How do you choose the best salesperson?
Products
Sunday 11 May 2025
Today, competition is very high in every market. Your organization's success largely depends on how effective your sales teams are. The more skilled your sales professionals are, the higher your sales will be.
The ideal salesperson not only knows their product inside and out but is also able to build relationships with prospects and customers. They need to have strong verbal and social skills and the ability to read between the lines and empathize effectively. The top salesperson aligns their thinking with the customer's perspective. It's not the product that drives the conversation, but the customer's needs.
Recruiting and selecting sales people is far from an easy task. Some salespeople are particularly good at selling themselves, but once hired, they consistently fail to meet their targets. At sales meetings, they often have all sorts of good reasons for this, which they know how to sell with verve. But the following month nothing changes.
Many studies show how sales teams perform. They consistently find that 20% of sales professionals are top performers, while another 20% perform poorly. The remaining 60% meet their targets each month. This means that your sales team may also have a few people who are not performing well.
The reason for underperformance can vary. It doesn’t mean someone is a bad salesperson; they might just be in the wrong role. For example, you could have hired a Negotiator when you actually need a Hunter. Or, a great team player might be in a position that requires someone who works better alone.
Selecting sales professionals
Even in a tight labor market, you must be selective. It is better to keep a position temporarily vacant than to fill it with an unsuitable candidate. But how do you select the right candidate?
Take the time to answer a few questions prior to recruitment. Are you looking for someone who will fit in especially well with the team, or someone who will fit with the market? Do you want a team player or an individualist? Translate this into concrete characteristics that the candidate must meet.
You can then convert the desired characteristics into selection criteria that form the basis of an assessment form and formulate a number of questions to test to what extent the candidate meets the requirements.
Online sales assessment
Setting up a selection strategy takes a lot of time and thought. With TestGroup's online sales assessment, this process is a breeze. You can use this assessment for the selection of applicants, but also to empower existing employees.
In developing the assessment, TestGroup used - in addition to more than 15 years of experience in online assessments - scientific techniques and experience from the field.
The online sales assessment has also more than proven itself in practice. Every day the assessment is used by hundreds of recruiters worldwide.
The online sales assessment provides you with a handy and clear sales assessment report in which all the commercial success and risk factors of your applicant are clearly displayed.
Video: sales assessment
TestGroup provides an online sales assessment to enhance employee sales skills and support hiring decisions. It measures key skills to identify potential successful salespeople, focusing on six steps in the sales process: (1) Planning, (2) Contact, (3) Building desire, (4) Presenting options, (5) Closing deals, and (6) Managing relationships.
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