Sales hiring and selection
A sales candidate aces the interview, sales call simulation, and reference check.
Should you hire them?
For thousands of savvy sales leaders the answer has been “not yet.” Rather than risk the costly consequences of a sales hiring mistake, they rely on the Chally Assessment, proven 80% accurate in predicting sales candidate success.
Far superior to so-called “sales personality tests” the Chally Assessment draws upon 30 years of field research among nearly 1,000,000 sales professionals.
- Reliably predicts success of sales candidates using the same actuarial science approach insurance firms use to predict accident likelihoods and lifespans.
- Certified EEO-compliant; evaluates candidate potential independent of race, national origin, and gender.
- No psychobabble; delivers unambiguous “hire” or “don’t hire” recommendations.
- Evaluates candidates against your specific sales job.
- Measures 140 sales attributes and distinguishes among 14 sales roles including sales management
Some hiring managers prefer to introduce the Chally Assessment upstream to save scarce interview time for candidates already proven to possess the required “sales DNA.” Other hiring managers use the assessment to expand the candidate pool by identifying high potential talent that would not have been considered on the basis of career experience alone.
Sales succession planning
Smart sales leaders think ahead.
When you choose the Chally Assessment to help you address an immediate hiring need you receive a report that also illustrates how the candidate measures up to 14 other sales roles, including sales management. This means you can:
- Avoid wasting scarce hiring opportunities on candidates that don’t have the potential to grow along with your organization.
- Be better prepared should market disruptions require you to ask your salespeople to undertake unforeseen new roles.
- Build bench strength and succession planning so you can fill key sales leadership roles from within rather than have to take a flyer on recruiting unknowns.
“Will the territory rep I hire today grow into the strategic account manager I may need tomorrow?”
“Can I confidently pencil in that promising new hire for a future sales leadership role?”
When you choose the Chally Assessment, you engage a talent management resource that will address questions like these and help prepare your sales force for whatever the future may bring.
Sales organization transformation
You return from a woods meeting committed to a major change in your go-to-market strategy.
From now on your reps will be calling on the C-level rather than technical specifiers. Or perhaps you’ll be pursuing a channels strategy rather than going direct. Maybe you’ll be organizing around industries rather than geographies. Or you’ll be loss-leadering systems and making money on services.
Perhaps it’s time for smaller customers to be handled via ecommerce and telesales. Or you’ve determined SAMs will now be responsible for account profitability and margin, not just top line revenues.
You’re excited … but you worry. Does our sales organization have the talent set to pull this off?
A Chally Sales Talent Audit conducted by Profitable Selling will deliver the answers you need.
Working together, we’ll tap the Chally database of 140 sales behaviors to identify the core attributes your people will need to perform their new roles.
Then, every member of your organization will complete the Chally Assessment.
The result is a remarkable report diagramming how every sales team member measures up to your new requirements.
You’ll see at a glance, some individuals will easily slot into the new roles. Others may need to be reskilled or reassigned. Perhaps the sales talent audit will also reveal key needs that can only be addressed by an external search.
However, if you’re like many Profitable Selling customers you’ll be pleasantly surprised to find that meeting the needs of your future sales organization can be largely addressed by making the most of the talent you already have on board.
Sales training requirements
What sort of sales training do you provide after basic school?
Some organizations are always in training needs analysis mode. Countless interviews with reps and execs that never achieve consensus.
Other organizations resort to a carpet bombing approach, subjecting the entire force to regular all-hands training on negotiation skills, presentation skills, account planning skills, prospecting skills, consultative questioning skills, right brain meditation skills, empathetic alignment skills, whatever the sales training flavor du jour.
There’s a better way.
An organization-wide Chally Sales Talent Audit by Profitable Selling measures each member of your sales team against the 4-6 critical success factors they require to excel at their specific job role.
Simply examine the results of the Chally audit to identify the success factors where the majority of your force fall short. This should be the primary focus of your training.
Front line sales managers will want to examine the core skills workup of individual team members. This will provide a clear blueprint for field coaching efforts.