29 Mar Is a Personality Profile Enough Information to Make a Hiring Decision?
No, it's not.
There are 3 Dimensions you need to consider when Hiring a Producer. It's like a stool with 3 legs, when one of the legs is missing, sales success is jeopardized.
The Can Do Dimension
The first dimension is the Can Do Dimension which includes the individuals skills, knowledge and experience. Here is a great example… you look at a young athletic kid, that is a football player. Will he be a good basketball player? Don't know yet. If he's never played basketball, he doesn't have the skills, knowledge or experience. If we put him on the court, Can he do what we want him to do? No, he can't.
You'll find producers that seem friendly, nice, from good families, but do they have the skills and experience to be a great producer? No… not without a lot of technical and sales training.
The point is Can They Do the job, are the skills, the knowledge and experience there. If yes, they passed criteria #1, Can Do.
If they don't have the skills, knowledge and experience, you need to be prepared to invest in a significant amount of training.
The Will Do Dimension
The next Dimension is Will Do. Do they have the drive, motivation and confidence, so that they Will Do this job. That means making prospect calls, qualifying the prospect, closing the deal.
Hiring a person that is not driven, motivated or confident is a mistake, when their success will come from from intentionally making things happen.
The Follow Through Dimension
The 3rd Dimension is Follow-Through. Do they have they discipline, the work-ethic to go do it every day?If not, you'll find them on the golf course, in a bar, or hiding behind their desk doing busy work.
These 3 Dimensions, Can Do, Will Do and Follow-through are all 3 absolutely necessary to be success as a Commercial Insurance Producer.
A Personality Profile can only measure the 2nd Dimension, Will Do. For you to improve your hiring ability, you must have great interviewing skills to determine the Can Do and Follow-through dimensions.
Larry Craft explains it this way, “A salesperson can have all the sales experience (1st Dimension) necessary, yet still fail because they don't have the drive, motivation, and confidence to succeed (2nd Dimension). Another salesperson can have both the 1st and 2nd Dimensions but never reach their full potential because they lack the ability to prioritize their day or control their destructive impulses (3rd Dimension). The best way to avoid costly hiring mistakes is to use an integrated selection system that helps you understand all three dimensions of success in your candidate.”
So, the answer is clearly NO, a personality profile is not enough and never will be.
To be effective in determining the 3rd dimension, follow-through and work ethic, you need an interview process that has exercises, it's called an evidence based interview process.
The Wedge Group created an evidence based interview process that is used to hire insurance producers. It is modeled after what you see in the Armed Special Forces, where GRIT is everything.
Here's an example, ask a recruit if they think they are worthy of being a Navy Seal and they will answer, Yes Sir. Ask them to tell you about their experiences of working hard and getting the job done in extreme conditions and they are likely to tell you about their senior year in high school. They grew up in Mississippi where the temperature is 95 degrees and so is the humidity. They will tell you about working out 2 times a day in that summer heat. And when coach made them run wind-sprints, they always came in first. You'll will be impressed, who wouldn't.
But, is it true? Frankly I don't know. And that is why the Armed Special Forces put them through difficult exercises to find out how much determination and stamina they really have.
We teach people how to put Producer Candidates through 3-5 exercises that rely on the characteristics you want to confirm they have and through this you will gain enough proof that this will be good hire.
Go to iWin Agency Growth System for more information.
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