Scientific Selling: Creating High-Performance Sales Teams Through Applied Psychology and Testing

Chapter 3

The Science of Sales Skills Assessment

We use these tools both proactively and reactively. I use them for manpower planning in all our branches so that I'm sure we have the right number of task-oriented individuals versus people-oriented. We've been driving hard to get more socially oriented people to build better relationships and develop opportunities for referrals and cross-sales.

—Clayton Mersereau, SVP of Branch Administration, Enterprise Bank

In the previous chapter, we learned about behavioral assessment, a scientific methodology for measuring the basic psychology, drive, and motivation of the individual. In this chapter, we'll be discussing skills assessment, which is measuring the individual's sales skills, knowledge, and judgment. Specifically, we'll be discussing skills assessment when it comes to specific sales skills required of individuals who sell.

Skills assessment adds a critical dimension to behavioral assessment, because it measures something that can be changed. Behavioral assessment primarily measures characteristics that are part of a person's basic personality. As such, they assess the potential of an individual to be successful at a given job or sales position.

By contrast, skills assessment measures the depth of sales knowledge needed in actual sales situations, in the specific activities and actions that the sales professional takes. Two individuals with very similar PI measurements (i.e., who score similarly in behavioral assessment) can have ...