For the better part of the last three years, most companies have been getting more profitable.  Their primary strategy is to grow the bottom line, by significantly reducing their costs.  The strategy seems to be working as most companies are now very profitable and are flush with cash.  The tough part about this strategy is that you cannot reduce your costs below zero, so there is a limit as to how profitable a company can become without also growing the top line: revenue.

If you take a look at the classified ads or look at the various internet job boards, almost every company is looking for salespeople.  You have a very difficult time growing your revenue without increasing your sales, and if the sales could be increased without salespeople, companies would already be doing this.  So, if you are like most companies, you are looking for salespeople.  But you do not just want any salesperson, you want a Top Performing Salesperson.  How do you find these people?

Profiles Sales Assessment™ (PSA)

Here are some sobering statistics:

• 50% of organizations are dissatisfied with new sales representatives they hire
• 19% of sales representatives turnover voluntarily each year
• 16% of sales representatives turnover involuntarily each year

What is the PSA?
The Profiles Sales Assessment measures how well a person fits specific sales jobs in your organization. It is used primarily for selecting, on-boarding and managing sales people and account managers. The “job modeling” feature of the PSA is unique and can be customized by company, sales position, department, manager, geography, or any combination of these factors. This enables you to evaluate an individual relative to the qualities required to perform successfully in a specific sales job in your organization. It also predicts on-the-job performance in seven critical sales behaviors: prospecting, call reluctance, closing the sale, self-starting, teamwork, building and maintaining relationships, and compensation preference.

Why Assess Sales People?
Many sales people are competitive and persuasive. Given the opportunity to land a new job or to be promoted, they may tell you what you want to hear instead of the truth. Additionally, so much of their success depends on the specific type of sales job and the organization in which they would work. Success seldom transfers automatically. The cost of failure in a sales job is very high considering the hiring and ramp-up costs, low sales productivity, and disruption to existing customers.

The PSA gives you an objective inside look at the behaviors and motives of your sales people and sales managers to help you make better decisions.

How Does It Work?
Prior to assessing new candidates, we help you develop Performance Models for your sales jobs. The Performance Modeling is based on identifying the Top Performing salespeople in your organization today.  Your goal is to hire more salespeople like them.  Once the Performance Model is established, the PSA is delivered to candidates over the Internet — hiring managers or an HR administrator simply forwards a link. The assessment does not need to be monitored, so the candidate can take it from any computer with Internet access. The system instantly scores the assessment and informs the hiring managers where they can access the results.  Best of all, the PSA is extremely cost-effective.

The hiring manager can use the results as a screening tool or to assist them in the interviewing, selection, and on-boarding process.