How to Increase the Sales and Profitability of Your Sales Organization

A Measuring Stick to Define Your Talent

Historically, most executives who have a sales organization under their control through a VP of Sales believe that the key to increasing sales from the organization normally comes from the list below. Often, these approaches are done with little to no effect.
•    Developing their soft skills to sell
•    Adding new products or services
•    Providing additional technical training on products or services sold
•    Changing the compensation structure to provide better motivation to sell
•    Setting Sales Goals & Profit Objectives

When one of the above approaches is deployed, it is often a puzzle to management why sales and profits hardly improved, if at all. You thought these were great to increase sales right? 
The core sales problem may not have been properly addressed and the real issue may be that the salespeople may have not been the best choice due to lack of aptitudes and behaviors needed for success in sales. Further, the sales trainer/manager, who believes that he or she can teach anyone to be highly successful in sales, may be proven to be seriously mistaken.

Executives, managers, HR people, and recruiters think they have the skills, knowledge, and ability to identify the traits in a sales candidate.  In reality, there are certain critical mental aptitudes and behavioral traits which simply aren’t accurately identifiable and measurable from an application, resume, or interview.
To make matters worse, many hiring decision makers take prior sales experience often times far too seriously. Experience could mean the sales candidate as moving up or forward with more responsibility, when in fact the employer(s) concluding this particular salesperson was never going to make it with them. Thus, prior experience must be more thoroughly investigated than most interviewers are prepared to explore.

Consider the importance of the following critical sales aptitudes and behavioral traits as a requirement for successful sales people vs. prior experience including which ones can be accurately measured in an application, resume, or interview and which ones cannot.

The following are critical sales oriented traits:

·         Mental Acuity - The mental level necessary to be able to thoroughly understand the product or service being sold.

·         Assertiveness, aka being able to close the sale.

·         Ability to meet and deal with people - An outgoing and gregarious nature to meet people and develop a rapport.

·         The ability to communicate effectively on a level mentally equivalent to the buyer.

·         Integrity – Are they credible?

·         Ego is highly important in the salesperson that is going to meet and exceed the employer’s expectations.

·         Competitive Nature – Individually and as a Team

·         Psychological Toughness

·         Motivation via Personality Style

Can all of these critical sales aptitudes and behavioral traits be measured in an interview?

Mental Acuity - A salesperson needs to possess the mental level necessary to be able to thoroughly understand the product or service being sold as well as be able to operate on a mental level at least equivalent to the prospect or buyer. A highly intelligent and educated buyer is less likely to take seriously a salesperson that lacks the ability to communicate effectively and on a level mentally equivalent to the buyer.

Integrity - Bear in mind that the individual who tends to be less creditable is the one who can justify any type of behavior to achieve their goal and or objective at the moment. A highly flexible individual is the one most likely to adapt themselves “as a chameleon does” into telling you just what they perceive you the interviewer and decision maker want to hear – true or not. Is an interviewer really able to discern this characteristic in an interviewee who is trained to sell them? Does the chameleon sell the interviewer and later display the inability to represent the employer credibly?

Ability to meet and deal with people - The trait of outgoing and gregarious nature to meet people, develop rapport, and build a relationship with people is certainly a trait that can be well ascertained in the interview.   However, an individual who is highly outgoing, gregarious, and certainly “people oriented” may also be the individual who is lacking in dominance to ask for the order or close the sale. To complicate matters, a sales candidate can be well rehearsed to “act the part” in the interview that is highly convincing to the interviewer. However in the long run of day to day selling, the person cannot keep up the façade on an ongoing basis in the actual ongoing world of selling situations. Thus in the interview, the employer may be “seeing what they’ll get” or be watching an “actor on a stage” playing a part for the moment of the interview.

Ego - One might think that ego could be readily ascertained in an interview, but the fallacy is that people who have low egos and self concept are the most likely to cover up their inadequacies by overcompensation and displaying the traits of an individual with a high ego, high self concept and high self worth. People with low egos are normally highly effective as actors and actresses, since it is so easy for them to slip into playing a role and identifying with the role they are playing.

Assertiveness - One of the biggest issues in selecting a salesperson centers on the issue of being able to identify the level of assertiveness in the sales candidate. It is assertiveness (also referred to as dominance) that is the critical catalyst necessary to close sales. One of the biggest errors and issues in interviewing that is made repeatedly by executives, managers, and recruiters is becoming sold on the candidate based on the candidate’s appearance and highly personable, intelligent and outgoing nature. Yet even with a great appearance and pleasant outgoing nature, the candidate may be lacking the ability to close the sale. Inability to close a sufficient level of sales represents the single biggest reason resulting in the termination of salespeople.

Competitive Nature - Being able to identify the competitive nature of the sales individual is critical. Some individuals are highly individualistically competitive and some are strictly oriented to being a part of a team selling situation. This particular trait in the salesperson and the sales force requires alignment with the sales compensation plan. This trait acts in a highly contradictory critical nature when the competitive nature of the salesperson or sales organization is not in alignment. For example, if the sales compensation plan is oriented to not highly recognize and reward individual exceptional performance and the salesperson is oriented to want and need high recognition, then two are not compatible.

Psychological Toughness - Being able to interview for psychological toughness is not all that hard when the interview recognizes the questions and answers that he or she should be looking for. On the other hand, measuring the actual psychological toughness level contained in the individual becomes a bit more difficult. The fact is that different kinds of selling does require different levels of psychological toughness in its successful salespeople depending on how hard the competitive conditions are, how tough the potential buyer is, and what obstacles must be overcome to make the sale.

Motivation via Personality Style – It is essential to ascertain the type and style the salesperson is best motivated. As hard as it is to recognize that there are measureable degrees of motivation in an individual, it is just as easy to accept that people are motivated differently. Human nature itself makes us all different, and those differences appear as much or more in what motivates us than any other behavioral trait. Thus, making it very difficult to make a hiring decision based on a candidate’s experience in the field, outgoing behavior, and what appears to be a sales oriented nature in the interview. When that individual is motivated by security, lacks the ability to take risks, and is not motivated by incentives, the organization then winds up with an individual who will do what is necessary to remain secure in his or her job and little more due to the risk factors involved that they are not psychologically able to deal with.


We conclude that the traits we can identify in an interview are drive, ability to meet and deal with people, competitive nature, and psychological toughness. The most difficult to measure are mental ability and assertiveness. However, even if we do make the case that the largest percentage of these traits can be identified in the interviewing situation, we then must deal with the fact that it is almost impossible to ascertain their levels in the individual. Different measurable levels are highly important in different selling situations.

If we conclude that certain mental aptitudes and behaviors are essential to be successful in selling, then we must conclude that certain levels of those mental aptitudes and behaviors are also critical. That being the case, it is best to be able to measure the specific levels in an individual and compare the aptitudes and behaviors and their levels of the sales candidate or salesperson with those required in the job. It has been repeatedly proven that the best way of doing this done by setting a standard pattern, often referred to as a benchmark. This benchmark is based on the people currently in sales in the employer’s organization who are currently meeting and exceeding the employer’s expectations in sales.

Next, it is important to compare sales applicants and existing people who are not meeting the employers expectations to the aptitudes and behaviors and their corresponding levels found in the people who are meeting the employer’s sales expectations in order to obtain better direction in what areas need to be addressed to increase sales performance in the organization of the less than exceptional performers.

The Achiever Series of assessment instruments offered by Innovative Leadership has been constructed and proven repeatedly to be highly accurate in measuring these critical mental aptitudes and behaviors and their levels in both sales candidates and the employer’s existing salespeople. The Sales Achiever represents a scientific, non-biased instrument delivered via the web to identify these critical sales aptitudes, traits, and levels of both in the people assessed for employers.

In today’s world, it is easy to have a sales applicant jump online and in less than an hour answer a series of questions. These answers when compared with the job description result in a report delivered to the employer that has scientifically measured critical mental aptitudes, behavioral traits, and their levels compared to the selling requirements in a job. It does not make sense for an employer to not use this readily available tool for the objective opinion that it presents of the sales candidate to the requirements of the sales job in the employer’s specific selling operation.

Innovative Leadership of the Delaware Valley, LLC recommends that an employer not familiar with the Achiever Assessment instruments assess one or two existing salespeople to experience for themselves the accuracy and validity of the instrument including the uncanny ability (without seeing or talking with the individual) to identify those traits necessary in the sales candidate vs. the job. In most cases after trying the Sales Achiever on one or two existing salespeople to measure its accuracy and validity, most employers install the Sales Achiever as a standard part of their sales application process. Most employers also wind up having their entire sales force take the assessment in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the sales force in its entirety or to get a better more scientific feel of the quality level of their sales force vs. sales forces in other similar organizations that are proving to be highly effective.

From a training and development standpoint, it makes all the sense in the world for the employer to be able to get a thorough sense and understanding of the strengths and weakness of the current sales team to facilitate the needed training and development to increase sales performance and profitability. We try to take the mysticism out of the hiring and development process replacing guesswork with a very critical and important tool geared to increase sales and profits in the organization.   Isn’t it time for you to measure the talent for your future needs!