A Sales Skills Test assesses a candidate's potential and ability to thrive in a sales role. It extends beyond reviewing resumes or conducting interviews by offering objective insights into a person’s skills, behaviors, and tendencies related to sales.
Sales talent is often viewed as innate, tied to personality traits. While natural aptitude matters, sales skills can also be learned with proper training, mindset, and experience. When hiring, it’s crucial to identify if a candidate is a Hunter or Farmer.
Hunters pursue new opportunities, closing deals and hitting targets, while farmers build relationships, ensure loyalty, and maintain satisfaction. Both roles are vital, but success depends on matching the right person to the right role.
To find ideal candidates, consider using an online sales assessment that reveals a candidate's tendencies, strengths, and growth areas. This understanding helps build a balanced team of hunters and farmers, driving sustainable success in acquiring and retaining customers. Sales may start with personality, but the right tools can turn it into a results-oriented skill.
Sales talent is in your personality
Sales talent is partly something you learn, but it is also strongly connected to personality and behavior. Successful sales professionals show perseverance, take initiative and actively create opportunities. They do not wait for business to come to them. Instead, they plan their approach, reach out to prospects and stay focused on results. Organizations that want to know how to build a sales force often start by identifying these behavioral qualities and measuring them with a sales assessment.
Strong sales professionals also show genuine interest in other people. They listen carefully to understand the motives, challenges and needs of a client. This goes beyond simply waiting for your turn to speak. It requires curiosity, empathy and the ability to ask the right questions. Through sales assessment training, managers and recruiters learn how to recognize these traits in candidates and how to interpret assessment results when selecting or developing commercial talent.
At the same time, sales professionals must be able to present convincing arguments and confidently ask for the order. They guide the client toward a decision and know how to close a deal in a professional way. Organizations that focus on strengthening your sales team often combine practical coaching with sales assessments, because this helps them select the right people and continuously develop the commercial skills that drive growth.
How Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green personality types shape sales
In many sales teams, different personality types contribute to success in their own way. In the 4 color personality model, red represents decisiveness and a strong focus on results, blue stands for structure and analytical thinking, yellow reflects enthusiasm and persuasion, and green represents relationship building and trust. A red salesperson often takes initiative and focuses on achieving targets, while a yellow salesperson typically excels at making contact and energizing potential clients.
Blue personalities are usually strong in preparation, argumentation and analyzing customer needs. They make sure proposals are well thought out and that solutions truly match the client’s situation. Green personalities are often excellent at building trust and long term relationships. They focus on understanding the client and maintaining strong partnerships over time.
This clearly shows how Red, Blue, Yellow, and Green personality types shape sales. Each personality style brings different strengths to the sales process, from closing deals to building long term client relationships. When organizations understand these differences, they can build stronger and more balanced sales teams.
Identifying the right sales people through a sales skills test
Talented sales people adapt easily to the person they’re talking to and are trained to present themselves. So it can be an enormous challenge to identify and select them. The solution is an online sales assessment, which provides you with answers to questions like: What really gets them going? What gives them energy? Is the candidate a hunter or a farmer? Is this person looking for a commercial, competitive environment?
Science-based online Sales Skills Test
TestGroup is continually conducting research into predicting sales results through personality tests. You can find more information about the research here. The research is conducted through The Bridge Personality, TestGroup’s personality test. As this test has been validated for the selection of sales people, it is ideally suited for use in the process of selecting sales people, sales managers or sales assistants.
Using an online assessment in your organisation
In dialogue with the organisation, we determine the frame of reference, which will depend on the goals, market, organisational culture, composition of the sales team and job profile. Our experience in selecting sales personnel, combined with the fact that our sales assessment is available in over 30 languages, means we can map out talent in an international context too. In doing so, we take account of cultural differences.
Order a Sales Skills Test
You can order a Sales Skills Test here. Order from any country in just three easy steps. You’ll receive the login details via email within thirty minutes. As a company or organization, you can pay later by invoice. The report is available instantly, and the assessment remains accessible until completed.
Video: Online Sales Assessment
The Online Sales Assessment allows you to back up your gut feeling with
validated science. This will prevent you from hiring a ‘false-positive’
and is the best way to reduce the odds of making a bad sales hire.
With
the Bridge sales assessment you can choose the candidate with the
greatest potential to succeed in the sales role. The online sales
assessment lists all commercial success and risk factors of a candidate
in a clear and compact report.
Used by 10,000+ organizations worldwide
Frequently asked questions about the sales skills test: sales talent is in your personality
What is a sales skills test?
A sales skills test is an online assessment used by organizations to measure the commercial potential of candidates or employees. The test evaluates important sales competencies such as communication, persuasion, initiative, resilience, and relationship building. With a sales assessment, organizations gain objective insight into whether someone has the potential to succeed in a sales role.
Why is sales talent linked to personality?
Sales talent is not only something people learn through training or experience. Personality also plays an important role. Successful sales professionals often show traits such as persistence, initiative, confidence, and the ability to actively approach prospects. Because personality influences behavior, a sales assessment can help identify candidates who naturally display strong commercial qualities.
What does a sales assessment measure?
A professional sales assessment measures several stages of the sales process. These can include preparation, making contact with prospects, identifying client needs, presenting solutions, handling objections, closing deals, and maintaining client relationships. By measuring these different aspects, organizations gain a clear overview of a candidate’s sales strengths and development areas.
Why should organizations use a sales skills test during recruitment?
Hiring sales professionals based only on interviews can be risky. Some candidates are very convincing during an interview but may not perform well in practice. A sales skills test provides objective data about commercial behavior and sales potential. This helps organizations make better hiring decisions and reduces the risk of costly recruitment mistakes.
Can a sales assessment also be used for employee development?
Yes. Sales assessments are often used not only for recruitment but also for developing existing sales teams. The results show which sales competencies someone already masters and which skills could be improved. Managers can use this information to provide targeted coaching, training, and development plans for their sales professionals.
How does a sales skills test help strengthen your sales team?
By using a sales assessment, organizations gain insight into the strengths and sales styles within their team. Some salespeople are strong in acquiring new clients, while others excel at building long term relationships or negotiating complex deals. Understanding these differences helps managers create balanced sales teams and improve overall commercial performance.
