When we assess sales candidates using our sales assessment, it helps us understand if we have the right people in the right roles.

There are many criteria we look at when helping clients employ new high-performance players or redeploy team members to be as successful as possible. In the assessments, the ‘Compatibility’ finding measures how compatible each employee is with each role. The ‘Sales Percentile’ finding is the single best measure of how strong a salesperson's skills are.

Who knew that compatibility would correlate to Sales Percentile?

I certainly didn't think that the distribution of scores would show this kind of correlation.

After all, when we score compatibility, we aren't measuring any of the sales competencies that make up Sales Percentile; only prior selling environments.

The top 5% of all salespeople are 41% more compatible with their selling roles than the bottom 50% and it left me wondering, "Why?" Three theories came to mind and perhaps you can add some additional theories!

Theory 1:

The best salespeople naturally identify good fits for themselves so that they can thrive. We could guess that elite salespeople seek out the greatest selling challenges - something beyond their comfort zone - but perhaps they are simply too smart to sabotage themselves.

Theory 2:

The worst salespeople don't pay any attention to fit because to them, selling is just spouting off features and benefits, doing demos, generating quotes and proposals, and taking orders. Maybe they simply gravitate to wherever they are wanted?

Theory 3:

The best sales leaders, in hiring only the best salespeople, are rewarded with salespeople that can handle their selling environment. It's worth noting that the best sales leaders hire salespeople who are more talented than they are while average and weak sales leaders hire salespeople who are weaker than they are.

I haven't written about compatibility before but it's worth spending a few minutes to understand the role it plays in sales success and consider its value in line with Sales Percentile?

The sales leadership significant advantage comes from configuring OMG's accurate and predictive sales candidate assessment tool to recommend those candidates that score well in 21 Sales Core Competencies. Being clear on what is crucial to success in the specific role you are hiring for. Learn more about the 21 Sales Core Competencies.