The Secret to Success in Changing Times: Sales Aptitude Tests for Hiring

Building a high-performing sales organization is such a big priority that companies invest $800 billion annually on sales salaries and commissions and $15 billion in sales training.

Top sales performers are always in demand—even in a down economy—because business leaders know a top sales team can help them meet yearly revenue and growth goals. Even a few sales “rock stars” can jumpstart stagnant sales and help a company meet annual forecasts.

Sales skills transfer easily within the same sector and often to other industries, so business leaders know their best sales representatives can go elsewhere if offered more money, higher commissions, or better sales opportunities.

Sales managers do not like to hear that a top sales representative plans to leave for another job. They lose the employee’s talent and product knowledge and may also lose customers because a new sales representative may not be able to build the same rapport. Clients might also be tempted to look at other suppliers, and future business could be at risk.

Turnover is costly, regardless of the position or department. However, the cost of sales rep turnover is particularly high because it can directly impact the bottom line. The first step toward building a top-performing sales team is to hire the right people. This is why organizations worldwide use sales aptitude tests.

Why Should I Use Sales Aptitude Tests for Hiring?

Most business leaders know that building a top sales team helps them maintain a competitive edge and can even help them increase market share. When they ask what steps they should take to build a stellar sales team, we tell them that the key is to implement a leading assessment testing solution so they can use the best sales aptitude tests to screen candidates.

When Should Aptitude Tests Be Used?

Companies usually receive thousands of applications for a job posting and need to determine which candidates meet the required job qualifications. If your HR team uses only the best sales aptitude tests during initial candidate screening, they can quickly eliminate unqualified applicants and focus on top candidates. This helps them improve hiring quality and lays the groundwork for building a top-quality sales team.

You can also use information from sales aptitude tests later in the hiring process. For example, you could include simulation questions that present candidates with job-related scenarios and evaluate how they managed the situations. Video-response questions offer an excellent way to ask applicants to role-play common work-related situations, such as overcoming objections or working with a difficult customer.

Can Sales Assessment Tests Predict Long-Term Job Performance?

Successful sales representatives are proficient in several critical areas, so when customers and prospects ask us, “What Are the Common Challenges in Implementing Sales Assessment Tests?”, we tell them assessments must cover all the essential skills sales reps need.

Sales reps must be articulate enough to explain the value of products and services in a way that makes sense to customers and prospects. They must be expert relationship builders and be able to win prospects’ trust and close sales. They must also be excellent negotiators and communicators in face-to-face situations, over the phone, and in writing.

We provide examples of what we feel are some of eSkill’s best sales aptitude tests to assess candidates’ skills. Then, we show how assessments can be used as-is and how to build a custom sales aptitude test by choosing questions from multiple assessments.

• Sales Concepts: A good sales representative must have “the right stuff” to work with prospects and customers effectively. The Sales Concepts Skills Test measures applicants’ knowledge of sales strategies and tactics, their ability to understand customers’ business goals, explain the value of products and services, overcome objections, and close sales.

• Sales Representative: The Sales Representative Skills Test is a general assessment that evaluates business development and sales skills, the ability to promote products and services to customers and prospects, and how effectively candidates communicate with prospects and customers.

• Emotional Intelligence: Successful sales representatives must be able to read people and anticipate what motivates them. They must understand their own emotions and the impact of those emotions on their relationships with others. The Emotional Intelligence Skills Test evaluates applicants’ social intelligence skills—how well they understand and manage their emotions and shows whether they can use them effectively when dealing with customers, colleagues, and stakeholders.

• Negotiating: Successful sales representatives must be excellent negotiators. The Negotiating Skills Test assesses applicants’ relationship-building, strategic thinking, problem-solving, and decision-making abilities, in addition to persuasive and analytical aptitude and interpersonal communication skills.

• Email Etiquette: Email is an essential business tool. It enables sales reps to communicate with customers quickly and efficiently but can cause misunderstandings and even ruin business relationships if used incorrectly. The Email Etiquette Skills Assessment helps hiring teams verify that candidates understand business email etiquette and can compose clear, complete, and tactful messages.

• Writing: Sales representatives frequently write bids, quotes, and complete requests for proposals (RFPs) to win business, so they need to know how to organize their thoughts on paper, write clearly, and use correct grammar and spelling. The Writing Skills Test assessment confirms that candidates have good writing skills and basic knowledge of spelling and grammar.

• Videoconferencing: Sales representatives must often hold meetings and give presentations online using applications like Zoom, Google Meet, or Microsoft Teams^TM.The Videoconferencing Skills Assessment helps you confirm that candidates understand how to use video conference applications, know basic videoconference etiquette, and can engage participants effectively.

How Can Sales Assessment Tests Reduce Turnover Rates in Sales Teams?

Turnover is a sales manager’s worst nightmare. Besides being expensive, it negatively impacts productivity and team morale and can lead to loss of customer goodwill. The best sales aptitude tests help you reduce turnover by minimizing the risk of hiring mistakes.

If you hire the right person, you avoid incurring the additional hiring, onboarding, and training expenses of a bad hire. To illustrate, suppose you hire a sales representative who becomes extremely successful. In this case, they will eventually produce around $1 million in sales, assuming a six-month ramp-up period.

A sales representative can generate around $500K in new business during their first year. However, you will incur hiring, training, onboarding, and ramp-up expenses of about $95,000 before the new hire has provided any value. If they don’t work out, and you are forced to replace them during the first year, you could lose $500K in potential sales plus the amount paid in salary and benefits.

This is the amount companies typically invest when they hire a new sales representative:

• Recruiting Costs and Fees: Recruiting costs and fees will total approximately 25% of a new sales representative’s base first-year salary. So, if you expect the new employee to earn $100,000, you should estimate that you will spend around $25,000 in recruiting costs. Screening and interviewing candidates will take around 25 hours. So, if you schedule interviews with several candidates and there are multiple interviewers on the hiring team, you should figure 25 hours at a loaded cost of $100 per hour for a total of $2,500.

• Onboarding and Training: Onboarding and training expenses are difficult to estimate because they vary by organization. The cost depends on your organization’s requirements and the time required to complete any required workshops and internal training programs. In general, you can expect the cost to be around $5,000.

• Salary and Benefits During Ramp-Up: The new sales representative will cost you money until they become productive. This means you need to add the cost of the new hire’s salary and benefits for approximately six months. In this scenario, six months of salary plus benefits would cost about $62,500—$50,000 plus 25% for benefits.

When you total these costs, you will find that if your new sales representative does not work out, hiring and training costs could be around $70,000, and you must incur the same expenses to hire and onboard a replacement and hope your second new hire will work out.

This does not account for the possibility of lost business and the impact on other team members. For instance, if the first sales representative damaged client relationships, you must factor in the cost of the possible lost business and the time and effort you will need to expend to mend fences with the customer.

How Reliable Are Aptitude Tests for Sales Positions?

Sales aptitude tests are essential for building successful sales and business development teams because they help organizations recruit top applicants from a limited talent pool.

Organizations worldwide find recruiting candidates with in-demand skills needed for critical job vacancies is challenging. One reason we have a talent shortage is because around 47.4 million workers quit their jobs in 2021. However, the main problem is due to a skills and knowledge gap that has been growing for the past decade.

Many organizations have implemented new technology and digital transformation initiatives, and their hiring needs have changed. Many applicants have not updated their skills to keep pace with these changes. So, although employers hear from many applicants when they post a job, few are employable because they lack even the most basic skills. This has caused a skills misalignment so serious that 71% of CEOs say a talent shortage is their most pressing business problem.

Another problem is hiring teams can no longer rely on the information candidates provide on their resumes. According to a HireRight study, 85% of applicants lie on their resumes and during interviews. So, a candidate with a perfect resume who sounds wonderful during interviews could be entirely wrong for a job.

Organizations that use an industry-leading assessment solution can use sales aptitude tests to recruit top candidates for sales representative positions quickly and efficiently because they can instantly see which candidates have the required sales skills and attributes.

What Happens Without Sales Assessment Tests When Hiring?

We have discussed why it is important to use sales aptitude tests while screening and hiring sales reps, so you’re probably wondering what can happen when you don’t use them. The following example illustrates how a company wasted hours and incurred costs in the thousands by hiring a candidate who looked and sounded perfect and was not a good fit for a job.

Suzette, the HR manager of a small software company, was asked to recruit candidates to fill a sales representative position. The employee would be responsible for selling three software products. The first allowed users to collaborate on and annotate CAD drawings. The second was a lighter version that could be used in the field. The third allowed users to create project files by consolidating documents and CAD drawings in a single location. Customers were typically engineers, architects, construction project managers, and city/county managers.

Suzette’s company did not use an assessment solution. So, she reviewed resumes, conducted screening interviews, and scheduled face-to-face interviews so the sales manager could talk to the top candidates. Mary Beth was hired because she had extensive Microsoft sales experience. However, it soon became apparent that she was not a good fit for the job.

She had no experience selling to technical users and managers. She also had problems understanding how the three products worked and the value they offered customers. So, she could not ask the right qualifying questions to determine which product(s) customers and prospects needed. Gary, the product management team, and the sales enablement team worked with her to help her understand the products. However, this just increased her frustration level, and she resigned after a couple of months.

Mary Beth had good sales experience, but she had never sold technical software and had never sold to engineers, architects, and project managers. If the company had used skills assessments in its hiring process, Suzette could have built a sales aptitude test that included sales and technical questions, and Mary Beth would not have made the shortlist.

Get Started with Sales Aptitude Tests

Businesses that want to build a top-notch sales and business development team know sales aptitude tests help them improve hiring outcomes. They also reduce recruiting costs and decrease time-to-hire. Organizations that use the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM have decreased hiring costs by about 70% and reduced time-to-hire by around 60%, on average.

Do you want to learn how the best sales aptitude tests can help you build a high-performing sales and business development team? Contact eSkill to request a demo.