Sales Aptitude Test: Why Your Company Needs One to Succeed

Your sales team is the lifeblood of your company − lifeblood that is made up of every single member of your sales team, from the long-standing head of sales, to the new guy on his first day.

So, as a Sales Director, it is crucial that your sales team is strong and delivers impressive results. Without a stellar sales team, your company may fall flat.

But, as you know, building a successful sales team comes with many challenges. One such challenge is ensuring your current sales team is working at peak productivity at all times. Another challenge is ensuring that anyone new you bring onto the team will add to your company’s productivity and success from day one.

How can you possibly accomplish this? With the help of an online sales aptitude test.

What Is an Online Sales Aptitude Test and How Does It Work?

An online sales aptitude test is your key to building a cohesive and successful sales team. Used in hiring, this assessment will weed out those not truly fit to sell.

It is with an online sales aptitude test that you will be able to determine who lacks the Drive to bring your company the sales, and thus, success, that you desire.

So how exactly does the assessment work?

An online sales aptitude assessment is very different from an interview − it provides a way for you to objectively analyze a candidate’s personality characteristics.

By answering a series of questions, your sales candidate will show to you whether he possesses the traits of a strong salesperson, which, as you know, is vital to your sales team’s accomplishments.

The key non-teachable traits you want your candidate to possess are:

• Need for Achievement
• Competitiveness
• Optimism

With an online sales aptitude test such as The DriveTest® by SalesDrive, LLC, you will be able to measure these traits, collectively called “Drive,” to determine whether your candidate will be a successful member of your sales team.

The other key takeaway from The DriveTest® is that it also measures teachable skills in your candidate including:

• Confidence
• Persuasiveness
• Relationship Skills
• Organization

Your candidate’s test results may show that he does not currently have strong skills in the art of persuasion, but has a promising chance of gaining those skills with focused training and the support of a strong sales team and sales manager. That is oftentimes better than a candidate who simply claims to be persuasive in the interview.

Do not let him fool you with his words, let the assessment show you via objective, scientific-backed data.

How to Use Online Sales Tests

The best way to use an online sales aptitude test is as one piece of a thorough sales hiring process. There are steps you should take before and after your candidate takes the assessment.

Standard Hiring Process vs. SalesDrive Hiring Process

Below is the standard hiring process that many sales managers take, one without a sales assessment:

1. Post job ad and collect resumes
2. Review resumes
3. Conduct phone screenings
4. Initial interviews
5. Final interviews
6. Make an offer
7. Onboarding

And here is a breakdown of the successful hiring process used by SalesDrive:

1. Post job ad and collect resumes
2. Review resumes
3. Conduct phone screenings
4. Use The DriveTest® Sales Assessment
5. Conduct The Drive Interview®
6. Final interviews
7. Make an offer
8. Onboarding

Do you see the difference?

That one extra step in there − #4’s sales test − is what will make or break the success of your sales team.

Why is this assessment so important?

An online sales aptitude test is crucial to your hiring process because otherwise, you may find yourself making the mistake of hiring a candidate based solely on his likeability.

Why You Shouldn’t Rely Entirely Upon The Interview

There are job seekers out there who could be considered “professional interviewers,” meaning that they can knock the interviewing process out of the park and woo interviewers into hiring them right on the spot.

Having a candidate that interviews well sounds great, right? 

Wrong.

It is hard to measure someone’s true potential by solely relying on who looks good on paper and “wows” in the interview. He may be a charmer, but could be misleading you into believing that he will be the salesperson of your dreams, when he really may cause you nightmares once on the job.

Before your candidate even has a chance to “wow” you, you have already developed a first impression.

And that first impression definitely means something.

A Yale University professor found that when conducting an interview, first impressions are not only something; they are everything.

It takes just a few moments for you to decide how you feel about the candidate. Whether you are leaning more towards liking or disliking him, you will assess the candidate’s answers “in a way that fits with that initial impression.”

In other words, you are vesting serious trust in your gut, yet your gut is not always right.

And guess what?

The most important characteristics of a candidate, those key traits that mark a successful salesperson (Need for Achievement, Competitiveness, Optimism) are oftentimes easy to fake during an interview.

You may be throwing away your chance to hire the best salesperson your company has ever seen, all because you did not like how shy he was in the interview.

Or, you may end up hiring the charmer who down the road will cost your company massive losses in sales.

The only way to avoid making critical mistakes when hiring new salespeople for your team is to bring an online sales aptitude test into the process.

This extra step will ensure that your candidates are assessed for the qualities that truly matter in sales, and will ensure that the candidates with the greatest potential for long-term success in your company are the ones that are chosen.

With SalesDrive’s DriveTest®, your candidates will be assessed for the non-teachable, research-based factors that are essential to the growth of your sales: collectively known as Drive. This patented formula is unique to SalesDrive, LLC and will provide you with the ability to see your candidate’s long-term potential.

Rather than finding out whether a potential salesperson can sell, The DriveTest® will determine whether he will sell.

With the less than 30 minutes of your candidates’ time it takes to complete The DriveTest®, you will be saving yourself a great deal of time and trouble in the future.