We get lots of questions from clients of ours about the role of online sales testing in the overall candidate selection process for hiring sales people. Many clients ask us whether or not we use these tests and what role they play. I’ll try to give you an idea of how we view them here.

Over the last several years there’s been a proliferation of online sales aptitude profiling tools that have developed and which have been commonly adopted by many companies. We subscribe to their use as a part of our own sales recruiting process at Cube Management. Why do we do this? Because they provide us with another set of data regarding the candidate and because that extra set of data gives us a more completely rounded view of the candidates skills, abilities, and aptitudes.

What does an online sales profile or sales test typically tell you? Probably the most important thing that we find is that an online sales test gives us another set of values related to the individuals ability to sell and whether or not their sales capabilities are well aligned with a target company’s sales process. A good online sales test will tell you those three things. Can the candidate sell? Is he/she motivated to sell? And can he sell for this specific company?

There are a lot of people who use other types of personality profiling and behavioral testing to hire sales people. such as Myers Brigs Testing or others. Many people ask us why not just use those tools? The reason why we feel that an online sales profiling tool is a better choice, is because they are specifically adapted to the type of questions that really need to be uncovered and resolved in the sales hiring process. Myers Briggs tells you more about behavioral attributes and characteristics of a person – their personality – but what it doesn’t tell you is whether or not that person’s personality will fit with a specific type of sales job. We believe that certainly there are generic personality types that fit very well with selling and being successful in sales (such as extroverts), but personality testing alone doesn’t give you enough information to be able to determine whether or not a person is closely aligned with a potential job you’re considering offering him/her.