In today’s job market, most candidates for any given position in a salesforce are highly qualified. Many also have extensive resumes and experience. Some may even demonstrate exceptional interviewing skills, but it is very difficult to tell within the span of a few conversations how this person will perform on the job. In the world of sales, it’s the nuances that tend to make or break the productivity of a taskforce, and in the case of the latter, the wrong salesperson who said all the right things in the interview can lose you money. There may, for example, be nothing obviously wrong with how an employee pitches – it’s just not the best fit for your company, and fails to entice your customers. The challenge lies in having the keen awareness to decipher an interviewee’s sales personality before inviting them to work alongside you.

It’s important to remember that many aspects of a job can be taught and learned. What a candidate showcases on their resume is not necessarily as critical as assessing the softer areas of their sales personality and motivational style. This is the most difficult area to evaluate by far in an interview process because often applicants play roles based on the types of sales personality they suspect you are looking for so that you will employ them.

Thankfully, there are helpful tools out there to aid you is discovering high potential hires for your business while eliminating risk, as well as saving you time and effort in the long term. One of these tools is a comprehensive sales profile test available through assessments like those provided at www.salestestonline.com (a sales profile test provider who has been helping a wide array of businesses such as banks, media firms, and industrial supply companies find the right candidates since 1986).

A pre-interview sales test streamlines the hiring process and levels the playing field for applicants so you can more readily see who would in fact be the best fit for your salesforce based off your own unique and customized criteria. The company does an analysis of the sales position you’re hiring for, and can cater their test to reflect your specific needs, using benchmarks to show you which applicants’ sales styles are closest to what you’re searching for. You can even send them sample tests taken by your best sales people to determine your ideal candidate’s profile.

The test is over 90% accurate in identifying the factors an applicant needs to be successful at your business, and you receive results instantly, enabling you to make quick decisions. What’s more is that it’s sold at an affordable price, allowing you to focus your resources on other areas.

Knowing what a good sales person can do for your business is one thing, but finding them and bringing them onto your team requires strategy. It goes beyond the credentials your candidates can prove they have on paper, or even how they perform when meeting one on one with you. Often, interviews alone are not an accurate representation of how well an employee will work under pressure, or the true style they will settle into later on. For this reason, consider a comprehensive sales test to truly discover the right match — it may surprise you.