CPQ Pre-Employment Assessment

I am always seeking the latest and greatest information in the field of sales in order to best serve our clients at Asher Strategies. I have done this for decades because, while the fundamentals of sales don’t really change, there are always new developments which increase the efficiency of how we do things.

This was driven home to me when I recently perused a slideshow created by Inc. titled “Top 10 Hiring Mistakes Business Owners Make.” There are several items on that list which can be directly addressed through the use of the CPQ Pre-employment Assessment, which would eliminate much of the inefficiency and expense of mistakes in hiring.

Let’s take a look at just a few of them:

“Letting personal attitudes and biases impact decisions.”

It is very difficult to keep personal opinions and preferences out of the hiring process. Anything from the university a candidate attended, region of the country he or she is from, hobbies, or other data points can skew the perception of the capabilities of a candidate without any real basis in fact.

The CPQ Pre-employment Assessment handles this by placing candidates on equal footing and eliminating bias: the test results know nothing of race, religion, schooling, or any other unreliable factor which can color a decision.

“Making decisions too quickly”

Although the CPQ is a very quick test (taking about 30 minutes), it allows hiring managers to step back from the interview and take a moment to really examine a candidate, rather than simply hire on the spot based on an excited, initial impression.

“Overlooking a candidate’s patterns of behavior.”

Often, you cannot determine a candidate’s pattern of behavior from the information on an application, because everyone tries to make themselves look better than reality. So jobs where they had issues get omitted altogether, and reasons for leaving others become “wanted a bigger challenge” instead of the more truthful “I constantly argued with my boss, co-workers, and customers.”

The CPQ Pre-employment Assessment will cut through a lot of that and predict behavior based on the candidates inherent characteristics as revealed by the test.

 “Failure to hire for a cultural fit.”

Putting a hyper-aggressive salesperson into a laid-back sales team quickly breeds resentment from all sides. Likewise, placing a nurturing, relationship-building salesperson into a team of go-getters with tough quotas will cause just as much conflict.

Hiring managers must consider culture as much as the skill level of candidates. The CPQ exposes a person’s strengths and weaknesses among traits such as Need for Control and Need to Nurture which point to a cultural fit or mismatch.

As you can see, exposing the strengths and weaknesses of your potential hires is essential for hiring well.  The CPQ Pre-employment Assessment is an important tool for achieving this.

Want to see the CPQ in action? Set up an account and take a free sample test yourself.