Identifying the Three “E”s

"You can train people how to sell, but if they don’t have the qualities and motivation to sell–if they don’t love getting to the ‘yes’ answer–they aren’t going to be successful in sales," says Herb Greenberg, PhD, founder and chief executive of Caliper, an international consulting firm. Over the past four decades, Caliper Consulting has helped more than 25,000 companies worldwide effectively select, develop, and manage millions of employees.

Caliper’s tests are designed to determine whether individuals possess the qualities that allow them to sell successfully. Greenberg says the three main qualities its sales position assessments focus on are: Empathy, Ego drive, and Ego strength.

"Empathy is the ability to read another human being," says Greenberg, co-author of the book, Succeed on Your Own Terms (McGraw-Hill, 2006). "It’s the ability to pick up the subtle clues provided by others in order to accurately assess what they are thinking and feeling. Empathy does not necessarily involve agreeing with the feelings of others, but it does involve knowing what their feelings are."

Greenberg refers to the second quality, ego drive, as the hunger to get to "yes." Salespeople need to be motivated not for the money, but for the conquest, he says.

The company also examines each candidate for ego strength or the ability to take rejection. The tests analyze how candidates deal with failure. Do they crumble or move on? In some sales jobs, it may not matter whether a person has high ego strength, but in others with a high rejection rate, it’s paramount.

Once you determine that a candidate has these three qualities, you need to differentiate what type of salesperson you need to do the job, says Greenberg. Twenty to 25 percent of people who have what it takes to sell should be selling something else, he says. Perhaps your product or service is one that needs someone who has a high ego drive and less empathy. Greenberg offers the example of different types of computer salespeople. Someone who sells six PCs a day, and has a huge amount of ego drive (the ability to get to yes) is satisfied quite frequently. But, perhaps you hire that same person to sell multimillion-dollar mainframes to large corporations. This person may only make two or three sales a year and will become frustrated. The person’s high ego drive will not be satisfied waiting six months to close a deal even though there is a potential to make a lot more money.

"This person might not be detailed enough for the job or be able to maintain relationships over time, but this person could still be good at selling computers, just not mainframe computers," he says. "Our tests can spot the difference."

Greenberg points out that measuring these three qualities also can tell you whether someone is right for wholesale, business to business selling, tangible compared to intangible, or consultative compared to commodity sales.

To help companies identify what type of salesperson they should be hiring according to their product or service, industry, and clientele, Caliper not only tests, but also may shadow a company’s existing salespeople to assess needed skills. The more Caliper understands the company and position, the more accurate they can be in selecting the best and brightest for that company, says Greenberg.

"We need to know your company’s core qualities and match the candidate’s core competencies to those required by the job," says Greenberg. "Equally important, we need to identify any weaknesses which cannot be overcome by training. For example, if the job requires the ability to take a lot of rejection, and a candidate’s ego strength is okay, but not as strong as needed for this particular job, we won’t recommend him or her. It all comes down to discovering who people are, not what they’ve done. You can always train someone on skills, but you can’t train a person how to be what he or she is not."