The Sales Assessment that Dave Kurlan Developed

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Mon, Feb 08, 2010 @ 08:27 PM

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Tags: sales evaluations, dave kurlan, sales testing, sales assessments, caliper, predictive index, chally

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

I am often asked how I can write so many articles.  I have a few answers for that:

• Compared to the demands of writing my two books, Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling, writing a couple of paragraphs every day is a piece of cake;
• From my unique vantage point as a thought leader in two industries - the Sales Development Industry and the Assessment Industry, there is more article material than I will ever have time to write about;
• I usually choose topics that are bothering me at that particular moment in time.

This is my 600th article since the inception of the Understanding the Sales Force Blog 4 years ago.  It seems that around every 66 articles or so I write an article to explain how inferior all of those other assessments are when it comes to the sales force.  The last time I made an attempt like this was four months and 115 articles ago.  So it basically comes down to a formula where I provide 65 articles with great content, and in return, you read about how our Sales Assessments blow the lid off of any other assessment you place along side them.

I have already written a series of articles on the subject of how assessments compare.

Let me begin with some questions.

If you sell high end business services and your salespeople earn in excess of $250,000 annually, would you want to use the same hiring and selection criteria that they use to hire salespeople that sell long-distance telephone services to anyone who will listen?

If you have a complex technical product with a long sales cycle, would you want to use the same hiring and selection criteria used to hire life insurance salespeople who call on married couples?

If you require your salespeople to call on C-Level executives, would you want to use the same hiring and selection criteria used to hire office supply salespeople who spend all day calling on administrators?

If you are hiring hunters, do you want to use the same hiring and selection criteria used to hire account managers?

And if you are hiring A players, do you want to use the same hiring and selection criteria used to hire office workers?

When I write this type of article, I don't usually get into everything that makes our assessment so much better.  Today I made an exception and got a bit more aggressive.

This is what is available when it comes to assessments:

Personality Assessments - they identify personality traits - these are never role specific and the questions are asked in a social context therefore the findings are not necessarily applicable to a sales environment.  As a result, personality assessments are not predictive and are ineffective as a sales selection, development or coaching tool.

Behavioral Styles Assessments - behavioral tendencies, much like traits above, but can also include cultural needs and wants to identify fit and management requirements. Questions are asked in a social context therefore the findings are not necessarily applicable to a sales environment.  As a result, these assessments are not predictive either and are ineffective as a sales selection, development or coaching tool.

Both of the above assessment types are marketed by their various companies as sales assessments but the only thing about them that is actually sales specific is the language used in their marketing material. See the next category.

Sales Assessments -  there are so many of these now that I can't keep up with them anymore but nearly everyone of them, despite the literature, web sites and white papers they produce, are based on an underlying personality or behavioral styles instrument. They are not accurate or predictive within the sales context no matter what their marketing claims.

Sales Aptitude Assessments - Think knowledge, not ability.  In other words, you know how a computer works but you can't build one.  You know what it takes to play winning, professional sports, but you aren't able to actually perform at that level.  The aptitude test measures what salespeople know about selling, not what they're actually capable of accomplishing.

Objective Management Group - We invented and pioneered the space.  Before OMG came along, nobody ever talked about evaluating a sales force.  Our accuracy is legendary yet we are never content with our world-class, industry leading sales force assessments.  Our sales force evaluations go so wide and deep that we can answer any question that you can imagine about the performance - past, present or future - of a sales force.  Our sales candidate assessments are so predictive that the statistics are nearly unbelievable.  Check this out:

When clients hire candidates that we don't recommend (silly clients), 75% of those salespeople fail inside of six months.

When clients hire candidates that we do recommend (smart clients), 92% of those salespeople rise to the top half of their sales force within the first 12 months.

How do we do it?  Our assessments are not based on somebody else's personality or behavioral styles instrument and they aren't modified to make them appear sales specific.  We built ours from the ground up - purposely for sales - and we continue to expand, evolve and refine it today - 20 years later.  It's a work in progress and that's one of the reasons that it's so good.  We are always working to make it even better.  It wasn't designed using antiquated test publishing guidelines, and it wasn't intended for use in schools or the military. Instead, it was designed by a very successful sales expert who happened to be a great sales diagnostician and researcher. How do I know?  I used to be that guy! 

Our data on nearly 500,000 salespeople and the 8,500 sales forces that have used our assessments provides us with rich sources of information to identify trends and make comparisons.  We recognize true success markers and reliable failure indicators.  We can sort by industry,  role or finding.  Simply put, we know what it takes for a salesperson to succeed in sales and you know what it takes for a salesperson to succeed in your business (and if you don't we can help you figure it out!).  When we combine the two sets of criteria and adjust for difficulty (complexity times resistance), we will either not recommend a candidate, or provide one of four recommendations:

1. Hirable - Less Than Ideal
2. Hirable
3. Hirable with Ideal Ramp Up Skills
4. Hirable Perfect

Watch out for all of the assessments that pretend to provide sales findings but report only what they can actually measure.  See examples here.

Questions?

Leave a comment and I'll answer it.

(c) Copyright 2010 Dave Kurlan

Exposed - Personality Tests Disguised as Sales Assessments

Posted by Dave Kurlan on Wed, Jan 28, 2009 @ 08:45 AM

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Tags: sales force evaluation, sales assessment, sales candidate, personality test, personality assessment, sales profile, sales evaluation, dave kurlan sales force profile, DISC, 16PF, Trimetric, Caliper, MySalesAssessment, SalesAssessment.com, SalesAssessmentTesting, SalesForceAssessments.com, SalesTestOnLine.com.com, Dave Kurlan

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

Yesterday, I met with a long-time client who, in his previous company, used OMG's Assessments to identify what needed to change in order to double revenue from $30 million to $60 million.  In his new company, which is already about 12x that size, he wants to double revenue again.  He said, "I just wasted two years with the _____ Assessment."  The assessment he referred to was a personality assessment marketed as a sales assessment.  It could have referred to any personality or behavioral styles assessment.

Many people are not going to like this article.  I am about to expose the findings in personality based and behavioral based assessments that companies have been marketing as sales assessments for the last dozen years.

First, you'll need to read this piece, Personality Assessments for Sales - The Definitive Case Study.  Really, you need to read it first!

There isn't a tremendous difference between personality assessments and behavioral styles assessments.  Popular behavioral styles assessments, like the various versions of DISC, produce findings along 4 dimensions (categories) while some personality assessments, like those using the PF16 as their underlying instrument, can measure traits in as many as 16 dimensions.

But Personality Assessments and Behavioral  Styles assessments are not predictive of sales performance.  They don't conduct Predictive Validity studies as we do because their assessments don't predict.  Instead they conduct Construct Validity studies, which only show to what extent an assessment measures a specific trait. And not the traits you want to know about, but the traits they can actually measure.

So here's the problem. Their marketing material usually says something like, "Salespeople must be able to Prospect, Question, Manage Objections and Close.  They must have Product Knowledge.  They must be accountable, have drive, be self starters and be coachable."  You read those words and say, "yes, yes.  That is exactly what we need."  And the masquerade is on.

As I wrote in the other article, personality based sales assessments don't really measure what you need to know. Instead they report on what they can actually measure.  In the table below, I'll list some of the most common "findings" in personality and behavioral styles tests that are marketed as sales assessments, describe what is really being measured, and compare that to what Objective Management Group (OMG) measures and reports.

These are just some of the most common findings.  Since OMG's Assessments are so sales specific, there are literally dozens of findings covering everything that can possibly happen in sales including, but not limited, to prospecting, closing, qualifying, account management, farming, use of the sales process, ability to handle stalls, put-offs, objections and work remotely, growth potential, development needs and more.  What's most important to understand about assessments is that:

• the questions in the personality tests are asked in the context of social settings, not sales settings, so none of the findings are sales specific.
• Because the findings in personality assessments are not sales specific, they are not predictive.
• Personality assessments are generally one size fits all, without regard to your market, its challenges, your competition, your pricing, the resistance your salespeople will face, your compensation plan and how specific selling strengths and weaknesses will impact those conditions.
• Assessments of your existing salespeople should be useful for development.  If you don't have sales specific findings, you are only developing them as people, not salespeople.
• How is OMG Different?  Assessments are only a minor part of an effective sales force evaluation.  The most important part is to be able to learn:
• What impact sales management is having on the salespeople
• Whether you've been hiring the right people
• Whether your sales force can execute your strategies
• Whether your systems and processes support the sales force
• How effective sales management is
• If you can develop more of a sales culture
• Whether the salespeople can make a transitionlike - account manager types to hunters and closers; presenters and quoters to consultative sales types; transactional sale to a solution sale; etc.
• Who can be developed?
• If you're attempting to down-size or right sales the sales force, who are the individuals that actually have the ability to help you do more with less?
• How much better can they get?
• What it will take?
• What the ROI on development would be
• Why you get the specific results you get
• What is the quality of your pipeline?
• Etc.
• When used for Hiring and Selection, an assessment must be an accurate predictor of sales success for a particular sales role in your particular company, calling on your particular market, with its particular challenges and competition. A personality assessment won't consistently identify the people who will succeed while OMG's Assessment, with its 95% Predictive Validity, will.  We can differentiate between Hirable (they meet our criteria and yours); Hirable - Ideal (they are hirable and they will ramp up more quickly than normal); and Hirable - Perfect (they are hirable ideal and they meet additional customized criteria that match up with your most effective producers).

in summary, whether you are using a personality assessment, behavioral styles assessment, psychological assessment, or psychometric (describes all of the above) assessment, it's the marketing that is sales specific, not the findings.  Use them at your own risk.

(c) Copyright 2009 Dave Kurlan