Businesses require two key elements to succeed: a product or service and someone to sell it. If you’ve nailed your product development, your next step is to hire a rainmaker. As you review the candidates who apply for your open position, should you go with your gut feeling? Or will formal sales assessments tell you what you need to know?

The Problem With Relying On Gut Feeling In Sales Hiring

What is a gut instinct?  It’s the feeling people get when they are in the process of decision-​making. This feeling is not limited to hiring or the workplace. You may have a gut feeling that something bad is about to happen when the driver in front of you slams on their brakes.

Where does this feeling come from? Often, it shows up in situations that feel familiar — ones in which you know your response. In our driving example, a quick reaction to your gut feeling will prevent an accident.

But when this feeling appears in sales hiring, and you go with what your gut tells you, the outcome could be disastrous. Let’s explore why.

The Power of Emotion

The candidate you’re interviewing may remind you of a friend. Or they may seem similar to an employee who once did a great job for you. You’re getting a really good feeling from the candidate. And that’s the problem.

Your emotions are in control. You’re evaluating the candidate based on personal attributes that have little to do with job performance.

Another problem with gut instinct is that it kicks in immediately after you meet a person. You may decide to hire them because they are likeable. If you’ve done a lot of hiring, you may think you can detect an individual who might be a problem hire. But it’s very challenging to understand all aspects of a potential sales hire within five minutes of meeting them.

How Sales Assessments Work

Sales assessment tools can give you an objective and data-​driven snapshot of an individual’s skills. Depending on the platform used, your decision-​making process can improve with the results of a sales assessment.

When you’re hiring for sales, you need an employee with specific professional skills. Your hiring decision should be based on whether the candidate possesses the desired skills.

In sales, a key skill is knowing how to conduct a needs analysis. Or you may be searching for a new business development specialist.

A sales assessment is an online exam that poses multiple choice questions to candidates. A comprehensive sales assessment includes questions that cover everything from needs analysis to new business development. The candidate’s answers to the questions reveals whether they understand basic sales terms and processes.

How Sales Assessments Outperform Instinct

A hiring manager’s gut instinct often kicks in during an in-​person interview. In a one-​on-​one setting, the candidate has a chance to impress the interviewer. Sales professionals, in particular, know how to present their best attributes in these settings.

Experienced sales professionals have plenty of practice emphasizing the positive aspects of what they are selling. During an interview, they are selling themselves.

The Pitfalls of the Interview

To them, an interview may feel like a discovery call with a prospect. They will ask questions to determine what you want to hear. And they’ll address those details during the conversation with you. In other words, you will likely see the only what the candidate wants you to see.

As you ask questions, the candidate may jump around and not provide a detailed answer, especially if they are unsure of themselves. After the one-​on-​one conversation, your gut may tell you that the candidate possesses the energy to do the job. You might also believe they can handle discovery calls because the two of you shared a laugh. This emotional experience will influence your decision-making.

The Power of Objective Data

With a sales assessment, there is no gray area. There is one correct answer to each question. The end result is a score and an analysis detailing where the candidate is strongest in terms of sales skills. You will know whether the candidate is a star when it comes to negotiating. And you’ll see that the candidate may struggle with the process of new business development.

The unbiased results of the sales assessment will show you which candidate possesses those skills.

When you combine the sales assessment data with the results of a full psychometric assessment, you’ll learn much more about the candidate. With the FourFits^TM tool in TeamTrait, you’ll see how well a candidate fits with their prospective manager and the company.

So, Should You Use Your Gut Or Your Data?

Hiring managers want to know which tools will help them find the right sales professional. Should they go with a data-​driven decision supported by the assessments when making this key business decision? Or should their hiring decisions be based on their gut feeling?

There’s little question that emotion plays a big role in the hiring process. But making critical business decisions based solely on gut instinct doesn’t always work out. If you hire the wrong person, you’ll lose time and money in the offboarding process. And you’ll need to start the hiring cycle all over again.

Other managers point to the power of data driven decisions when hiring. In fact, a hiring manager can benefit from using more data than a sales assessment provides. A psychometric assessment can help you achieve business success.

These types of assessments reveal how the candidate is likely to behave at work. The data driven insights from these assessments show the likely motivators for a person’s behavior. In addition, soft skills such as problem-​solving, critical thinking and empathy are part of a comprehensive psychometric assessment.

The Power of Combining Data with Intuition

No one tool is superior when making key business decisions such as hiring a sales professional. Leaders need as much business intelligence as they can get. During your sales hiring process, you may decide to use multiple tools.

To hire efficiently you may choose an approach that combines data with intuition. You may decide to require many applicants to take a sales assessment to increase efficiency.

Based on those outcomes, you can invite a select few for interviews, which are more costly, especially in terms of your time.

After analyzing data from the assessment, you will know what topics to cover in the interview. You can ask questions that explore your areas of concern as you seek to hire for the mission critical roles in your company.

Trust Your Gut, But Verify with Data

Your gut feelings are shaped by your experiences and knowledge, even if you are not consciously aware of them. Initial impressions, including those formed during interviews, are important. However, effective hiring requires informed decision-​making. To more accurately predict how candidates will perform on the job, require all applicants to complete a sales assessment before the interview process. Use this objective data to complement your instincts, ensuring your final decision is both well-​rounded and evidence-based.

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