Challenger Sales Hiring Assessments

Hire the right seller, every time

Challenger research shows that sales managers regret almost a quarter of hiring decisions. Combine that with the current high turnover rate for sales organizations — half of B2B sales organizations report 30% or higher turnover, and 44% of sellers plan to leave their job within 24 months — and you’re looking at having to replace more than half of your salesforce every two years.

Bad hiring is time-consuming and affects your bottom line.

Each failed sales hire costs your organization millions of dollars of missed revenue — it takes 6.2 months to fill an open sales position — and that figure doesn’t even consider the direct costs of rehiring, onboarding, and training. Then it takes time and resources to get that new seller up to speed.

But hiring the right seller doesn’t have to be so difficult or costly.

Challenger’s sales hiring assessment tool, Selection, makes it easy to get the hiring decision right the first time. Our online sales skills assessment tells you which job candidates demonstrate greater Challenger potential and overall likelihood to succeed in the role. Challenger gives you all the resources you need to hire the right seller, every time.

Accelerate recruitment

Save your sales managers time by presenting better-qualified candidates

Improve sales results

Hire stronger performers and avoid candidates with poor job fit using a validated sales assessment

Reduce seller attrition

Motivate sellers in the role and manage their career progression

How Selection, our sales skills assessment, works

While validated to be used off the shelf, for unique sales roles, you can tailor the platform, adding competency requirements to your sales assessment. Studies have shown that Challenger’s sales hiring assessment is free of adverse impact, ensuring a level playing field for all candidates and complementing your company’s diversity and inclusion efforts. You’ll:

Learn each candidate’s job fit or likelihood of meeting a sales quota

Use behavioral interview questions based on Challenger sales methodology

Conduct panel interviews to further accelerate your recruitment

Receive development feedback to strengthen and personalize onboarding for sellers

Why Challenger’s sales hiring assessment?

Challenger’s validated sales skills assessment provides all the resources that sales organizations need to hire the right seller, every time. The Challenger sales hiring assessment comes with structured interview guides that enable sales managers to avoid low performers and make the best possible hiring decision.

How does Challenger’s sales hiring assessment work?

Candidates answer questions about their values, preferences, beliefs, and typical workplace behavior. They also take a short test that measures their critical thinking ability. Our assessments produce a 0 to 100 job fit score that indicates a seller’s likelihood of success in the role.

Sales managers can use Challenger sales hiring assessment results to:

  • Screen out very low scorers
  • Prioritize high scorers in the interview process
  • Target interview time based on insights gathered from the results of the hiring assessment

What kind of customer is a good fit for Challenger’s sales skills assessment?

Anyone hiring for commercial sales roles can benefit from Challenger’s sales hiring assessment. The competencies that our sales skills assessment measures are broadly applicable across industries and go-to-market models.

Learn why Challenger's sales skills assessments are right for your sales organization

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How are Challenger sales hiring assessments different from other sales assessment tools?

Most sales assessments only evaluate a seller’s personality, which limits their predictive power.
Challenger’s cognitive ability testing is based on the largest-ever research about the competencies required for success in sales. Both of these data points combine to deliver more accurate predictions than other sales skills assessments.

The survey questions are based on the customer study that founded the Challenger model. All survey questions have been extensively tested and researched and are included to specifically gauge customer sentiment across key Challenger principles.

Numerous criterion-related validation studies have established strong empirical links between our overall score and business outcomes, including:

  • Percent to quota
  • Win rate
  • Total sales bookings
  • Manager ratings of seller performance

When comparing our sales skills assessment performance across races, genders, and ages, any subgroup differences are small, minimizing the risk of adverse impact.

How will Challenger sales hiring assessments work within our recruiting process?

The sooner you administer the sales assessment, the more informed you’ll be about each candidate’s true potential. For most companies, this means after engaging candidates via screening or informational interviews but before the bulk of the interview process with sales managers.
Managers can use the sales skill assessment results to prioritize which candidates to interview and to address possible red flags based on assessment results.

If you’re ready to take your hiring assessments to the next level, get in touch.

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