Sales

Hire Better Sales People with Sales Aptitude Tests

One of the top issues every business leader thinks about is how to hire better salespeople. They know a top sales team is essential to meet revenue and growth goals. Even one or two rock-star sales representatives can turn a yearly forecast into reality and transform a lackluster sales team into a performance powerhouse. This is why U.S. businesses spend $800 billion annually on salaries and commissions for their sales forces and $15 billion on sales training.

Top-performing sales representatives are always in demand, even with high unemployment. Since their skills are portable, it is easy to lose them if offered a better compensation package or more lucrative sales opportunities elsewhere.

Sales managers dread hearing that a star performer plans to move on because as a result, they lose the person’s talent and product knowledge. Turnover is also expensive, and the cost of sales rep turnover is particularly high because it can directly impact the bottom line.

Top salespeople build trusted relationships with their customers and thoroughly understand their business. They act as the face of your organization and partner with customers to drive success. If they leave, future new business could be at risk as well as existing deals, and client retention could also be in jeopardy.

The best way to build and retain a good sales team is to hire the right people in the first place. This is why organizations worldwide use sales aptitude tests to test sales ability.

How Do You Test Sales Ability?

Companies know a top sales team will help them maintain their competitive edge and grab market share from competitors. When they ask, “How do you test sales ability?” they learn that using sales skills assessments and pre-employment sales aptitude tests provided by an industry-leading testing solution like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM is the answer.

What is a Pre-Employment Sales Aptitude Test?

HR professionals use pre-employment sales aptitude tests to test sales ability and determine whether candidates are a good fit for their organization. Instead of manually reviewing hundreds of resumes, they can instantly screen applicants and compile a shortlist of promising candidates. This helps them improve hiring quality so they can build a top-functioning sales team. These are some ways sales skills assessments help organizations hire top sales talent:

Streamline Screening and Hiring

Organizations often receive thousands of applications when they post a job, and it is difficult to determine which candidates have the required qualifications. HR teams need an easy way to identify top applicants and weed out the unqualified ones. Otherwise, they could spend hours reviewing resumes for candidates who have no chance of being hired. This is counterproductive and wastes time. Sales skills assessments help hiring teams instantly eliminate unqualified candidates so they can focus their efforts on the ones that are best qualified for the job.

Customize Sales Skills Assessments

Leading assessment solutions like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM allow hiring teams to customize pre-employment sales aptitude tests to perfectly match the requirements for every job. The eSkill Assessment Library contains hundreds of validated job- and subject-based skills tests. HR professionals can use pre-prepared assessments or build customized tests by selecting questions from multiple skills tests.

For example, if you are hiring a sales representative for a medical equipment company, you must ensure candidates are familiar with the industry and understand important regulations. So, you can create a sales aptitude test that includes questions to test sales ability and questions from skills tests that measure industry knowledge, such as the Medical Terminology, HIPAA-Health Insurance Coverage, and HIPAA-Health Privacy and Security Standards skills tests.

Custom Simulations

Written sales aptitude tests confirm that candidates have the right skills to do a job, but do not show whether they can apply the knowledge. For instance, how do you know whether applicants Googled “How do I prepare for a sales aptitude test?” and “How to prepare for a sales interview?” and memorized answers to commonly asked questions?

Since it is easy for applicants to learn what skills they need to succeed in a sales aptitude test, HR teams include simulations in sales aptitude tests that present candidates with situations they will encounter on the job so hiring teams can evaluate their performance. For example, you can present applicants with scenarios where they must overcome objections, work with a difficult customer, or sell against one or more competitors to win or win back business.

Video Response Questions

Hiring teams include video response questions in sales skills assessments to evaluate abilities that cannot be measured on paper. Interpersonal communication and negotiating skills are two examples. Sales representatives must sound pleasant and professional over the phone, in video meetings, and in person. Video response questions require candidates to record audio or video answers to questions. So, they help you confirm that candidates are articulate and can effectively explain the value of products and services to customers and prospects.

Minimize Hiring Mistakes

Hiring mistakes are a sales manager’s worst nightmare because they negatively impact productivity and team morale and can lead to loss of customer goodwill. They are also expensive, as illustrated in the following scenario. If you hire a new sales representative, these are the costs you can expect to incur.

• Recruiting Costs and Fees: Recruiting costs and fees will amount to about 25% of a new sales rep’s first-year salary. So, if you expect the new hire to earn $100,000, assume your cost will be $25,000. Interviewing candidates and creating a shortlist will take an estimated 25 hours. So, if you interview multiple candidates and several interviewers are involved in the process, figure 25 hours at a loaded cost of $100 per hour for a total of $2,500.
• Onboarding and Training: Onboarding and training expenses vary by organization. So, the cost will depend on your company’s requirements, program length, and internal process. In general, you should expect a minimum cost of $5,000.
• Salary and Benefits During Ramp Up: Your new hire will cost you money until s/he becomes productive. So, you need to factor in the cost of their salary and benefits for approximately six months. In this case, six months of salary plus benefits will cost $62,500–$50,000 + 25% for benefits.

Given this scenario, you will invest a minimum of $95,000 in hiring, training, onboarding, and ramp-up costs BEFORE the sales rep has provided any value. And it will cost you more if the new hire does not work out.

You expect the new hire to generate around a million dollars in sales once they reach their full potential. So, if you assume a six-month ramp-up period, you can expect a minimum of $500K in new business in the first year. However, if the new sales rep does not work out and you replace them during the first year, you lose $500K of opportunity cost plus the amount you have invested in salary and benefits.

You must also consider the potential cost of lost business and the effect on other team members. For instance, if the new hire damaged client relationships and lost business, you must factor in the cost of the lost business.

Add up these costs, and you will find that if your new sales representative does not work out, your hiring and training costs could be around $750K to $1 million, AND you must hire and onboard someone new. So, you must invest the same amount again without knowing whether the second new hire will work out.

Dedicated Assessment Expert

The eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM is so easy to use that most organizations configure and begin using it in a day. However, hiring teams like knowing they can get help when and if they need it. Every eSkill client is assigned a Dedicated Assessment Expert. This means the HR leaders have a go-to person they can contact if they have questions or need assistance developing or implementing a new hiring strategy.

Why Sales Skills Assessments Are Important

Sales aptitude tests are invaluable to companies because they help hiring teams recruit top-quality applicants from a limited talent pool.

Employers worldwide are struggling to find candidates with the skills to fill critical job vacancies because we are in the midst of an unprecedented talent shortage.  In 2021, around 47.4 million workers quit their jobs during what is commonly referred to as the Great Resignation. However, the problem is actually due to a skills gap that has been growing for the past decade.

Many organizations have adopted new technology and implemented digital transformation initiatives. So, their hiring needs have changed. Unfortunately, many applicants’ skills have not kept pace with these changes and do not have the skills employers need. This has caused a knowledge gap so acute that 71% of CEOs believe a talent shortage will be their most critical business challenge for the next 10 years.

Hiring teams also know that candidates’ information on their resumes is not always credible. According to a recent article in Entrepreneur, 55% of applicants lie on their resumes and during job interviews. A HireRight study estimates the number is much higher—closer to 85%. This means applicants with a perfect resume, who present themselves well during interviews, could be entirely wrong for a job.

Companies that test sales ability using an industry-leading assessment solution like the eSkill Talent Assessment Platform^TM can recruit top candidates for sales positions quickly and efficiently because they can instantly see which candidates have the required job skills.

What Are the Most Common Sales Aptitude Tests?

Top candidates for sales representative positions must be able to explain the value of products and services to customers and prospects. They must also be able to build relationships to gain prospects’ trust and close sales. So, when HR teams ask us, “How do you test sales ability”?” and how to hire better salespeople, these are some sales aptitude tests we recommend:

• Sales Representative: This general assessment evaluates candidates’ ability to sell and promote products and services to customers and prospects, generate and follow up on sales leads, close deals, and communicate effectively with customers on the phone, by email, and in person.
• Sales Concepts: Top sales representatives must have the basic tools to effectively work with customers and prospects. This assessment measures applicants’ knowledge of sales strategies and tactics, professionalism, closing skills, and ability to learn and explain the value of products and services.
• Negotiating: Sales representatives must be good negotiators. This test assesses applicants’ persuasive and analytical abilities, relationship-building skills, strategic thinking, problem-solving, decision-making, and interpersonal communication skills.
• Emotional Intelligence: Successful sales representatives are good at reading people. They must also understand their own emotions and how they impact their relationships with others. This assessment measures candidates’ social intelligence skills, how well they understand and manage their emotions, and whether they can use them productively when dealing with customers, prospects, and team members.
• Email Etiquette: Email is an essential business tool, but it can cause misunderstandings and ruin business relationships if used incorrectly. This assessment confirms that candidates know how to compose clear, complete, and tactful email messages and understand basic email etiquette.
• Writing: Sales representatives often write bids and submit a request for proposal (RFP) to win business. This assessment evaluates candidates’ ability to organize their thoughts on paper, write clear, complete sentences, and use correct grammar and spelling.
• Videoconference Communication and Etiquette: Many sales presentations are given online using applications like Zoom, Google Meet, and Microsoft Teams^TM_. This assessment confirms that candidates understand videoconference etiquette, know how to use video conference applications, and can engage participants effectively.

Get Started with Sales Aptitude Tests

Sales skills assessments are the perfect solution for businesses wanting to build a sales team to generate leads and close business. They also help organizations improve hiring outcomes while reducing recruiting costs and decreasing time-to-hire. Many eSkill clients have decreased hiring costs by about 70% and reduced time-to-hire by around 60%.

If you and your team need an effective way to test sales ability so you can build a top-notch selling team, contact us to request a demo.