Sales are the backbone of any company and are considered the soul of any given company. Businesses cannot afford bad hires when it comes to particular roles like sales.
As a result, companies are shifting towards personality tests when it comes to sales. The sales personality assessment helps them predict their performance and how well they are as a salesman.
A great personality is what shapes a good salesman. Overall, a strong mindset and resilience are required for this role, and traditional resumes and interviews often fail to measure that.
In this article, we’ll explore what sales personality assessments are, the key traits they examine, their benefits, and the best tools to use. Excited? Then, let’s dive in!
What Is Sales Personality Assessment
A sales personality assessment is a standard testing method that analyzes detailed information about an individual that the traditional method often fails.
Sales is a type of role where a resume and interview won’t be able to predict job performance. This is due to the complexity that comes with a role.
On the other hand, a personality assessment includes tests that measure the candidate’s behavior, psychology, and personality as a whole. Undoubtedly, it is crucial to get full insight into a role like sales.
As a result, employers are able to get a clear insight into their character and understand whether they will excel in sales or not.
The Types of Personality Assessment In Sales
Assessing a salesman consists of assessing many aspects of an individual. Therefore, a single type of test won’t be able to reveal the salesman’s potential.
Fortunately, personality assessments also assess individuals in a holistic approach. Let’s check out the types of personality assessments in sales.
1. Behavioral Assessments
It assesses how a candidate will behave in different sales scenarios. There will be questions about an incident related to sales, and candidates can choose how they will behave in that scenario.
2. Cognitive Ability Tests
This test is meant to check the candidate’s sales intelectuality. Starting from decision-making to problem-solving, candidates are sent through different scenarios that can be turned into a candidate’s intellectual report.
3. Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence assessment helps companies understand their emotion management better. It is vital in roles like sales where human interaction is involved solely.
4. DISC Personality Test
DISC simplifies the assessment process by categorizing potential salesman into 4 types. They are Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
5. Big Five Personality Test
It is a widely used type of personality test that examines traits like openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. However, it is mostly famous for predicting job performance.
What Traits Are Examined For In Sales Personality Assessment: 8 Qualities
There are certain traits in an individual’s personality that are required to become an exceptional salesman. As a result, employers value and look for these traits, consistently ensuring they hire a great salesman in their team. Let’s check out the traits.
1. Resilience
A great salesman handles rejection like it’s nothing. That’s the type of job sales is, rejection is a daily thing.
This is why resilience is key to this job role to ensure they handle rejection and setbacks properly without losing any motivation.
2. Stress Tolerance
Sales involve handling a lot of stress. Whether it be going to different clients in a short period, or meeting deadlines, salesmen are expected to handle all unpredictable situations.
3. Persuasion & Influence
The core ability of a salesman is to persuade someone to buy something and make them feel they have made the right choice.
A good salesperson may influence decisions to buy while gaining the trust of potential customers. They are persuasive and know how to make convincing arguments.
4. Confidence
A salesman without confidence is not a salesman. One must believe in the product or service that they are providing to become a terrific salesperson.
Moreover, they must also communicate about the product with a confident tone, body language, and approach. This builds credibility for the company as well as the product.
5. Empathy & Active Listening
Undoubtedly, sales aren’t just about talking about the product or service. A qualified salesperson will listen to the customer and try to understand how they feel. This builds a genuine relationship between a salesman and the customer.
On the other hand, active listening helps in grasping customer pain points easily and delivering a customized solution to them.
6. Competitiveness
Beating last month’s sales record is a sign of growing salesman. As a result, sales personality assessments also dive into your competitiveness mindset.
Traits like competitiveness consistently force them to work harder to beat the records of their own as well as their peers. Overall, making them a valuable asset to the company.
7. Adaptability
Whether it be a product or a service, they are continuously changing. Starting from market trends to customer behaviors, the changes are everlasting.
Thus, a sales agent is expected to adapt to all the changes quickly and stay ahead of the competitors.
8. Self-Motivation
As already mentioned, there’s a lot of rejection in sales. Thus, soft skills like self-motivation come in handy to keep up with the good work.
5 Best Sales Personality Assessment Tools
There are numerous personality assessment tools that are there to help you find the right sales representative. However, only a few are effective. Let’s discuss the notable personality assessment tools.
1. Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI)
The MBTI is one of the oldest players out there and started their journey in 1942. What it does is categorize each candidate into 16 personality types.
You can trust the MBTI personality assessment to give you deep insights regarding how an individual handles sales-related challenges and interacts with clients.
Extraverted, intuitive, and thinking are the traits you are looking for in the 16 personality types to find an outstanding salesman.
How it helps in sales:
- Finds persons who excel in sales who fit extroverted, intuitive, thinking criteria.
- Evaluate a salesman’s capacity to manage objections and fit several customer personalities.
- Shows whether a candidate is inherently confident, charismatic, and persuasive.
2. DISC Personality Test
As already discussed in the types of personality assessment section, the DISC personality assessment categorizes individuals into four types.
Don’t get confused about whether it’s a personality assessment type or a tool. It is a fundamental form of personality evaluation that includes a personality test tool.
A candidate’s ability to interact with prospects, negotiate well, and adjust to high-pressure sales situations is assessed by employers using DISC.
How it helps in sales:
- Assists companies in selecting applicants with skills optimal for sales such as Influence and Dominance.
- Tests a candidate’s capacity for client interaction, transaction negotiations, and handling of sales pressure.
- Let businesses construct sales teams including strategists, persuaders, and relationship builders.
3. The Big Five
Similar to DISC, the Big Five is also a fundamental form of personality assessment that has a testing tool.
It simplifies the evaluation process by categorizing the candidates into only 4 types; Dominance, Influence, Steadiness, and Conscientiousness.
Employers use this tool to understand the skills of a candidate, such as relationship-building with clients and goal achievement.
How it helps in sales:
- Assesses a candidate’s capacity for long-term client relations building and goal-oriented behavior.
- Essential for managing rejection in sales, measures resilience and emotional stability.
4. SAJOKI
SAJOKI is an AI-powered sales assessment tool that evaluates candidates’ soft skills, behavioral tendencies, and cognitive abilities.
Unlike traditional tests, SAJOKI uses advanced AI algorithms to match candidates with sales roles based on their potential.
On the other hand, employers get access to seamless features such as profile comparison, personalized profiling as well as AI job description.
How it helps in sales:
- Examines personality qualities fit for sales performance using cutting-edge artificial intelligence technologies.
- Offers individualized profiling and profile comparison, enabling companies to quickly evaluate several applicants.
- Automates AI-powered job descriptions so companies may easily match applicants with perfect sales opportunities.
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5. Caliper Profile
The Caliper Profile is a well-known personality assessment tool that assesses over 25 personality traits.
Whether it be motivation or problem-solving, the Caliper Profile gives you access to enough tests to measure everything required for a sales role.
However, employers tend to use the Caliper Profile in the sales role to figure out how someone handles rejection, maintains enthusiasm, and stays goal-oriented.
How it helps in sales:
- Evaluates a candidate’s capacity for handling rejection, preserving energy, and keeping goals oriented.
- Examining qualities like assertiveness, competitiveness, and self-discipline, helps businesses find top-performing sales personnel.
- Provides analysis of a candidate’s long-term sales performance.
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Why Should You Use Sales Personality Assessments: 8 Key Benefits
Knowing if personality assessments are helpful or not is essential, regardless of whether you are a salesperson unsure of their importance or a business considering implementing them.
There are numerous benefits that comes with personality assessment. However, we will cover 8 benefits that are notable for organizations and salesmen. Let’s start.
1. Improved Hiring Accuracy
The most important thing for companies is to ensure no bad hires occur. It costs both time and money for companies to hire an unfit candidate. Utilizing personality assessments reduces the chances of hiring the wrong candidate.
2. Higher Sales Performance
With the right salesman on your team, sales performance is bound to go up.
3. Lower Employee Turnover
Personality tests also help to understand team dynamics and cultural fit within the company. These ensure a perfect company-fit salesman with the right skills is there. Generally, they excel in the company and the employee turnover reduces.
4. Better Team Dynamics
As already mentioned, personality assessment helps in understanding team dynamics. With this insight, employers are able to create better team dynamics that are backed by data and bound to work.
5. Enhanced Training and Development
The insights that you will uncover through assessments will help you understand your employees’ strengths and weaknesses. This way, proper training can be given to them, and development is anticipated.
6. Increased Customer Satisfaction
With the nature of strong communication and empathy skills, increased customer satisfaction is guaranteed.
7. Data-Driven Decision Making
While traditional methods rely on instincts to make a hiring decision, this method is entirely data-based. Thus, the accuracy is increased by a ton of right hires.
8. Stronger Company Reputation
As the process is based on science, top talents are attracted to apply to this type of company where they believe and implement scientific methods.
Frequently Asked Questions
Let’s check out some commonly asked questions regarding sales personality assessment.
Are sales personality assessments 100% accurate?
No, personality assessments are not 100% accurate. However, when combined with a resume and interviews, you can expect better hires than a resume and interviews alone.
Can personality assessments predict sales success?
Yes, personality assessments can predict sales success. However, training, experience, and motivation also play a crucial role in ensuring that the prediction turns out right.
Should small businesses use sales personality assessments?
Any size of business can move toward these personality assessments to find success in the company. Moreover, small businesses require exponential growth, and personality assessments can bring the right people to the right table and make it possible.
Are these assessments expensive?
The cost of these assessments varies significantly. There’s an option for everyone, thanks to the scalable pricing that fits businesses of all sizes.
Conclusion
Overall, the role of sales personality assessment is crucial for businesses aiming to build a high-performing sales team.
Hires should not rely just on resumes and interviews. Integrating assessments will raise the likelihood of selecting the appropriate sales agent since decisions will be based on statistics.
These tests help candidates who can make it to the top in this position by evaluating important qualities such as resilience, confidence, and persuasion. Apart from selecting a salesman, these tests also guarantee you choose someone who is a team player and helps to lower the turnover rate.
