Spotting square pegs before hiring them

Companies are wasting huge amounts of money on recruiting sales staff that are ill-suited to their jobs. A recent survey reveals that about 80% of all new sales staff quit their jobs within the first year of their employment.

22 Aug 2002

The American sales research company that conducted the survey, Texas-based Behavioural Sciences Research Press (BSRP), says that the findings are applicable to a wide range of people. Most sales staff cannot, will not or simply don't know how to sell, BSRP says. They call this Sales Call Reluctance and have identified about a dozen different types, the main ones being:

The Over-Preparer - confuses the process of getting ready to sell with actually getting out and selling. These people are too entangled in preparing and organising and tend to over-analyse and underact. Typically, they reach only 43% of their annual goal.

The Hyper-Pro - focusses on image and prestige while neglecting bread-and-butter accounts.

The Yielder - with a fear of being "pushy" or "intrusive", this employee is always waiting for the "right time to call".

The Sales Role Rejector - is ashamed of their choice of profession and will call themselves anything but salespeople.

The Socially Self-Conscious - are cowed by clients that are richer, more powerful, or that are perceived to be of a higher educational/social status.

The Oppositional Reflex - is averse to being coached, advised instructed, managed or trained. They are highly critical of their selves and others.

So how do you identify these personality types before hiring them? One of the less effectively used routes is preliminary psychometric testing. A validated and widely-used tool in other parts of the world is SPQ*GOLD, and now Drake International is introducing the application to the South African market. Speaking about this technology, Roy Henderson, a senior corporate consultant at Drake Assessment Technologies, is adamant that huge amounts of money in lost sales every year can be saved by simply ensuring that you have the right people in the right jobs, from the very start.