Great People Works

Often in the past, a person could be hired for a sales position simply by having a firm handshake, engaging smile and the ability to carry on an intelligent conversation for the length of the interview. Many employers still think that is all they need for good sales people, relying on training them on the job or for commission jobs simply giving them a try. Their thinking may be that good sales people will succeed and those that fail do not cost the company anything since they were on a commission only basis anyway. Unfortunately, they are missing some important considerations and the use of a breakthrough in predictive behavioral assessments, the Profiles Sales Assessment.

First, the sales person represents your company. They are the image your potential and current customers see, so if they are inept, crude, lewd or simply bad at what they do it reflects upon the image of your company as your behavior also.

Second, you have invested time and money in searching, hiring and possibly training bad sales people only to have them tarnish your company image, produce lackluster business results, reduce morale of others in your company and possibly even lost customers because of them. You have increased your employee turnover costs, reduced your own productivity and may even have reduced other employees productivity.

Third, each wrong hiring decision sets back your timetable for business development, which generally is the fuel that powers the overall business. This is not an area where you want to make mistakes or end up with a bunch of average sales performers because in a global, competitive economy you cannot afford to survive for long on average business results. There is too much competition for credit, resources and the dollars your customers are willing to spend for goods and services. You need sales stars that look better than your company, in effect providing the image you aspire to and provide a constant stimulus of new and growing business to move you forward.

For an extremely modest investment in improving your hiring process you can gain quantum improvements in your ability to hire top performing sales stars consistently. That's right, real added value to the hiring process that in the past has seemed to miss the mark at least half the time or more in many industries. And the ones who aren't top performers are still well above average and can usually be coached or trained to become a high achiever. Predictive behavioral assessments have come a long way in the past twenty years and nobody has done more with fine-tuning and improving them than Profiles International. Their Profiles Sales Assessment is customized for sales people. Not only does it tell you about their thinking and learning styles, key business behaviors and major interests so you know if they can do the job but you can learn how they will do the job and if they will do the job. In addition, the assessment evaluates seven specific sales behaviors including, prospecting, closing the sale, call reluctance, self starting, working with a team, building and maintaining relationships and compensation preference. And, as if that weren't enough, each assessment also generates specific interview questions for the Interviewer to ask the interviewee, to help you dig deeper into the behaviors and characteristics in order to know exactly who you are hiring. When compared with a job match pattern for a high performer in your organization you can come as close to cloning existing success behaviors as possible. And best of all, every report is both graphic and an easy to understand self-interpreting report. You don't need a reference book or a visit to a Psychologist to interpret the results; it's in plain English, the language of business. Why would anyone not want to use this?