--- title: Why sales-specific assessments are critical to recruitment and development description: Bob Apollo of Inflexion-Point, the outcome-centric selling experts, on why sales-specific assessments are key to recruitment and organisational development image: https://www.inflexion-point.com/hubfs/Assessment%20vectorstock_53100579%20letterbox.jpg --- This is a search field with an autosuggest feature attached. - There are no suggestions because the search field is empty. # Why sales-specific assessments are critical to recruitment and development ![Bob Apollo](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/78fa41976d534cacbb0e22e151bc6816) Post by [Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo) October 3, 2024 ![Why sales-specific assessments are critical to recruitment and development](https://www.inflexion-point.com/hubfs/Assessment%20vectorstock_53100579%20letterbox.jpg) ![Oct24_01 Top Sales Magazine Front Page](https://www.inflexion-point.com/hs-fs/hubfs/Oct24_01%20Front%20Page.jpg?width=137&height=178&name=Oct24_01%20Front%20Page.jpg)*This article was first published in the October 2024 edition of Top Sales Magazine:* Recruiting the right new salesperson - as any sales manager will acknowledge - is hard. Consistently getting the best sales performance out of every existing salesperson - as any sales manager will also acknowledge - is hard. In both scenarios, relying on subjective judgements leads to costly and avoidable errors. Sales candidates all-too-often get hired on the basis of a plausible CV and a series of convincing interviews, only to fail to deliver. Existing salespeople all-too-often get put through training and coaching programmes because someone has a feeling they may benefit from them, only to find their results do not improve. In both situations, decisions made on the basis of incomplete, inaccurate or unreliable information have very significant (and costly) consequences... ##### The high cost of failure It has been calculated that the cost of having to replace a salesperson (whether because they were a bad hire in the first place, or because they failed to achieve their potential), when taking all the associated costs into account - including the cost of lost revenue - is between half and two times the employee’s annual renumeration. And yet too many sales organisations are serial offenders. They replace one bad sales hire with another, and the cycle continues. They miss their revenue targets because their existing salespeople’s potential capabilities were not fully developed. And (perhaps most painful of all) they lose good salespeople because they failed to fully develop their potential. This is not just a matter of sales skills. It’s about a combination of attitudes, behaviours and competencies - the things that together underpin sales effectiveness. If any one of these factors is weak or underdeveloped, sales performance will inevitably suffer (and the effects will be compounded if sales management is weak or ineffective). ##### **The compelling case for using sales-specific assessments** Sales skills training alone (no matter how professionally it is delivered) won’t fix this. Unstructured and ineffective attempts at coaching won’t fix this. Without the right attitudes, and in the absence of the appropriate behaviours, salespeople will struggle to achieve either their personal goals or the goals that their sales organisation sets for them. By the way, I acknowledge that attitudes, behaviours and competencies also need to be nurtured, supported and underpinned by the right organisational culture, systems and processes - but that’s a topic for another day. In the remainder of this article, I want to make the case for formal sales-specific assessments of both potential new hires and existing sales team members. I’m not talking about the generic assessment tools such as DISC, Myers-Briggs or Predictive Index that are often favoured by HR departments. Whilst they can offer some useful insights into the personality of the individual, none of these generic tests are capable of assessing the specific attributes that underpin consistently successful sales performance. Perhaps the most widely-used sales specific assessment programmes are provided by the Objective Management Group [OMG], and theirs is the approach that I am most familiar with. It is based on decades of research into the attributes of top sales performers and has been continuously updated to reflect the realities of the current sales environment. ##### **The Will to Sell, Sales DNA, and Tactical Sales Competencies** OMG’s programme of research identified three major competency themes that are particularly strong in consistently effective salespeople - their Will to Sell, their Sales DNA and their Tactical Sales Competencies: The **Will to Sell** competencies (including desire, commitment, outlook, responsibility and motivation) measure a salesperson's overall drive to achieve success in sales. Without a strong will to sell, it is difficult for an individual to ever become a successful salesperson, but for individuals with potential these qualities can be developed (coached, not trained) by a good manager. The **Sales DNA** competencies** **(such as an individuals’ need for approval, their comfort discussing money, and the way they handle rejection)** **measure a salesperson's beliefs and actions that support or limit their success in sales - salespeople are often unaware how their biases can negatively impact their interactions with customers. Targeted coaching can help. The importance of **Tactical Sales Competencies** varies according to role, but can include the ability to hunt, to reach decision-makers, to build relationships, to qualify, to sell consultatively and to sell value - these skills can be trained, but only if the individual has both the will to sell and the necessary sales DNA. While a few of these essential foundations of successful selling can be inferred using generic assessments, none of them can be predicted with the validity associated with a professionally designed sales-specific assessment. And yet these are the qualities that make the difference between sales success and failure. ##### **Before you hire or implement training** Before you make your next sales hire, I urge you to evaluate all the potential candidates using a sales-specific assessment, and to use this information to determine which applicant is worthy of interview (and what to ask them at interview). You will save a great deal of time and avoid a lot of hiring mistakes. Before you invest in any significant sales skills training and development programme, I urge you to assess everyone in your sales organisation - including every level of sales management, on order to identify which specific competencies most need improving. You will get much better returns from your investments in coaching and training. You can learn more about our approach to sales evaluations (and download samples of the outputs) in [this section of our website](https://www.inflexion-point.com/evaluate). By the way, you can [subscribe to Top Sales Magazine here](https://topsalesmagazine.com/sign-up/). ###### Tags: [Outcome-Centric Selling, ](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/topic/outcome-centric-selling) [Objective Management Group](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/topic/objective-management-group) ![Bob Apollo](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/78fa41976d534cacbb0e22e151bc6816) Post by [Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo) October 3, 2024 Bob Apollo is a Fellow of the Institute of Sales Professionals, a regular contributor to the International Journal of Sales Transformation and Top Sales World Magazine, and the driving force behind Inflexion-Point Strategy Partners, the leading proponents of outcome-centric selling. Following a successful corporate career spanning start-ups, scale-ups and market leaders, Bob now works as a strategic advisor, mentor, trainer and coach to ambitious B2B sales organisations - teaching them how to differentiate themselves through their provably superior approach to achieving their customer's desired outcomes. [Follow me on my website](https://www.inflexion-point.com) [Follow me on LinkedIn ](https://uk.linkedin.com/in/bobapollo) [Follow me on Twitter ](https://twitter.com/bobapollo) ### Comments ###### Related Articles ### [If you’re not going to coach your salespeople, don’t bother training them](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/if-youre-not-going-to-coach-your-salespeople-dont-bother-training-them) Posted by **[Bob Apollo](https://www.inflexion-point.com/blog/author/bob-apollo),** **Sep 04, 2024** This article was first published in the September 2024 issue of Top Sales Magazine ... 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