What Is A Sales Acumen Assessment and Why Generic Personality Tests Miss It
When it comes to sales hiring, business leaders must identify the right candidate. While more businesses are using personality tests, these tests can’t highlight which candidate will excel at sales. Recruiters should use sales acumen assessments to evaluate candidates’ practical sales judgement and decision-
What is a sales acumen assessment?
A sales acumen assessment is a standardized hiring tool. The tool is designed to show which candidates are the best fit for a sales position. As candidates answer the assessment questions, the tool evaluates their practical sales judgment, decision-
What does a sales acumen assessment measure?
A sales acumen assessment measures a candidate’s skills and understanding of basic sales principles. In every sale, the rep leads prospects through a funnel. The parts of the sales funnel start with prospect qualification and customer needs analysis. From then, the rep moves into the objection handling stage and must communicate effectively during negotiation. Finally, the rep must decide on the final approach and close the deal.
Qualifying the prospect
Not every prospect will become a customer. And not every customer will represent the same value to the organization. Sales managers rely on their reps to identify the prospects that are most likely to be a good fit for the solution they’re selling.
Customer understanding
A key sales rep skill is the ability to listen closely. As reps build a relationship with a prospect, they must ask questions designed to reveal what the prospect needs. The prospect’s answers reveal which business problems they’re encountering and how they prioritize pain points. Reps must understand these details, along with the prospect’s business goals, as they develop a recommended solution.
Objection handling
After making a presentation and proposing a solution, reps will hear objections. How they handle these objections results in the difference between losing the deal and scoring a sale. Reps with great sales acumen know how to dig into the surface objection to get at the underlying concern. They use that information to reframe the value of the offered solution and move the deal forward.
Why generic personality tests miss sales acumen
General personality tests measure an individual’s traits. The questions do not focus on specific behaviors needed for successful selling. These factors range from sales knowledge to situational judgement.
Personality does not equal sales performance
The early versions of these assessments, often referred to as the “Big Five” or “Ocean” predominantly measure traits such as openness to experience, extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness and neuroticism.
Hiring sales managers and recruiters may believe that the best sales professionals are extraverted. But that’s not always the case. And being assertive and confident can help in the sales role but true success requires more than having a specific type of personality. In fact, over 30% of senior B2B decision-
Generic questions lack sales context
General personality questions may provide behavioral insights. A candidate’s answers indicate how they will act in a job setting and how well they will do in a team environment. But these questions are not specific to the skills and tasks that an individual must master to succeed in sales. Relying on a personality test means the hiring team will not obtain valid information about how a candidate might respond to prospects or objections, how they will handle negotiations, or how they might manage difficult buying situations.
Sales requires more than personality traits
Personality tests can reveal important behavioral characteristics about sales candidates. However, to identify the most promising candidate for a sales position, the hiring team should consider other factors. Effective sales professionals possess sales knowledge, adaptability, critical thinking, customer understanding, commercial judgement, and relevant behavioral characteristics.
How a sales acumen assessment evaluates real-
A good sales acumen assessment poses realistic scenario-
Scenario-
In a sales situation, a rep must decide, for example, how to ask discovery questions. The sales acumen assessment can mimic that environment by posing a discovery question to the candidate and listing three or four possible answers. The answer selected by the candidate provides insight into their judgement and decision-
Situational judgment
A good sales acumen assessment will pose situation-
At the negotiating stage of the sales process, a rep may encounter prospects who demand a steep discount. The assessment can pose this type of question with four potential actions. The action selected by the candidate reveals their situational judgement.
Sales acumen assessment vs. personality test
| Factor | Sales acumen assessment | Personality test |
| What it measures | Candidates’ sales skills such as the ability to close deals | Basic behavioral traits such as agreeableness |
| Relevance to sales roles | Highly relevant to sales roles | Not specifically relevant to sales roles |
| Connection to job responsibility | Can be customized to match types of sales jobs | Not generally customized to job roles |
| Used as the sole hiring tool | Assessment data should be used in addition to other hiring tools | Can complement but not replace sales- |
Why sales acumen matters for hiring
Sales departments must hire candidates who have the ability to sell and want to sell. A sales acumen assessment is one tool out of several that can be used to measure a candidate’s abilities and compare them to other candidates. Hiring managers use assessment data, along with interview results, a resume and prior experience to find the person who will fit with the job and the company.
Improve sales hiring decisions
Sales acumen assessments can also reveal which candidate is the best match for specific sales positions. Candidates with high scores on questions related to new business hunting will likely be a good match for that type of position. Hiring managers should ensure the fit by asking more specific questions during interviews and by reviewing resumes.
Identify development gaps
Assessments often indicate at least one area of sales where candidates could benefit from coaching or training. If a candidate consistently selects poor answers for questions related to social selling, they are revealing a need for training. Managers can decide if the candidate’s other traits, such as their willingness to be coached, will make them a good hire.
Build stronger sales teams
When organizations hire skilled and motivated team members for their sales departments, they can count on best-
What to look for in a sales acumen assessment
Assessments work best when the questions presented to candidates are sales-
How TeamTraitTM helps evaluate sales fit
TeamTrait offers a sales acumen assessment. This sales hiring tool provides additional insight into the behavioral characteristics, decision-
TeamTrait also allows users to customize an assessment for hiring for a specific role. Based on the results, interviewers can access customized questions. And hiring teams can compare assessment results to find the strongest candidate.
Final takeaway: Measure sales ability, not just personality
Personality assessments can provide useful behavioral information, while sales acumen assessments can add insight into the job-
Image by Mikhail Nilov on Pexels.
A sales acumen assessment measures basic sales skills such as discovery, negotiating and closing. These assessments also use questions to measure a candidate’s situational judgement and decision-
A sales acumen assessment can offer great insight into a candidate’s potential sales performance. However, assessments should be used along with other hiring tools to reveal a more complete profile of a candidate. Those other tools, such as a structured interview, add to datasets about candidates.
Based on an initial resume review, the hiring team may ask candidates with at least minimal qualifications to take a sales acumen assessment. These candidates could be applying for a full-
Sales acumen assessments are better than personality tests when the hiring team needs to know about sales skills. Even then, the information from the assessment should be combined with other knowledge about the candidates before a final decision is made.
