In July 2009 I was asked to address the National Convention of the National Association of State Radio Networks (NASRN) about creating a sales hiring system that works.

Rather than talk about using profiles in the abstract. I decided to conduct a bold experiment.

I asked their 20 members to have the top salespeople at each company complete an Advanced Hiring System profile. In exchange for having these salespeople take time to complete the profiles, I agree to present the information – regardless of whether it confirmed the validity of the Advanced Hiring System.

This was not a setup. Although we had done work for three members of NASRN, we had no relationship with the majority of the members.

Since we had worked with three NASRN member companies we considered them to be a high sales driven industry. Our definition is they are selling a highly perishable product (one that is time based and if not sold expires worthless.)

Some background: the top performers at the NASRN members are highly compensated salespeople earning serious six figure incomes.

Our system says select applicants who score high in the Values of Utilitarian (Money) and Individualistic (Power). Then, for after selecting those with those Values, select those applicants who score high in the three natural selling Styles (Conductors, Persuaders or Promoters.)

Take a look at where the top performers cluster:

VALUES                                             STYLES:

Notice the strong positive correlation in the green circled areas.

This is a real world example of the power of the Advanced Hiring System’s profiling approach to pre-selecting candidates with the “right personalities. More than 80% of the top performers would have been pre-selected using profiles.

The next time you decide to hire a salesperson you might think about this example. Ask yourself whether your strategy produces 80% selection of top performers. Give us a call if you’d like more information about how we can apply this to your sales hiring challenges.