By David Pearce. Permission is granted for you to reprint this article provided it is reprinted in its entirety including the by-line of the author
Five years ago, you would be hard pressed to find many sales recruiters who had embraced on-line sales testing as part of their hiring process, but today it is a different story. The practice of testing sales candidates on-line has finally come of age, partly due to advances in on-line sales tests that have improved their reliability, validity, usefulness and access, and partly due to the growing appreciation among sales organizations of the advantages that on-line sales testing can offer.
Testing has always been a popular component of the recruiting and hiring process, yet the 'hard-copy' tests of the past, traditionally delivered 'in-person' to applicants, were costly for organizations and time-consuming for hiring managers. Today, on-line availability of sales tests means testing can be done anytime and anywhere, for a fraction of the cost of face-to-face testing.
These advantages have resulted in a paradigm shift in businesses, approach to hiring sales people. Recruiters historically used sales tests at the back-end of the hiring process to decide between the final few front-running applicants. Today, hiring managers can cost-effectively deliver on-line sales tests to dozens, or even hundreds, of sales applicants at the very beginning of the hiring process, to weed out the bulk of applicants before the interview process has even begun. In other words, on-line sales tests are enabling organizations to interview fewer, more qualified sales applicants for their available sales positions. The hiring process is far more effective because interviews are more intensive and targeted-focusing on the most important issues uncovered through on-line sales testing.
"Its pointless trying to fit a square peg into a round hole," says Elizabeth Matheson, Vice President, Acuity Psychometrics, a company that develops 'ideal candidate profiles' for companies, as well as creates and administers tests to measure personality, motivation and temperament. "Sales tests can recognize candidates that fit a company's ideal salesperson profile, as well as help identify red flags in candidates that might not be immediately apparent in an interview situation."
Today's on-line sales tests are more easily adapted than ever before to specific businesses or industries. They can also be customized to meet the unique sales requirements of any company. On-line sales testing provides the added advantage of database capabilities, for easy archiving, tracking and comparison of candidate profiles and test results.
Linda Finn sings the praises of on-line sales testing. She is a recruiting manager at a Florida-based media company who has used sales testing for the past nine years. "Our success rates in terms loyalty and retention of sales staff are far higher when we know the types of traits that comprise the ideal salesperson," says Linda. "On-line testing enhances the value of sales testing as a management information tool even more, because the data can be so easily accessed and analyzed."
Finally, the growing trend to globalization of business has also contributed to the surge in popularity of on-line sales tests. Today, candidates from anywhere in the world may be applying for a sales position in a company that could be based just about anywhere. On-line sales tests help companies avoid the expense of flying candidates to Head Office for testing. Why bother, when a candidate can complete the sales test on the web from the comfort of his own home? This, added to people's growing reluctance to travel after the events of September 11th., has made on-line sales testing an exceedingly attractive option.
Given the many advantages of on-line sales testing, it is apparent that on-line sales testing will continue to gain momentum in the high-pressure world of sales recruiting. Although on-line sales tests cannot be viewed as a panacea, there is no doubt of their growing appeal with both employers and employees alike.
David Pearce's By-line
David Pearce is the President of Salestestonline.com. Established in 1986, Salestestonline.com is North America's #1 provider of web-based assessments for testing sales people. Salestestonline.com has over 1000 satisfied customers with a 97% re-order factor. The Salestestonline system is customized to your unique criteria, fully automated, instantaneous, extremely accurate and very economical. Salestestonline is represented in Australia and Asia Pacific by Exceptional Sales Performance at www.exceptionalsales.com.au. Read the BLOG at http://exceptionalsales.blogspot.com/
