Did you actually know that you can increase your sales quite easily by getting information about what’s limiting your salespeople’s activity or when recruiting which sales candidate will make their prospects, calls, and customer visits.
Did you know that 85% of all salespeople we have tested in the world have sales call reluctance so much that they miss several deals every year to very many deals every year. We have tested over 1 million sellers to today’s date.
Did you know that 12% of all salespeople who responded to our Sales Call Reluctance test in Sweden say that they do not like to talk to people.
Did you know that the average sellers struggle with 5 out of the 16 different sales call reluctance types detected.
Did you know that the most common sales obstacle is Indecision (Yielder) a fear of intruding, being too pushy, too much on, waiting for the right moment and many are still waiting today. Nearly 50% of all sellers have this obstacle as one of the five obstacles they face.
Top sellers are more active than others, have more to sell to, prospect more than others, and you know why they might do it. Well, they have more gas in the tank every morning they wake up i.e. they are more motivated than others. They are also more performance-oriented than others and they procrastinate much less than other salespeople.
Most people in HR and sales departments still use personality tests that are good and that are less good.
Rarely is this supplemented with a test that measures the ability to be active, the very thing that all research shows distinguish those who perform from those who perform worse in sales.
If you want to hire salespeople who will show activity, you need a test that can measure it. After 40 years of research, we know what it is that makes some people have a higher activity than others. If I simplify it, there are three main factors behind it and we measure these three and important nuances to predict whether the great candidate you have in front of you is a low, medium or a top performer. (Below you can see a table based on a random study where we correlated our test results with whether the seller was low-, medium- or a top performer.
The three most important factors behind activity are Motivation, i.e., does the person have enough petrol in the tank to keep a high activity all day, all week and then replenish the tank over the weekend.
This Motivation should be used to perform i.e. do the sales job I am hired to do, perform, reach my sales quota etc. It is done by contacting customers and prospects to talk business i.e. how my goods and services can assist customer or prospect in their development. We call it Goal Focusing and our test also measures that.
Then we measure how much of the Motivation above is spent on procrastinating instead of contacting the customer and/or prospect. What makes us procrastinate we call Sales Call Reluctance and we have discovered 16 types that affect our salesperson’s ability to make contact.
So, it doesn’t have to be harder than that. Just give us a call or an email and we can complement your selection process and increase its quality considerably. This leads to both increased sales and over time reduced costs as everyone sells well.
There is a book written about all this called Without a Doubt and can be purchased here.
What does it cost you in energy and the person you hire if they become a low performer or an average person who never really gets there. If you are more interested in performance figures on our test, we have a technical manual, but how about one of our scales shows 0.56 in predictive validity to say if a person will prospect or not. Then the connection between prospecting and succeeding as a salesperson is also very strong in most sales jobs.
The Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology says that the research on Sales Call Reluctance and the test I described above are of the highest quality. So, if you work with recruitment of salespeople or development of salespeople, this should be an important management tool for creating a sustainable high-performing sales organization.
The question is how do we get in contact with you and your organization that we can help you improve your selection process or your salespeople? WE would be happy to answer all your questions to our ability and if we don’t have an answer directly we will find it.
The image shows a random sample of almost 5000 sellers from our database of over one million tested sellers worldwide. Then we have divided the salespeople into three performance levels in the company they are employed. In other words, in low, medium, and high performers and then we have correlated each group’s test results and compared it with each group.
If we look at Motivation and Goal Level, you will see that those who sell more have more of this. If you look at all sales call reluctance types, those that perform more have a lower degree of these. You also can see what we call Brake how much energy is going to procrastinate instead of making the contact.
In a way it could be quite easy to improve your sales. Just incorporate our test when you recruit and develop salespeople. So, what is it worth to you will be the next question.
