COMMENTS
I would say that based on the fact that I have personally produced millions of dollars in revenue based on my talent and sales experience, your assessment, books, etc. are nothing more than bigus hype.
You can not 'qualify' someone based on a test.
Brian was also nice enough to send me a personal email that said only, 'You suck. So does your bogus ASSessment.'
It was a very mature note. I wrote back:
'Hi Brian,
Thanks for the nice note. It’s really wonderful to be appreciated. I don’t know when you were assessed, who had you assessed or the results of your assessment, but I’ll bet that one of the findings was that you become emotionally involved. I’ll bet that another one was that you make excuses. And I wouldn’t be surprised if a third finding indicated that you have difficulty recovering from rejection and have need for approval. Funny how just one sentence from you brings the whole assessment to life, isn’t it?
Have a great weekend.
Regards,
Dave Kurlan'
Brian probably doesn't realize that even the EEOC recognizes that validated assessments do qualify and disqualify candidates and our assessment has a 95% predictive validity - it's the most accurate sales assessment in the industry.
I would also guess that Brian is probably a very successful account manager, managing an awful lot of revenue. But, I would guess that if he had to start over without that book of business, go out and make cold calls and get companies to buy from him, he would struggle.
I did some research and found the candidate in question. He had strong desire, strong commitment good outlook and, as I predicted, MAKES EXCUSES.
He had four major weaknesses including, as I predicted, GETS EMOTIONALLY INVOLVED and NEED FOR APPROVAL.
I was wrong about rejection - he recovers from it but he certainly FEELS IT.
The most important lesson is that this is the guy that companies hire because he looks so good. Good track record, good skills - even the assessment showed many, very compatible at 84% but so many weaknesses that he won't consistently execute the skills he has. He knows what to do but can't do it. He is very well suited to be a major account manager which is what he has probably been doing so successfully for many years.
Dave
We will be using this example in our next Sales Talent Acquisition Routine training to 10 key State Managers responsible for hiring the sales people that will take their company to the next stage of their growth. Since taking on the assessments and following up with targetted training from the results that company has grown from $50 million to $130 million in 2 years. There were no acquisitions involved in that growth just sold more products and services.
That's even better than one could have expected!
For the record, a test cannot be the sole reason for a company to not choose a candidate. Companies should consider resume, track record, experience, fit, understanding, compatibility, intelligence and references in addition to the assessment.
Dave,
I used to work in the Technology sales arena, in the period of 1993 through 2001. We still joke about how easy it was to make money, even if you were not a good sales person. If you happened to be lucky enough to be in charge of a major account when it was time to renew an enterprise license agreement or inherit a large ripe opportunity from a sales person who quit, you could make well over 500K per year, do 200-300% of your quota and have a resume with Millions worth of sales results.
If this same sales person was put in a situation where they were given a new territory and were expected to hunt and close, they would and did fail miserably. I speak from personal experience. In 2001 I did 3.2 million dollars in business at a 2 billion dollar Houston based software company. I would not admit it in an interview but the truth is, I WAS IN THE RIGHT PLACE AT THE RIGHT TIME. I inherited a deal worth 2.5 million which was being managed for the past year by my predecessor in the territory. All I had to do was fill out requests for dispatching the technical people for demos and proofs of concept, and the deal was mine. In fact I almost blew it, since I was TOO WEAK a sales person to press for a meeting with the CIO, I hung back in my comfort zone with the CIO’s lower level reports who underestimated the amount of people who needed to buy off on the deal. If it were not for my manager's manager getting involved at the last minute I (we) would have lost the deal. As for the other 700K of my sales that year, I was commissioned for add-on business to existing clients who happened to be in my territory. I am not ashamed for being lucky, but I am amused at how many easy it was to get a 96K base + commission job at a competitor, who was blown away by my quota busting skills and my book of contacts. My past sales made for an amazing sales call in the job interview.
Funny thing though, it does catch up with you and it costs the unlucky new employer a lot. I have ended up experiencing a lot of challenges in that next job, since there were NO existing clients and preexisting deals to work on. I was left to my own devices to try and match the past performance. Fortunately, after almost 2 years of struggling to hunt and close new business, I hooked up with one of your distributors in 2003 who since then has been working painstakingly to help me overcome my NEED FOR APPROVAL, FEAR OF REJECTION, EMOTIONAL INVOLVEMENT, and several other weaknesses. Lucky for me that I won't give up, since I want to become a truly great sales person who is really capable of hunting and closing, as opposed to hoping for a lucky hand out which will make my resume look good for the next high paying base salary sales job.
It never seizes to amaze me how many sales people across all industries have similar sales stories. Even more amazing though, are the majority of sales managers and other hiring managers who buy these stories as opposed to looking under the covers to find out where the millions of dollars the sales person sold CAME FROM. Most of all how few companies spend the time and energy objectively evaluating if the potential sales hire is capable of duplicating the performance or was it a case of, “being in the right place at the right time.”
-The associate who refuses to give up!!!
Thank you for your honesty. Your truth is an example of what our evaluations and assessments demonstrate to leaders at thousands of companies.
Well Dave you can't please all of the people all of the time and I've found it never pays to get into a fight with someone that has already made up their mind. We were working with a bank that refused to assess candidates because the president was once tested, failed and eventually became, well, a bank president. But he painted all assessment tools with the same broad brush. I equate that to having a bad experience in a car and deciding that you would never drive again. Just doesn't make sense to me. I would agree that interviewing, assessing, checking references etc. are all part of the entire recruiting and hiring process. Making a decision based on just one of the contributing factors would most likely lead to a mistake. Last note. We have a new convert. A sales manager of ours has fought us for a long time on the validity of the screen. Last week he called to tell me that he should have paid more attention to the non-hirable recommendation. All of the findings unfortunately were 100% accurate and he had to terminate the non-hirable.
And we'll take those converts one at a time!
Is this a dumb question? Why is anonymous reading your blog? Don't sane people avoid that which upsets them? Is he crying out for help? Is he hoping to someday find the magic bullet that will make him be what he wishes he could be? Is he like the alcoholic that hasn't admitted he has a problem even though he sees the symptoms and worries that he might be wrong? If you think that these questions are too inflamatory for Brian, then I respect that you might modify or not publish them. But just like an alcoholic, salespeople can't be helped until they bottom out and admit it to themselves and the world.