chances of finding and retaining the right sales people for our business.  To get the most out of your assessment experience for Selection and Development purposes please go to our section on how to use assessments.