The “80-20 Rule” Challenge
It has long been accepted that 80% of all products and services are sold by just 20 percent of the salespeople. This so-called “80-20 Rule” presents a challenge to all sales executives who strive to build exceptional sales teams.

The Problem
When people make an honest effort to do a good job and fail, it is usually because they were in jobs that they did not fit. Matching people with the work they do is a primary mission of all Profiles products, and an analysis of people working in sales shows that over half of them are miscast. They lack the basic qualities required for success in sales and should be doing something else for a living. Of those remaining, half could succeed in sales, but at the moment, they are selling the wrong product or service. That leaves 20 to 30 percent of the salespeople who are in jobs that they fit. These are the people who sell about 80 percent of the world’s products and services.

The Analysis
This suggests that about half of the people in sales should never have been hired for sales positions in the first place and another 25 percent should be hired to sell something else! Thus, the typical employer may be making three hiring mistakes for each correct one. Obviously, the best place to attack the 80-20 rule is in the hiring process.

The Solution
When hiring salespeople, the objective is to hire only those who have the characteristics of the top 25 percent. The challenge is to find an instrument that can assess those characteristics with a high degree of accuracy. The solution is the Profiles Sales Indicator.

Five Qualities Make Salespeople Successful
The Profiles Sales Indicator provides a means of selecting people who have the five qualities that make salespeople successful:
Competitiveness, Self-reliance, Persistence, Energy, and Sales Drive.
 It also predicts on-the-job performance in seven critical sales behaviors:

• Prospecting
  
• Closing Sales  
  
• Call Reluctance
  
• Self-starting 
  
• Teamwork
  
• Building & Maintaining Relationships
  
• Compensation Preference.

Fast and Readable Customized Reports

The Profiles Sales Indicator can be customized by company, sales position, department, manager, geography, or any combination of these factors. Empirical data can be used to develop a pattern that will tell you how well a job candidate matches your successful salespeople.

The Profiles Sales Indicator is easy to use. It can be taken in just 15-20 minutes and produces clear, readable reports that are direct and to the point. These reports can be used for selecting, managing, and training salespeople more effectively. This tool provides objective data for developing a more effective sales team, one person at a time. Sample Report