Keeping on Track - 9 Ways To Attract and Retain Sales & Customer Service People With Personality Testing

By Dana & Ellen Borowka, MA

Free Teleclass at 10:30 am PST, Wednesday, May 21st
To register, please email reception@lighthouseconsulting.com
or call 310-453-6556, ext. 403.
Attendance is limited to 100 people – sign up today!

How do you build up your sales and customer service force in a down economy? The quick answer is don't be a dodo bird.

While researching our upcoming book, Cracking the Personality Code, we examined the essentials of what managers and business owners need to know about hiring and managing sales/customer service people with the help of personality testing.

An interesting sales management guru we discovered along the way is Lee B. Salz. In June 2007, his widely acclaimed book “Soar Despite Your Dodo Sales Manager” was published. In it, he deals with one of the biggest problems companies face, the chasm between sales managers and sales and customer service people.

He uses the metaphor of the dodo to show what happens when one fails to adapt. Those who adapt, thrive. Those who don’t become extinct like the dodo bird of ages ago. Some laugh at the use of the word ‘dodo’, but there is nothing funny about a business losing its competitive edge due to unmanaged change.

To hire the best sales and customer service people and keep them on the team, your sales or customer service manager needs to know what makes them tick. We believe the sales and customer service personality code can be cracked. If that sounds like a bold declaration, consider this: Studies show that personality tests are a far more reliable predictor of performance than interviews and resumes.

A proper test should reach beyond simple profiles and decipher a sales and customer service person’s underlying needs. This is key for employee development, team building, conflict resolution and succession planning. If you want to retain the best, you need to treat them the way they want to be treated.

Below are nine ways to use personality testing in the workplace to help attract and retain sales and customer service people that we will be discussing in a free teleclass at 10:30 am PST Wednesday, May 21st. To register, send an email to reception@lighthouseconsulting.com or call 310-453-6556, ext 403. Attendance is limited to 100 so sign up today! Here is the overview of how to attract and retain the right sales people with personality testing.

Get the real picture. Of course, every sales and customer service candidate wants to put their best foot forward during an interview. However through a personality test, you uncover a great deal about their ability to work well with other personalities, their problem solving abilities, their thought processes and their ability to tolerate stress. Personality testing gives you objective information that can help you make an informed decision about if this person is a good fit for the job and for the team. If you decided to hire the person, the questions you ask during the hiring process will reduce your learning curve as a manager on how best to manage this person from day one.

Help them be all that they can be. Every sales and customer service person has strengths and weaknesses. Find out the real truth with an objective measure. Once you pinpoint the good and the bad, then you place them in the right position and coach them on where to improve.

Take me to your leaders. Personality testing gives the sales or customer service team a common language about how they like to interact. The assessments can help you train future managers on how to get the best out of the team.

Know how to manage difficult sales people. Face it, there will always be difficult people and flare ups on the job. Use objective personality assessments to diagnose potential sources of workplace conflict. The best way to deal with a problem is to prevent it in the first place.

Get everybody to play nice. Sales and IT, customer service and marketing, operations and financial people have to interact to make the company run smoothly. Too many employees get frustrated with other co-workers and just wonder why everyone doesn’t act like them. Through the use of personality profiles, managers can coach employees how to interact better with peers.

Treat co-workers the way they want to be treated. In today’s fast-paced world of business, there is little time to get to know many of your co-workers. Using personality assessments as the basis for team building exercises can quickly get everyone to have a healthier respect for other ways of seeing the world.

Make managers better leaders. The days of seat of the pants leadership are over. When sales and customer service managers understand what makes their people tick, then they can be better leaders. Knowing personality traits can help with motivating teams, communicating change and delegating authority.

Pick better teams. Today so much work is done by ad hoc teams that come together for a specific purpose. Before you assemble a sales or customer service team it pays to know the strengths and weaknesses of the team members. Sometimes this can be the difference between a productive team that gets the job done and one that pulls apart at the seams.

Set people up for success. Sometimes we hire the right employee and put them in the wrong job. Understanding preferred work styles and where a person would be happiest goes a long way to improving retention and productivity.

While personality testing can be a valuable resource before you hire sales and customer service people, perhaps the true value of any assessment comes in using the insights it provides along the entire spectrum of employment. Personality assessments lend objectivity to decisions that may otherwise be largely subjective.

Remember, it is not how many great people you hire. The true measure is how many great sales people you keep! To find out more please email us at reception@lighthouseconsulting.com or call 310-453-6556, ext 403.

You are invited to a free teleseminar on “9 Ways to Attract and Retain Sales People with Personality Testing”, presented by Dana Borowka, MA, 10:30 am PST Wednesday, May 21st. To register, send an email to reception@lighthouseconsulting.com or call 310-453-6556, ext 403.

Permission is needed from Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC to reproduce any portion provided in this article. © 2008.

If you would like additional information on this topic or others, please contact your Human Resources department or Lighthouse Consulting Services LLC, 3130 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 550, Santa Monica, CA 90403, (310) 453-6556, dana@lighthouseconsulting.com & our website: www.lighthouseconsulting.com.

Lighthouse Consulting Services, LLC provides a variety of services, including in-depth personality assessments for new hires & staff development, team building, interpersonal & communication training, conflict management, workshops, and executive & employee coaching. Be on the lookout for the soon to be released book, “Cracking the Personality Code” To order the book, please email reception@lighthouseconsulting.com