sales competency assessment

HR Focus in Start-ups to Succeed

Start-up companies can come in all forms and sizes. They seem to have high failure rates, but the minority who succeed can become large and influential.

It has been seen that most start-up founders more often have a casual or off-beat culture in their thinking, dress, office space, HR practices and Marketing, as compared to traditional corporations. Some of these casual approaches, such as the use of “flat” organizational structure, in which employees can directly communicate with the Founders or CEOs informally, are practiced to promote efficiency and to enthuse employees in the workplace.

Business Strategies for Finance, Marketing, Production, Product Development and Innovation are made without a robust HR and People strategy. The importance of this needs to be highlighted as this is one pillars of the foundation on which the businesses is built, and if this pillar is weak or not there the dangers will always loom. Having a HR and People plan is like a having Finance plan which is absolutely essential to a success of a start-up. If people are not the key focus area the start-up cannot succeed. The HRand People plan needs to be budgeted in the initial phase itself.

Hiring the right person is one of the biggest challenges for the start-up – it is not that getting people is a problem but getting the right-fit certainly is for most start-up organizations. Many a times compromises are likely to be made to get the organization moving quickly hoping that the incumbents will learn and adapt as we go along – something which a start-up needs to be careful about in my opinion.

All start-ups need people who are innovative, adaptable and flexible, analytical, emotionally intelligent, team players and have willingness to learn. They should be willing multi-taskers. Easily said than done – how do we find this out in an interview of an hour or two at the most? The founder’s or CEO’s experience or gut-feel may not be sufficient to make those judgements. There is a professional way of doing thisby putting the person through professional Competency Assessment or Personality (Psychological) Tests.

As the organization matures and grows retention of good people becomes the challenge.Attracting,developing and retaining an amazing team are the hallmarks of success for any start-ups success. If there are right people they will design and redesign success strategies and fight for the organization’s success.

What HR policies should be there? How shouldthe elements of legality, predictability, fairness, equity and control be built into them require in-depth thought and insight as does the business plan. What has succeeded in one organization may not in another as each organization have a unique character and personality. Having policies is not good enough it is their proper implementation which is the tougher part and leads to dissatisfaction in most organizations over a period of time.

Just like business strategies and plans change the HR policies need to be revised and re-engineered keeping in view the business needs.

Making sure that the there is adequate focus on people besides other areas is most important in my opinion.

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Making Performance Management Work effectively

Managing Performance and keeping the workforce motivated is becoming increasingly complex and difficult particularly for the young brigade who is far more mobile and impulsive.
No system is perfect and permanent in any organisation. We need to continuously improve and adapt our processes to the changing environment.
Most organizations do have some form of Performance Management System as in recent times even Performance Appraisal is called the same. Firstly, let me clarify that Performance Appraisal is only one of the elements of the Performance Management System.
A robust Performance Management System (PMS) has 4 distinct sub-processes:
1. Formal Target Setting Process cascading down from the Annual Business Plan. It encompasses a participatory approach and is an open, transparent,data-based and an alignedprocess wherein the organization seeks to set challenging but realistic targets for all its employees.
2. Monitoring and Control involves an institutionalised and an on-going process for giving feedback, coaching and counselling to keepthe performance on track. This is the most important part of PMS and the organization needs to build the competence of its employees – it requires specialized training. This has invariably been a weakness in most organizations we have worked for in the last 30 years
3. The Performance Appraisal against the targets set in step 1 and any revisions thereafter. This requires the elements of subjectivity to be reduced and objectivity brought in. For this the appraisal form needs to be well designed. Self-appraisal often helps to bring acceptance and reasoning in the whole process. Appraiser and Reviewer both need to be data-based and objective to keep personal biases out.
4. A clearly defined Reward and Recognition Policy linked with thePerformance Appraisal contributes to building a motivated work-force. This needs constant review and updating year on year.
It is desirable to have the whole process fully documented with timelines with responsibilities clearly demarcated.
Other process such as Career and Succession Planning need to be in place for Performance Management to be more effective. Some Organizations do keep the two processes independent. However, the retention of talent has thrown a big challenge to many organizations as they grapple with balancing these processes.
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What is a Sales Aptitude Test?

Sales Aptitude Test(SAT) are conducted to measure the personality traits that are grave to success in sales and similar related fields, primarily for the customer service, marketing, public relations and management and also, it assesses those traits also that aren’t apparent in an interview or resume. SAT is also known as customer service test, which measures the personality traits. It’s a boon for those who have the high level of patience, perseverance, cooperativeness and personal diplomacy and are kept on priority for customer service roles. Personality tests are conducted to select salespeople, because, according to the research conducted, to be a successful sales manager, you need to have certain personality traits. As a seller, you need to be more outgoing, aggressive, confident and of course, highly motivated.

Aptitude Test

Sales achievement predator or sales AP was introduced by Dr.Sander I. Marcus, Dr. Jotham G. Friedland, and Dr. Harvey P. Mandel. Sales AP helps the companies to groom salespeople. These people prepared a written test which contains 140 items and is written at a sixth-grade reading level. This scale contributes to adjust the score of those applicants who are at their extremes- either exceptionally brilliant or below average.

Cengrows is here to guide you and solve your queries about the salesmanship and help you to climb a step higher than yours. These days, personality tests contribute to select salespeople because many pieces of research have proved that certain personality traits are required to be successful in sales. According to the Sales Competency Assessment, aggressive people are quite competitive and highly motivated. Many times, low or negative correlations have been in highlight cooperation and patience because, to handle sales, you need to have both- patience and collaboration, which further leads to Sales skills assessment. The more accurate your Test score here, apparently, so will be your job performance.

In fact, various case studies have been conducted with the customers who state that the most successful salesperson is assertive, competitive, and impatient too- which is just the opposite of customer service personal.

The utmost thing to be taken care of or noted is that sales role varies from one organization to another; hence it will be an injustice to judge it as a larger picture. On the contrary, the basic building blocks remain consistent throughout the industry. You have to mold yourself according to your job profile and the requirement. Once you are in the seat, you are the boss who has to act accordingly.

How to Use Psychometric Testing in Hiring

According to a survey conducted by the Society for Human Resource Management, approximately 18% of the companies these days are using personality tests in the recruitment procedure, and surprisingly, this number is growing at the rate of 10-15% on an annual basis- as per many industrial and organizational psychologists and the Association of Test Publishers.

Psychometric testing proves that there are certain cognitive and personality tests which help the new employees to succeed in their field and boost them for their future. Since the cost of a bad hire is extensively estimated to be a year’s salary; there are huge incentives for organizations to get hiring right. Due to lack of knowledge, unfortunately, many organizations use the wrong psychometric assessments in a wrong way and here are the followings they ought to know to minimize the potential risks and maximize their predictive accuracy, as Cengrows is helping you to achieve:

Know the law: the organization ought to keep in mind, the legal compliance when they want to add psychometric tests to their pre-employment screening system. The assessment tools, especially cognitive ability tests need to be job- relevant due to the presence of anti- discrimination laws. Competency mapping is included too for psychomotor testing.
Business needs should be known: these tests won’t help you unless you don’t have well- established measures of job performance. These days, organizations are focusing more on the predictors or independent variables rather than concentrating on dependent variables. It is important to know that if an industry doesn’t have quantitative measures of employee performance on the job, then there is no source for statistical correlations of how good these tests predict their performance. In such a case, you need to be dependent on the assessment center.
Risk of cheating is reduced: the tests like cognitive ability tests are conducted in order to safeguard the candidate; organizations should ‘proctor’ the assessment test, either by monitoring him via video conference, or noting their activities directly. But keep in mind that some candidates may be tempted to play a smart act with the result. You must compare the reference of the candidate and his interview ratings with their results to ensure whether the two are consistent or not. Such things are useful in the sales department where to need to have a smart candidate and you can be easily fooled by people by ‘impression management’. Using multiple psychometric tests can actually help the organizations to get a more consistent picture. You have to perform such tests in limit and never try to over-do it because sometimes, even a well-developed, predictive assessment battery and legally defensible won’t be of any worth if the candidate feels it being over time-consuming.
Must share the results with the candidates: every candidate has the right to see their effect these days- as per “informed consent” and few organizations also provide access to the reports based on the psychometric tests that the applicants take. Whether the candidate accepts the employment offer or not, there are both- the ethical as well as the pragmatic benefits of sharing the result.
Test the tests: job performance of an individual must be evaluated quantitatively, which give the company criteria for correctness. While hiring managers and HR, one must consume the right methodology to select and retain the authentic psychometric tests.

To undergo all these points as mentioned earlier, one ought to know and understand the business needs and make sure that you find a test that evaluates the characteristics. Some laws prohibit the company from discriminating the privacy of the candidate, but no legislation prohibits the company from using strange assessment tools.

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What Happens in the Graduate Assessment Centre?

The recruitment process is a herculean task, along being an interesting one too. Every recruitment center goes through various stages before the final list is presented, which can be challenging and you might be wondering what lies ahead at these centers. Cengrows is here to solve your queries regarding the same and how one should prepare for it in the best way.

Assessment Centre

Various levels involved:

Group exercise: this constitutes the larger part of the assessment center, along with being the most exciting level as you get to interact with other candidates of/in different teams and get involved in the group activities, challenging your personal skills. Here, probably, you ought to focus on good communication, sharing, negotiation, planning or even leading your team at some parts. If the things are taking unusual shape, one can be tested to demonstrate conflict management when there is the lack of planning and lots of arguments taking place in the team.

An experiment was conducted in U.K based company- Novo Nordisk, where all these steps are performed.

Case study followed by presentation: this is an intellectually challenging part of the program, where you can be asked to resolve an actual real life business case while being an active member of the team. As this isn’t a single case study, hence you must dedicate yourself in planning and coordinating various tasks. This is just not a SINGLE MAN show, where you can solve the problem on your own having sufficient time. You must be able to plan the things well and divide the task equally efficiently among the team members.

The important thing to be noted here is, you should be an active team worker, who doesn’t impose his ideas on other members. You should be open for discussion as well as sharing. You must know how to listen, instead of just speaking.

Nobody is testing your financial or technical skills in the business case, rather your ability to think logically, planning and engaging is what decides your selection. And YES, your presentation skills and ability to state your idea in more organized and confident way is what matters.

Interview: this is the last step for the recruitment and the most uncertain too, as you will be asked different questions. The interview is all about competency mapping and is conducted to judge your smartness on how best you can get fit in the required program. All you need is to have a sure shot career goals, and the things should be clear in your mind. Many times, you may even have to go through the stages in the interview as well, or maybe your interview is conducted by more than one person. Just be yourself in such a case and be easy. You go through psychomotor testing on the whole in the interview.

All these steps, though, constitute the recruitment procedure, nowadays; it is all about networking and socializing on a larger front- where you can interact during coffee breaks, or meals or even a fag. Hope, this piece was of some help to you and was an answer to most of your queries. Though the actual situation will be completely different, still, you can assess it via information provided.

Sales Aptitude Test – Helps Evaluate Sales Skills

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Sales profession is an important and crucial aspect to any organisations growth & success. Technology is radically changing the field of sales and many organisations today are transforming their sales force with an honest assessment of current skills. As a development tool, a sales aptitude test is kind of a predictive analysis that is perfectly designed to help you gain and understand certain skills that could help you achieve the kind of sales career you always wanted.

Managers often benchmark candidates or their employees on the ‘hunger for work’ and on the ‘drive to perform’, but they often miss evaluating them for the skill they have.

A sales aptitude test helps companies make the right recruitment decision for sales team and is also helpful for candidates who can understand more and know if they have the right edge for a selling profile.

When it comes to selecting employees for the sales force, it is important to consider their personality, consultative selling skills and abilities and whether the person has the right motivation to go through the sales process even with challenges. Often it is the sales person’s personality that hinders in the salesperson’s success. Energy and the drive to work are reflected in the candidate’s resilience and that depicts his selling personality. It is often their consultative selling skills that makes a lasting first impression and can help make the sale.

A sales aptitude test can help evaluate the right salesman spirit and performs better as compared to other personality tests. It is a highly developed test assessment that works in conjunction with other sales force selection including a sales skills assessment and sales competency assessment. It also helps your bottom line to improve and an efficient sales force is sure to help the business grow.

So how does one evaluate a sales candidate?

To be successful in a sales environment, a person has to have ability to understand what the buyer wants, engage &establish trust, communicate succinctly, demonstrate the product or service clearly and personalise their interactions for effective sale. These are just a few skills that make the core set of selling skills and make the entire selling experience exceed an organisations expectation.

A sales competency assessment helps understand strengths and identify areas that can help explore the potential for making a sales career. The sales aptitude test or sales skills assessment is designed using a mix of scenarios, self-assessment and interactive questions. The candidate’s response to each of these questions reflects on how he behaves and reacts to similar situations. The answers help experts identify the right personality required to become a professional sales person and the results are often shared within a quick turnover.

Understanding the buyer is important but is it equally important on what kind of experience the buyer is looking for.

Demonstrate the value of the product, but also highlight the benefits the product has and how it will help the buyer. That is what makes a true salesman.

Cengrow uses psychological profiling that uses various techniques and tools to create deeper engagement with your clients and sales assessment tests help filter candidates that have specific industry knowledge and can efficiently handle sales processes and conduct better sales activities.

Sales Skills Assessment With Unleash Employees Sales Potential

assessment-solutions-using-scintific-tools-cengrow

New trends in sales force selection and development have now made it easier for organisations to recruit the right talent for the right profile. There are now psychometric tests including a sales skills assessment and other methods that acts like a benchmark to allow employers to choose an employee with the personality traits that a company desires for its job positions.

Every organisation wants its employees to be self-driven, self-motivated and a go getter. For an organisation solely relying on its sales & marketing division, choosing an employee that has energy, innovative selling skills and resilience will prove to be an asset to the company.

Selecting candidates after an initial screening with a sales skills assessment makes the organisation employ better and increase its work efficiency and overall job performance.

A sales skills assessment or a sales aptitude test helps employers look beyond the candidate’s appearance and personalities and hire them on the basis of their mental abilities and talents. These tests are designed and developed in a series format that are easy to comprehend but are different from the usual interview questions that come up during hiring. It helps employers measure if the applicant is fit for the job position and will succeed in a sales profile.

A sales aptitude test is ideally divided into three categories, namely –

Cognitive: Relating to brain function, it is a unique and personalised analysis based on our natural personality traits and instincts including human relations, challenge, adaptability, persuasiveness, intuitive decision, self-control, availability, analysis/evaluation and anticipation.
Behavioural: This includes our approach towards taking initiative, social behaviour, strong mental & emotional state, being assertive and how disciplined an individual is.
Interest based: This relates to the professional dimensions including Sociability, Assertiveness, Composure, and the Ability to analyse.

These tests are aligned with other sales force development programmes and help employers employ better and also help identify and dramatically improve the already hired employees to perform better. So whether it is identifying yours or your employer’s key personality traits related to sales or discovering where your sales potential lies, it is recommended to take the sales aptitude test for a successful career in sales and marketing.

Cengrow, a reputed and experience management and business consulting firm located in Gurgaon design and develop unique, customised and interactive sales aptitude tests and sales competency assessment reports that cater to your organisation needs. Their strength comes from well-researched models and accredited consultants with a vast experience in international organizations, industries, NGOs and management consulting.

Consider what a difference can be made if the sales force is chosen with the right mindset and the right aptitude tests. Companies that like to outperform their competitors and strive to become a better place to work. The aptitude tests may differ depending on the kind of work environment the company has and the roles being applied for, but most psychometric tests will focus on personality or situational judgement tests. This method helps organisation see increased sales and also find performance dynamically increasing with genuine market value and proven results.