Pre-Employment Tests: 4 Methods Help You Hire The Best Sales Reps - Part 1

 Pre-employment tests plus other applicant evaluation methods help you select salesperson job applicants who will turn into highly productive, super-profitable sales reps.  These applicant evaluation methods include pre-employment tests, intriguing bio-data, vague job interview questions, plus colorful role-plays.

Hiring fantastic sales reps is crucial.  As Henry Ford wisely observed, “Until someone sells something, no one else has a job.”  A company with monstrously effective sales reps can grow and prosper.  However, a company with wonderful products but lousy sales reps will wither away.

So, how can managers hire highly productive sales reps? 
Here are four great methods you can start using immediately.

1^st METHOD = PRE-EMPLOYMENT TESTS – CUSTOM-TAILORED FOR SALES REP HIRING 

Use two pre-employment tests to evaluate sales rep applicants:

1.  Behavior or personality test

2.  Mental abilities or intelligence-related test

The behavior or personality test needs to forecast the applicant’s behavior in three key areas:

a.  Interpersonal Skills –  e.g., friendliness, assertiveness, and teamwork

b.  Personality Traits – e.g., poise under pressure, optimism, and action-orientation

c.  Motivations – e.g., if the sales applicant feels driven to earn incentive pay

The mental abilities or intelligence tests forecast if the applicant has enough “brainpower” to

+  learn – how to do your company’s sales job

+  think correctly – to solve problems encountered while selling your company’s products

Importantly, before using personality and intelligence tests, you must conduct a benchmarking study.  This custom-tailoring tells you specific test scores of your company’s best salespeople.  

Then, when you test applicants, you quickly, easily and objectively can

>  favor job applicants who got same test scores as your company’s best sales reps

>  weed-out applicants whose test scores differed from your best sales reps’ scores

Hundreds of pre-employment test benchmarking studies I have done – for many companies – often result
in this “benchmark” pattern of test scores gotten by the best, super-productive sales reps:

>  high scores on Friendliness

>  average scores on Assertiveness

>  average scores on Following Rules & Procedures

>  high scores on Poised Under Pressure

>  high scores on Optimism

>  Calm for inside sales reps – but Excitable for outside sales reps

>  high scores on Money Motivation

>  average scores on Intelligence or mental abilities

As such, pre-employment tests enable you to objectively – not subjectively – know if a sales rep applicant has crucial personality and intelligence qualities similar to your company’s best sales reps.  That is the reason pre-employment tests tremendously help companies hire the best sales rep applicants.  

Importantly, using pre-employment tests removes the tendency of managers to like applicants who con them through (a) charm in interviews or (b) semi-pseudo-relevant work histories.  Pre-employment tests helps you avoid getting fooled again by a smooth talking sales applicant.

Next time Method 2.