Strategic Use of Sales Aptitude Assessments to Build a Top Sales Team

When it comes to sales performance, no amount of training will turn your highly mediocre sellers into sales superstars. The unfortunate truth is that your under performers probably lack something you cannot teach them—natural sales aptitude.

Fortunately, sales aptitude assessments make it easy to identify key traits of a good seller and boost team performance. Here are just five of the ways that you can use assessments to strengthen your sales team.

Save Time and Money by Pre-Qualifying with CPQ Sales Aptitude Assessments

Hiring and training isn’t cheap. From lost productivity to sorting through applicants, the cost of a new hire can reach tens of thousands of dollars easily.

Aptitude tests take the guesswork out of predicting new hire performance. By using a simple bank of questions, the tests can accurately gauge a number of traits known to lead to successful selling. Combined with interviews and references, you can ensure that you hire the best of the bunch to bolster your team and reduce turnover.

Make Sure Your Team Members are in the Right Seats on the Bus

If you have a team member that just can’t seem to hit the numbers but is driven and otherwise a great choice, sales aptitude assessments are a simple, cost-effective way of finding a better role for them within your organization.

Place them in another role to save money by avoiding the loss of productivity from terminating and finding a new hire. Re-training is often cheaper than training a new hire as well. Ensure that all members of your team are in the ideal roles for their natural skills and personalities and you can maximize performance at a minimal cost.

Use Sales Aptitude Assessments to Balance Your Sales Team

Using aptitude tests, it is easy to analyze trends in the skillset of your team and adjust accordingly. Perhaps your roster leans too heavily with outside sales hunter traits, and you need to balance this out with more inside sales people.

Once you have a good mix, you can focus on the weak points and ensure that everyone gains the most benefit possible from the sales training and one-on-one coaching sessions.

Find the Right Support Staff

While a high natural sales aptitude indicates that an applicant will often outperform anyone without the important traits of successful sellers, this doesn’t mean they are the absolute best choice to improve your team.

In fact, what you might need are people that support those high-performing salespeople — and the worst thing you can do is put an A-Type personality to assist another A-type, as these often compete against each other and the clashes can be disruptive.

Aptitude testing can help you find support staff which complement the personalities of your top performers and help them close more deals.

At the end of the day, those on your team with sales aptitude are driven to succeed and will always rise to the top. Sales aptitude assessments give you the knowledge and confidence to optimize your team and drive performance to new levels. For a free sample CPQ test, contact us today.