In an interview earlier this week, Sales and Business Coach Belinda Aramide shared with Workwolf the importance of being able to sell products and services as an entrepreneur or business owner. And while everyone should learn how to best advertise and sell their products/services, some people will naturally be better at sales than others. But how can you tell if you have a personality for working in sales?
According to Robert Dougan, founder of RAD Potential Advisory Inc. and senior consultant for Self Management Group, psychographic assessments like Packfinder can help you narrow down a candidate pool and rank applicants on how successful they will be in sales based on how enterprising and competitive they are.
Workwolf’s Packfinder is built to exclusively measure an individual’s soft skills like self-management, motivational profile, environmental orientation, comfort with conflict, people orientation, and analytical orientation to ensure that an employee will perform well in the given job. And maybe more importantly, it can tell you based on their potential in the job how likely they are to stay with a company long-term.
Finding Who Is Best Suited for Sales
In order to determine if a candidate is suitable for working in sales long-term, employers and recruiters can use Packfinder to measure the following in each candidate:
1. Self-Management
Successful salespeople thrive in a competitive environment, demonstrating proactiveness and assertiveness. They possess the drive to set and achieve challenging goals and take initiatives to seize opportunities. A candidate who displays self-management skills and an enterprising mindset is more likely to excel in sales.
2. Motivational Profile
An effective salesperson is often highly competitive and self-motivated. They embrace the thrill of closing deals and are motivated to do so even when working alone. An ideal sales candidate, then, is one with a high motivational profile and one who is not afraid to ask for what they are motivated towards.
3. Environmental Fit
The most ideal sales candidates are those who remain coachable and adaptable to different managerial styles in order to fit well in their environment, no matter what it may be.
4. Comfort with Conflict
Handling objections, negotiating, and presenting unpopular views are common challenges in sales. So, it’s crucial a salesperson has the ability to gracefully navigate any conflicts that may arise and turn them into opportunities. Assessing a candidate’s comfort with conflict ensures they can effectively address objections and maintain composure during challenging situations.
5. People Orientation
While most think all salespeople need to be extroverted, some of the most successful salespeople in the world naturally work best on their own and do not only get their energy from other people. This is because many salespeople work on their own for long periods of time closing deals and making negotiations.
6. Analytical Orientation
Top-performing salespeople have a thirst for knowledge and continuously seek personal growth. They enjoy analyzing market trends, understanding customer needs, and staying up to date with industry developments.
Expanding the Use of Packfinder for Hiring Success
For employers and recruiters alike, Packfinder can be an invaluable tool for assessing a candidate’s potential for success. While it can be utilized to predict a candidate’s fit within your organization and under your leadership, its benefits extend beyond that. Specifically, incorporating Packfinder into the early stages of your hiring process can help filter candidates effectively.
By leveraging Packfinder’s results, Workwolf creates candidate pools tailored to specific benchmarks.
That is, when seeking a strong sales candidate, you can automatically filter all of your applicants based on their likelihood to succeed in a sales position. The resulting candidate pool consists of individuals who closely match the requirements of the role.
And most crucially, by doing so automatically based on an optimal personality for working in sales, rather than based on keywords in each resume examined, candidates are more effectively and more equitably considered for the role at hand.
Conclusion: Selecting the right salesperson involves considering a range of personality traits in addition to skills and experience. By assessing qualities such as self-management, motivation, environmental fit, conflict resolution abilities, people orientation, and analytical skills, hiring professionals can identify candidates with a higher likelihood of success in sales roles. Incorporating tools like Packfinder can further streamline the hiring process, ensuring a more accurate assessment of candidates and improving overall hiring outcomes. Determine if your candidates have a personality for working in sales with Workwolf today; sign up for your Business account here.
