Welcome to the January 11, 2006 issue of The Total View

Published by Success Performance Solutions, Written by Ira S. Wolfe

Visit our Human Resources Blog and Perfect Labor Storm Blog where we can post daily (and more often) human resource updates, news, and Perfect Labor Storm facts. 

What's Inside:

1.     Personality Tests Detect What Makes Salespeople Tick

What is it that differentiates the top producing salespeople from the ones that go through life working very hard to eek out a paycheck? Is it sales knowledge? Is it experience? Or is it personality?

With over 16 million people employed in sales and sales-related positions, there certainly is no shortage of salespeople with experience. Billions of dollars are spent each year on sales training so it seems unlikely that there is a lack of sales knowledge? And yet there is no single position that demands comparable attention and investment from executives, business owners, and managers than sales when it comes to recruiting and hiring.

Given all the data and information and past experiences about how personalities affect sales performance, doesn't it make sense for hiring managers to understand what makes successful sales people tick?

Recent validation studies and thousands of empirical experiences prove that personality traits give individuals a leg up in achieving what they want to achieve. In fact, scientists now believe that 50 percent of the differences in our personalities is inherited. But not everyone with the "right" personality becomes successful. Why? Because personality is not a case of you have it or you don't. Personality traits provide a recipe for success but other factors determine whether these traits will be turned on….or just lie dormant.

What are these "other" factors? In addition to some genetic component, environment certainly influences how an individual uses these natural abilities. For example, growing up in a family of extroverts with parents who encourage a bit of risk-taking will turn on different traits than a conservative upbringing that values a subdued, private lifestyle and feels that a bird in hand is worth more than two in the bush.

Personality traits also combine in unique ways. The number of possibilities is enormous which explains why two people who might look capable of selling (or doing any job for that matter) perform very differently in the workplace. That explains why understanding personality traits gives managers a new powerful tool in making hiring and training decisions and getting the most out of their employees.

Personal values also determine how personality traits shine brightly in one situation yet lie in the shadows in another. Compare two people with turned-on competitive genes but one values life by how much wealth they've attained while the second treasures exploration and the knowledge that comes with it. The first measures his success in dollars while the latter invests his time and resources in books and continuing education….even if what he learns is not ever applied. The thrill of victory is not owning the most toys but having the right answers.

Much of the scientific research for using personality tests (and not sales skills and sales knowledge tests) for hiring salespeople comes from the Big 5 or Five-factor model. This model has been studied since the mid-1950s and has gained enormous acceptance as a result of the need to hire highly productive employees, the increasing competition from a global marketplace, and the high cost of recruiting and training.

The Big 5 Traits are easily remembered by the acronym OCEAN. The letters represent:

Openness to Experience: Measures how open to innovation, change, and risk a person is. Openness to experience determines flexibility to explore new opportunities. Salespeople who are more open thrive in a more fluid, dynamic, and technology driven marketplace while the more conventional salesperson prefers a more predictable, traditional, and familiar routine.

Conscientiousness: Measures how organized, punctual, disciplined and reliable a person is. Salespeople who prefer spontaneity over conscientiousness can be very effective at making sales but time management, follow up with customers, and completing sales reports will be an ongoing challenge.

Extroversion: Measures the energy an individual derives from working with large groups of people and/or lots of continual activity. Salespeople are typically extroverted but like all the other traits, relying on natural strengths without understanding how they can affect others can be detrimental to a career. For instance, extroverts believe there are no strangers, just people they haven't met yet. They do however tend to dominate conversations, be overly optimistic, and do more talking than listening.

Agreeableness: Measures how like trusting and accommodating a person is. Highly agreeable people will go out of their way to avoid conflict and therefore cold-calling, closing and holding profit margins can be a big problem if this individual chooses sales as a career.

Neuroticism: Measures how an individual will cope with stress, anxiety, and rejection. While some degree of restlessness and excitability ignites urgency, too much of it triggers impulsive behavior and vulnerability. A reasonable level of neuroticism protects the individual from complacency and yet energizes them to respond when things aren't going as planned. Perseverance and resilience - two traits absolutely necessary when you're talking about commission-based sales - are linked to the neuroticism trait.

Screening candidates and existing salespeople is easy with our online personality tests. Both our TotalView Assessment System and ASSESS Expert Personality Survey are based on the Big 5 personality model and validated by organizational psychologists for use in the workplace. These tools help managers and recruiters easily recognize which candidates have the personality traits that can drive, neutralize or sabotage success after they are on the payroll.

Learn more about TotalView and ASSESS

2.  "Testing the Tester" - Q & A about employee testing

Each week clients and prospects email or call me with questions about employee testing. Sometimes the questions cause me to stop and ask: “I wonder how many other people are asking the same thing?”

Beginning with this issue, I'll include the most interesting questions in a new feature called, "Testing The Tester. If you have a question you'd like to ask, please email me directly by responding to this email. Do you want to keep the response anonymous? Just include your request in the email.

Q: Can you tell me more detail about what the testing is about? What are we testing and how are the results determined and why are the results important to me in hiring?

A: We primarily rely on testing personality traits based on the Big 5 Factors – five broad aspects of our personalities that have been scientifically linked to how receptive we are to new experiences and ideas, our work habits, how attracted we are to activity, pace and people, our ability to cooperate and avoid confrontation, and how we cope with stress and difficult circumstances. These same traits are the ones linked to Emotional Intelligence.

We also test for cognitive skills which assess how quickly we think on our feet and learn new things.

We test for personal values and motivation as well as work and communication style.

All three assessments are completed online and reports are then delivered to you as pdf reports. All our assessments have been validated by psychometricians and are being used by all types of businesses from the micro-business to the Fortune 500. Combined, these three assessments tell hiring managers how well the candidate will do the job, fit on your team and share your values.

Why are these important? First, the interview is proven to be only slightly more effective to flipping a coin at assessing a candidate’s fit and skills. Second, the cost of a mistake is at least 1 to 2 X annual salary not counting the aggravation and frustration it causes. When the cost of customer and employee acquisition is high, just consider the ROI of pre-employment tests compared to the loss of a customer or turnover of an employee.

3. Perfect Labor Storm Alerts # 493 to # 494

Don't miss day-to-day updates on Perfect Labor Storm. Save the Perfect Labor Storm blog to your favorites.

Fact #493: Thirty-two percent of 587 employees said they spend 20 or more hours in an average month complaining about, or listening to others complain about, bad bosses.
Source: Development Dimensions International Inc.2005

Fact #494: The five biggest reasons new hires fail:

26% can't accept feedback
23% can't understand and manage emotions
17% lack necessary motivation
15% possess wrong temperament
11% lack technical competence

Source: Leadership IQ, Inc Survey of 5, 247 hiring managers (2005)

Don't be caught in storm without all the facts. "The Perfect Labor Storm Fact Book: Why Worker Shortages Won't Go Away" is a must-read leading edge forecast that predicts workforce trends for decades to come. Order your copy today - Only $7.95.

4.   Supervisory Skills Boot Camp begins February 21, 2006

Ever since Success Performance Solutions introduced Managing to Excel in 2002, hundreds of Central PA supervisors and managers have been learning and developing proficiency in the twelve competencies that highly effective managers and supervisors have that average performers don't.

Success Performance Solutions will offer Managing to Excel workshops beginning in February 2006. Each workshop will be limited to 6 supervisors. Topics will include Settings Goals, Time Management, and Scheduling Work.

Read more about Managing to Excel.

To learn more about 2006 workshops, email Marilyn Walker.

Managing to Excel is also available for purchase by in-house trainers and human resource professionals. The per participant cost per program is as low as $20!

5. .  CriteriaOne Train-the-Trainer: Job Benchmarking and Certification

The next CriteriaOne Train-the-Trainer is scheduled for February 2 to 4, 2006 in Lancaster, PA. Learn to identify and assess essential core competencies, select the right psychometric assessments, and develop behavioral event interview guides in just 3 days.

Register for CriteriaOne Train-the-Trainer  today

6.  New Book!    Instinct - DNA of Success
by Thomas Harrison

Instinct is a book about what prevents one person from evolving and adapting to change, and makes another get ahead regardless of obstacles? Are some people naturally endowed wth characteristics that lead to success? And what about those of us who may not be do gifted?

Instinct reveals how highly successful people leverage certain traits and compensate for those they lack.

(Instinct is the very best book written that links Big 5 personality traits with career and job success.)

Order Instinct