- August 28, 2020
- Posted by: Dave Kurlan
- Category: Understanding the Sales Force
Would you fly on a huge jet from Minneapolis, Minnesota to St. Paul, Minnesota, usually a 15-minute drive?
Would you take a train between intersections of the same city block, usually a 2-minute walk?
Would you take a bus to the bottom of your driveway – usually a 1-minute walk or less?
Would you walk from Boston to Miami – a 3-hour plus plane flight?
These are all examples of inappropriate solutions to the simple question, “What is the best way to get there from here?”
How about the simple question, “What is the best way to assure that the salespeople I am about to hire will succeed in the chosen role?”
An OMG Partner pointed me to this article which has 7 assessment solutions. 6 of the recommendations are every bit as inappropriate as the solutions to my travel questions.
There are three additional questions that must be asked in order to answer the primary question that asks the best way to hire the right salespeople:
Are assessments in general good enough to identify those salespeople? There are many types of assessments, including intelligence, honesty and integrity (illegal in some US states), personality (challenged in the courts), behavioral styles, cognitive ability and of course, skill-specific tests. Because most of these assessments can be provided to any potential employee and are not specific to sales, the answer is a loud and resounding NO.
Are personality assessments good enough to identify those salespeople? Personality assessments are not role-specific so they have been challenged in the court. The dimensions and findings in Personality assessments are not predictive of anything and there is no specific personality type (including Meyers-Briggs, 16PF, DiSC, and Caliper which were all mentioned in the article) that indicates that one is a better salesperson than another. Again, the answer is a loud and resounding NO.
Is OMG’s sales-specific assessment a personality test? Despite its inclusion in the article’s list of 7 assessment solutions, Objective Management Group (OMG) is NOT a personality assessment. OMG provides a sales-specific assessment that measures a sales candidate’s capabilities in all 21 Sales Core Competencies as well as several additional sales-specific competencies. Does it help identify the right salespeople because it is sales specific? That is part of the reason but the more important reason is that OMG is validated using Predictive Validity. Predictive. Validity. Most validations show that an assessment is properly constructed and will provide consistent and reliable results. That is Construct Validity. On the other hand, Predictive Validity correlates the findings to on-the-job performance. It is not enough though to simply identify good salespeople; you must identify the right salespeople for the role or roles in question. Configurations for each role are customized so that the ideal salespeople are recommended for the company’s specific role(s). Right people in the right seats. It’s about getting sales selection right. OMG has proven its accuracy and track record in sales selection having just passed 2 million sales assessments in 30,000 companies. In the case of OMG, the answer is a loud and resounding YES.
Here’s another question. Why only 30,000 companies? If OMG is that predictive and accurate, shouldn’t it be used in 3 million companies? I don’t think there are 3 million B2B companies that qualify but certainly there are 300,000. So again, why only 30,000?
There are 3 answers that deserve consideration.
Ego. Far too many sales leaders believe that their gut instinct is more accurate than some assessment. Given that the overall success rate for hiring salespeople is hit or miss with an emphasis on miss, they couldn’t be more wrong. Of the candidates who were not recommended, but clients hired them despite OMG’s warning, 75% failed inside of 6 months. Of the candidates who were recommended and eventually hired, 92% rose to the top half of the sales force within 12 months.
Knowledge. Far too many HR leaders believe that their expertise is in hiring and either don’t need an assessment or they choose one they are familiar with, like DiSC, Caliper, Predictive Index or Myers-Briggs. The reality is that only 14% of all HR professionals understand how assessments work.
Stupidity. At some large companies, in-house counsel has banned the use of assessments. While they often justify their own existence, this stupid practice occurs out of ignorance. While attorneys are protecting their clients from law-suits alleging discriminatory hiring practices, only personality assessments have been successfully challenged in court. Remember, OMG is not a personality assessment – it’s sales-specific, or in other words, a role-specific assessment which is perfectly legal to use, has never been challenged in court, and shows no adverse impact on protected minorities.
If you aren’t already using them, check out OMG’s Sales Candidate Assessments. You’ll improve your sales hiring success rate immediately!
If you aren’t familiar with all 21 Sales Core Competencies, check out some of the data here.
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