Introduction

The Internet can help sales managers find raw talent. Some online tools can help you find sales talent across the country or the globe. Others can help select the best candidates for serious consideration and then profile these candidates before interviews.

But if you use online sales tests only to hire new reps, you may be overlooking much of the power of the online picture. These same selection tests can help train and develop salespeople throughout their careers. And they can be applied to an entire sales force to give top management a clear picture of where new skills are needed, which reps may need reassignment, and what the sales force as a whole is capable of doing.

Search Mission

Online tools can do much that sales managers must do anyway, but these tools can help do it better, faster, and cheaper. Start with the first step – looking for new reps.

“If you want to recruit in real time and retain full control over recruiting, you go to the Internet, and we are number one for sales recruiting on the Internet,” stresses Jason Lovelace, VP corporate marketing for Careerbuilder.com. About 90 percent of Fortune 1000 firms use the Website as at least a component of recruitment. Firms pay for posting open jobs. The site is free for applicants, who can apply for specific jobs or submit resumes for Careerbuilder’s archives.

Hiring companies can screen applicants by customizing a list of screening questions, for example, job experience. Or they can search the archived resumes with a new tool, R2. For example, R2 could locate the resumes of national salespeople with a certain number of years of experience in pharmaceutical sales.
Lovelace says 20 million candidates have submitted resumes for this type of search. Companies can also use Brandbuilder, another new tool, which showcases working environments with slide shows or videos.

There are now 65,000 “doors” or Web linkages to Careerbuilder, and the service is increasing its international presence. More foreign sites in local languages will tap global markets for sales talent. But the site’s key differentiator, according to Lovelace, is that Careerbuilder is a sales organization, with 2,000 salespeople on board. Lovelace says, “I tell people to be proactive in posting, whether they have an open position or not. If you have 10 reps, with five A’s and the rest B’s and C’s, you should always be looking for some people to replace the C’s.”

Personality Plus

Careerbuilder finds and screens new reps, while other firms assess candidates for the skills and personality traits suited for sales. The results of these assessments are a rich source of knowledge, useful well past the hiring stage.

The HR Chally Group has a selection assessment that collects 866 data points, which are all stored in Chally’s database. Clients can use the data in any of several ways, according to Sales Director John Wood. The first is selection, and the second is alignment: “Do I have my people deployed in roles that fit their strengths?” The third is development: “Where are the skill gaps and what are my priorities for filling these gaps?” Last comes succession planning: “Who are my future managers, and where do they need to be developed?”

Take the third step, development. Here, one key is matching expensive training commitments to real gaps and prospective needs. “We can look at training in a variety of ways, by individual, by position, or for the entire sales force,” Wood says. “We might find your business-development people generally need training in negotiation or qualification, or perhaps more business expertise for solution selling.” Chally often looks at the training required to reassign reps to different positions. For one client planning a major restructuring of the sales force, Chally plotted current sales employees against the specific requirements of 13 new sales roles.

Of course, the solution to a skill gap can be either more training or looking for new people, rather than reassigning current staff. Top management must make this choice. “Our assessment does not exist in a vacuum,” Wood emphasizes.
“There are employee evaluations, manager ratings, and performance ratings also put into the equation. As with selection, we do not want to be the only tool used.”

Several of these steps can be combined in a full talent audit. Say a company is transitioning from transaction to solution selling. “We will define the skills that predict success in the new sales positions, and then plot their incumbents against these skill sets for every available role,” Wood explains. “We then give a dashboard, showing where everybody is.”

Chally has done 200 of these talent audits covering a total of 50,000 employees and found some interesting results: Only 15 percent of sales stars have the right skills for management. Barely 19 percent of good “hunters” have the skills for “farming” current accounts. In all, 16 percent of farmers would be comfortable hunting. And 65 percent of failing salespeople could probably be effective in different roles.

A talent audit thus gives a sales leader contemplating a different go-to-market strategy a check on whether the onboard talent can make it work. “It shows where gaps are and where the priorities for development should be,” Wood says. That is important because reassigning the existing sales force is a lot faster and cheaper than hiring new people.

Moreover, results of the initial test for recruitment can be reused over and over again for later purposes, because basic personality traits do not change. Chally reviewed its assessments of 1,000 candidates who had taken the test twice in five years. “There was a maximum 3 percent change in results,” Wood notes.

Amy Wuelfing, assistant VP marketing at veteran tester Caliper, agrees. “Once people have taken the basic test, the results can be used throughout their careers. These results help develop and train new recruits and let their supervisor know what their strengths and weaknesses are.”

For example, a new manager can review the Caliper results for the salespeople he will be managing and know whether there is someone who may present a problem because his or her style of working is very different from the manager’s. Or conversely, there might be a subordinate with whom the manager will get along great, but the two of them will not get much work done because they are too much alike. Caliper assessments focus on such questions as whether a person is detail-oriented or haphazard.

“We definitely urge clients to use results this way because, once they have made their initial investment, they should get the most out of their money,” Wuelfing says. “They should not just stick the result in a file cabinet and forget it. It is a great initial investment and keeps on giving.” Companies can file results and consult them, for no additional cost.

Understand Ability

The Caliper assessment is generally easy to understand. It consists of a graph and a written report, either hard copy or PDF, emailed to the human resources or hiring manager.

Or a client may want to consult with Caliper on career development. For example, “If a person is going from salesperson to applying for a manager’s job, the company may want to have us consult on that for a small fee,” Wuelfing explains.

Caliper can also use the results for several reps on a sales team to assess the team’s personality. The team could be cautious and methodical, or it might have a tendency to shoot first and ask questions later. Management may want to reassign team members or adjust its approach to guiding the team.

Caliper assessments are also used to prioritize training in areas such as time management, closing, handling rejection, and servicing customers. Some reps may excessively accommodate customers in order to close, while others are so fixated on closing that they do not provide good service. Both tendencies should show up in Caliper results.

Like the Chally test, Caliper’s assessment is thorough and lengthy. It can take up to two hours to complete, depending on the person. All Caliper tests can be taken online, but the firm recommends that even online versions be given in an office under supervision. “The candidate cannot fake the test, but he might have someone else take it for him,” Wuelfing explains. “If he takes it at home he might have a friend who is a great salesperson take it.”

Unlike the Chally and Caliper assessments, which are generally given to the most serious candidates for a position, SalesTestOnline is a much briefer and less expensive personality assessment that can be used to screen a large number of applicants for each sales position. Yet its results can also be retained and used for follow-up work with new hires, to train and develop them to maximum potential.

David Pearce, president of SalesTest Online, says his test gives a suitability score customized for the requirements of the particular position to be filled. But it also contains more in-depth information in the form of ratings and a narrative report that can help manage, train, and assign new hires. It can evaluate them for different positions during their careers. “It is silly to hire people for a job and then not manage them appropriately based on their personality traits,” Pearce emphasizes.

The report tells users which are the most suitable jobs for each applicant and which are least suitable. For example, one report would tell managers that the individual needs a fast-paced job, with lots of authority and incentives, a minimum of structure, and only general direction. This person would do best when he is treated as if he were managing his own business. Another report could say the opposite.

The reports also highlight the best ways to motivate each individual. What are his natural strengths and what are the weaknesses that may need more work? “The further into the report you go, the more detail you get,” Pearce says.

These personality traits are covered throughout a standard SalesTestOnline report, which takes less than a minute to read. Clients can store the easy-to-understand reports and refer to them either shortly after hiring or later as an individual is considered for reassignment. SalesTest Online staff can help interpret these reports for specific job changes if requested.

Most clients are likely to read the detailed reports only on their top job candidates and, of course, use them later for only the individuals hired. “If they do not, they are missing a great benefit,” Pearce says.

For example, a person hired for a sales role would not initially be scored for a manager’s position. This person can be later re-scored for a manager’s role, or the detailed results from the first result can be used to aid the promotion decision.
Actual requirements for management depend on the specific position and industry, as they do for sales reps. But in seeking management talent, higher executives generally look for strengths in communication, organization, and attention to detail. Management style and personal motivation traits also need to be matched to the management position. “A manager should also be people-oriented so he can focus attention on training and development,” Pearce notes.

Careerbuilder.com

Sales jobs by the numbers:
Jobs featured Feb. 2007: >100,000
Monthly searches in sales: >4 million
Monthly unique visitors: 21 million

Harris Interactive Survey of 160 sales managers found:*
81% average 25 resumes or fewer for each position
10% average 26 to 50 resumes
9% average 50 or more
* All managers, not just Careerbuilder customers
Source: Careerbuilder.com