Hiring top sales talent is crucial for business success, but ineffective recruitment practices can lead to poor selection decisions. Over-reliance on resume screening in the recruitment process often fails to provide enough insights into a candidate's sales capabilities. However, incorporating validated psychological assessments can significantly improve the identification and selection of high-potential salespeople.
Challenges of Resume Screening
Most companies still depend heavily on resumes when screening sales candidates. However, resumes have limited ability to predict on-the-job performance. They focus heavily on past experience and educational qualifications. But superior sales results depend on a wider range of psychological attributes like persuasion skills, resilience, achievement orientation, and more. Just because someone lists sales roles on their resume does not mean they will thrive in those roles at your organization.
Subjectivity is another issue. Different recruiters often form very different impressions of the same resume. There is no consistency or standardization around what aspects they focus on in making evaluations. This can lead to overlooking potentially suitable candidates. Lack of objectivity also makes resume screening susceptible to unconscious biases.
Finally, resumes provide no mechanism to check for response distortion. Candidates are tempted to exaggerate or embellish their credentials to impress potential employers. But this makes it harder to gain an accurate picture of their true capabilities.
A Multidimensional Sales Talent Assessment
The Three Dimensional Sales Profile (SP3D) helps address these limitations by objectively assessing sales potential across three key dimensions – abilities, personality traits, and values. Developed by a team of Business Psychologists, Sales Leaders, Sales Professionals and psychometric experts, the SP3D questionnaire contains 74 items measuring:
- 4 sales-related cognitive abilities like sales acumen and emotional recognition
- 11 personality traits such as resilience, ambition, persuasion skills
- 6 values including independence, security, expertise
The profile matching feature compares the candidate's responses to a validated model of success for 4 major sales roles - insurance, B2B, retail and channel sales. This identifies their potential fit for different sales positions in the organization.
The SP3D provides an in-depth evaluation of sales aptitude that resumes cannot match. It measures natural capacities that enable sales excellence, not just past experience. The standardized stimulus presentation and objective scoring prevent subjective interpretations and ensure fair assessments.
Improved Selection Outcomes
Extensive research shows that assessments like the SP3D significantly improve salesforce selection. In validation studies, SP3D scores strongly correlate with performance measures like sales volumes, revenue targets, and supervisor ratings. By integrating SP3D early in your recruitment process, you can identify high potential sales talent regardless of background.
For instance, a candidate's resume may show limited sales experience. But their SP3D results could indicate untapped capacity for sales roles based on cognitive abilities, values, and personality traits. On the other hand, certain candidates may look strong on paper but demonstrate low aptitude on the SP3D. This additional data enables informed hiring decisions.
In today's highly competitive talent landscape, sales recruitment requires going beyond the resume. Robust talent assessments provide unbiased insights into sales capabilities. Rather than relying solely on past experience, the SP3D evaluates the psychological building blocks that drive sales success. Using this multidimensional profile ensures your sales roles are staffed with individuals who have both the natural potential and the motivation to excel.
Are you ready to go beyond the resume and make data-driven sales hiring decisions? Sign up for a free trial of the SP3D assessment today. Generate in-depth sales profiles for your candidates and see firsthand how it reveals sales potential.
With SP3D, you get:
- Instant online assessment and scoring
- Profiles benchmarked against top performers
- Easy-to-understand reports
- Customizable to your sales roles
- Cost-effective pre-employment screening
Don't leave sales recruitment to chance. Let the science of talent assessment work for you. Unlock deeper insights into sales potential by signing up for the SP3D free trial today!
