Many of our clients have been looking for salespeople over the last few months and their experience seems to reflect what the stats are saying: it’s taking longer to fill these positions and the turnover is higher.
Our sales teams are the primary human face of our organisation and so these are critical roles.
Let’s look at recruitment first
Effectively predicting sales performance is critical to the success of any business, 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 salespeople.
We have been using psychometric assessments for almost 30 years. We have assessed more than 80,000 people in sales, sales management and leadership roles using a variety of high-quality assessment tools for both selection and development purposes. The tools we use are designed to measure cognitive abilities, personality, motives & values, Call Reluctance, coping & derailing behaviours, EQ, etc.
To get the most value out of psychometric assessments when applied to your sales selection process you might like to consider these important points:
- Use as part of a selection process: psychometric assessments should be used in concert with other validated selection tools such as structured behavioural interviews, competency based simulation exercises and structured reference checks where findings can be cross referenced against core criteria that have been established as relevant to the job and culture in question.
- Predictive ability: psychometric assessments should account for no more than 20% of your decision making criteria. They can never be 100% predictive of performance.
- Purpose built: use psychometric assessments that have been purpose built to measure specific qualities, abilities or attributes.
- What to measure: there are a variety of assessments you can use on their own or combined. Select the ones that will measure what you need for the specific role.
- Cost: most businesses reserve the more stringent psychometric assessment process until after they have developed a short list of candidates who have been through the initial screening parameters and a thorough Behavioural Interview. Considering it can cost up to double the salary of an employee to replace them, when you balance the cost of including psychometric tools in your recruitment process against the cost of one or more poor selection decisions, the numbers speak for themselves.
What about retention?
In 2018 the average tenure of a sales representative across Europe and USA was 15 months, and closer to two years in Australia. However, these numbers seem to have decrease over the last two years with the changes on how we work since the beginning of the pandemic.
These statistics are alarming because the costs associated with poor engagement and high staff turnover are monumental and can manifest in many ways including decline in sales, poor customer service, loss of reputation leading to more loss of customers and employees, and impaired recruitment. If not addressed, organisations can find themselves in a death spiral. And in today’s hyper connected world this can happen at lightning speed in any organisation.
So, what can we do to improve retention of our salespeople?
Implementing a Selling Better Operating System
Smart CEOs and sales leaders understand that leading and managing a sales team and its operation is about managing a complex variable system that requires constant attention and considered action. We know that sales teams and operations do not follow a predictable straight line.
Throwing our salespeople in the deep end and expecting them to sell better with no clear strategy, no value proposition or articulated sales process, limited training, no ongoing support, no leadership, no coaching, or a ‘customer phobic’ value chain is madness. These are some of the reasons why sales teams experience such high turnover.
This is why we encourage companies to take a systems thinking approach to selling better. We’ve been studying, researching, codifying, modelling, promoting and educating people on a better, ethical, human-centred approach to selling since 1995 and implementing a systems approach to selling better has many benefits including creating high performing sales teams who want to stay and sell better.
Remember, everybody lives by selling something.
Related topics
How should I assess a sales recruit?
How to give every salesperson the best start to their sales career
What are highly evolved sales leaders doing to drive teams, growth and revenue?
A year ago
I’m in sales, you’re in sales, we’re all in sales
New Article Email Notification