A consistent way to assess sales applicants
Give the people who hire a consistent way to assess applicants for the role.
Your business hires salespeople all year, and each hiring manager may do it their own way. For most, that means a pile of applications, a few CVs read quickly, and an interview. A CV mostly shows how well someone presents themselves on paper. It says very little about whether they can close a sale.
A screen tailored to each sales role gives you a consistent way to compare applicants across the business. A salesperson who works out stays longer and costs less to replace, and keeps the customer experience up to your standard from the first conversation.
What the applicant does, and what you get
A tailored screen for volume hiring, and a psychologist-written report for the hires that matter most.
For a single important hire — a senior salesperson, or a sales manager at a larger site — the assessment is chosen for the role, and one of our psychologists writes a report on the applicant's sales strengths and weaknesses within two working days. They will also talk it through with whoever is making the decision.
Both draw on three established tools: SaleAbility, a comprehensive sales assessment; SaleAble, a lower-cost screen for sales roles; and the Sales Attitude Survey, which compares an applicant's attitudes to selling with those of successful salespeople. For car dealerships, SalesWorthy is a version built specifically for automotive sales. Where a role depends on long customer relationships, the Emotional Reasoning Questionnaire, an ability test of how well someone reads what others are feeling, can be added.
In a sales role, the gap between a strong hire and a weak one shows up in the takings every week. Whether someone can start a conversation with a customer, keep it going and close it doesn't appear on a CV. An interview doesn't settle it either, because the one thing every sales applicant has practised is selling themselves to you.
Built around what sells in your business
The screen is tailored to what drives sales in your business, not to salespeople in general.
Good sales assessment combines personality and reasoning, because each predicts something the other misses. The volume screen does both — and the questions are chosen for the traits, values and reasoning found to drive sales in your business specifically.
That matters because what makes a good salesperson depends on what is being sold. A quick sale at a counter and a considered sale over several visits call on different people. A screen tailored to your business ranks applicants on the things that move your numbers, rather than on a general idea of what a salesperson should be like.
It picks out the strongest applicants from large numbers quickly, and costs less in time and money than interviewing them all.
A good interview shows that someone can sell themselves. That isn't the same as selling your product.
What happens once the results arrive
The hiring manager makes the decision. Our psychologists make sure the screen is asking the right questions before they do.
Before the first applicant sees it, one of our psychologists works through your roles with you: which sales roles it should cover, what drives sales in your business, and how strong an applicant needs to be to make the shortlist. You have that conversation once, at the start, and it is what makes every result afterwards mean something.
From then on, profiles and shortlists go to the person doing the hiring, written to be read without training in psychology. For individual reports, the psychologist who wrote it will talk it through, including how well the applicant suits the role. Either way, the result isn't a verdict. Most of its value is in the interview it sets up: an applicant who scores strongly on opening a sale but weakly on closing one is someone to ask about the last sale they lost, and why.
You can also see the pattern across the business — which sites are using the screen, and whether the people being hired are the ones it put forward. Where you want that, it can be reported back to you as well.
The evidence behind it
Developed by psychologists, drawing on research in psychology and sales, and used by large retail employers.
We have built tailored sales screening for large retail employers including Burberry, ICE Design and Nestlé — screening high volumes of applicants and identifying the strongest performers among them.
The assessments are developed by experienced psychologists and draw on current research in psychology and sales. Psych Press has developed and published psychometric instruments since 1995, in-house and in partnership with universities and international test publishers.
Who it suits, and who it doesn't
Businesses hiring salespeople, from volume recruitment to individual senior sales roles.
It suits
Businesses where selling is part of the front-line job — retail, fitness, home and personal services — whether recruitment is managed centrally or by individual sites, often in volume. Also businesses with a few sales roles important enough to justify a psychologist's report.
It isn't built for
General management and specialist roles outside sales, where our selection reports and assessment centres go further. Nor roles where serving customers matters more than selling to them — the Customer Service Predictor covers those.
Retail, hospitality and customer service roles each have their own screen, built for the role: retail screening, hospitality screening and the Customer Service Predictor. For security-services businesses, the Security Employment Screening Questionnaire combines work history, reasoning, situational judgement and personality.
Frequently asked questions
Won't this slow hiring down?
Not at volume: the shortlist builds in real time as applications arrive. A psychologist-written report for an individual hire takes up to two working days, which is usually quicker than arranging a second interview.
Can applicants fake their answers?
Sales applicants are, by nature, trying to persuade you, so it is a fair question. Combining personality with reasoning helps, because reasoning questions have right answers that can't be talked around. And the result guides the interview rather than deciding it: the strengths an applicant claims are the ones to test by asking for a specific sale they made, or lost.
What does it cost?
It depends on how many sites use it, how many applicants go through the screen, and how many individual reports you want, so we scope it with you. The figure worth setting it against is a year of sales from one salesperson who never quite performs.
Start a conversation with us
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