When a great salesperson is recommended by Objective Management Group's (OMG) Sales Candidate Assessment, and this star has a great track record, and great references, should we expect this person to succeed?
Most executives do. But even though salespeople will tell you that "If you can sell, you can sell anything", that statement is only true some of the time. Here are some examples of salespeople who are successful in one environment, but usually fail in another:
For example, if you go back and take another look at #4, this is where great salespeople, selling the exact same thing, can suddenly fail because they aren't able to succeed when working remotely from a sales manager who doesn't manage her salespeople very closely. I reviewed OMG's data on a random set of 4,500 recent sales candidate assessments and only 12% were suitable for working remotely. BUT…upon closer look, 12% was not representative of the findings for any one company! Of the companies that required both a remote seller and had enough candidates to make up an appropriate sample size, the distribution of candidates suitable for working remotely ranged from 2% to 75%. I thought that was rather strange and looked again, but with different filters. I found that the variations in suitability had more to do with the company, and the difficulty level of the role, than anything else. When the role was more difficult and their job postings reflected that difficulty, stronger candidates applied and were assessed. When the role was less difficult and the job postings reflected it, all kinds of qualified and unqualified candidates applied and the assessments reflected that change in candidate quality. For example, look at these 5 companies, their percentage of suitable candidates, and the difficulty level of the role: CompanyDifficulty LevelSuitable for Remote A Considerable 75% B Considerable 67% C Some 50% D Moderate 25% E Moderate 2% If you throw out company E, the average is 60% suitable, but we also lose 75% of the candidates in the sample, so you can’t do that… When the role is not very difficult, the company will attract lower level salespeople, and they will be much less likely to be suitable for working remotely than their much stronger peers. When you look at all 10 of my examples, you should be able to recognize why it is so important to use a sales-specific candidate assessment that is customized to your company's requirements, determines whether candidates possess the required selling skills, digs into the Sales DNA to determine whether candidates will succeed in your business, and in this role, and makes an accurate, predictive recommendation.
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Author:Scott Yelle, Founder of NE Sales Solutions Archives
April 2023
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