Jonathan Farrington’s Blog

I have to tell you that when I was first introduced to psychometrics in 1983, I was somewhat sceptical and that scepticism has remained with me ever since; I will explain why in a moment but first a little background information – this might be the boring bit but do stay with it!

Psychometrics evolved from the need to examine ability. At the end of the 19th century, French psychologist Alfred Binet worked on some of the first tests to measure children’s ability. The US army developed its own tests to help recruit fresh troops for the first world war, the so-called Alpha tests designed to work quickly through the hundreds of thousands of applicants and work out who had the required education and background. More notoriously, the tests went through a period of popularity with eugenicists – something psychologists are still trying to live down – with the invention of IQ and aptitude tests.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of psychometric tests. The first measures ability – verbal or numerical reasoning, for example. The second measures personality traits such as how a person might behave in a given situation or what motivates them. In the world of work, tests are increasingly tailored to the jobs they are used for. The choice of test is absolutely crucial: In order to decide to use a test, you must first analyse a job in terms of what makes one person more successful at it than another. You must be absolutely clear that what you’re measuring is relevant to the job performance.

So why my scepticism and why do I believe that psychometric testing and professional salespeople are uncomfortable bedfellows?

Pick up a typical company report and what words do you find? Verbs like analyse, forecast, plan, assess and schedule, are used by organisations that are efficient, productive and predictable. What set of people are required? Obviously, people who are efficient, effective, proficient, competent, productive and co-operative. These traits we can measure and predict using psychometric testing.

But I believe we need to go beyond – as business captains we need to be inspired, motivated, creators, who are enthusiastic and able to consistently deliver against our key objectives. We should be developing individuals who are not afraid to challenge paradigms, who are prepared to go that extra yard in search of excellence and who understand that success is 80% attitude and only 20% aptitude. And this is where my scepticism has its roots because the “personality” element or the “attitude” in my Attitude + Skills + Process + Knowledge = Success selling formula, cannot be accurately benchmarked.

Witness the admission of John Rust, professor of psychometrics at City University and director of the Cambridge Assessment Centre, “Some skills such as numeracy or language are easy to test. Others – creativity, for example – are more nebulous. Lots of people criticise creativity tests because they are very hard to do”.

The question is, are any of these assessments reliable or valid? Rust does believe creativity can be tested. He cites the example, now used more often in psychology lectures than HR departments, of giving a candidate a brick and asking them to come up with as many uses for it as possible.(The mind boggles) Here psychometrics enters a grey area. “Using personality tests for personnel selection is sometimes regarded as controversial. The difficulty is that people can often perceive what characteristics are desirable – you’re unlikely to admit to having hallucinations. People who answer honestly might be at a disadvantage and this tends to show up if you look at the relationship between test scores and performance”.

“Correlations between personality test scores and job performance are often weaker than a similar comparison with ability-based tests”, he adds. “Ultimately, psychometrics can only ever be used by companies in the context of a wider selection process, the test will only inform the decision – it won’t make the decision”.

You see, returning to my ASP + K formula, at what point does a psychometric finding have reliable relevance? The attitude element is uncertain and for me this is critical, as it drives the motivation of all the other elements: Skills, including; negotiation, presentation, account management, relationship building, opportunity assessment etc, cannot be assessed. The individual’s commitment to appropriate sales process which might include; forecasting, pipeline development, activity analysis etc, cannot be assessed. And finally, knowledge, that includes industry knowledge, sector knowledge, company knowledge, product knowledge and even self-knowledge, cannot be assessed.

Having recruited, trained, mentored, coached and developed literally thousands of front-line sales professionals, my question is a simple one:

“In the field of professional selling, have we been seduced into allowing psychometric testing to become our bedfellows?”

Is there a better way? You betcha! More soon.

OK some changes to announce:

This will be the last Friday posting on the thejfblogit. From next week, new postings will appear on Mondays and the first one under the new timetable will be on Monday March 5th BUT if you prefer to listen or even participate, you can tune into my show on BlogTalkRadio.com on Sundays (1800 GMT/1200 EST). You will see the button in the side column on the right and if you follow the link, you will find all the necessary information – but please note the show does NOT start this Sunday, I have put it back by one week to Sunday March 4th.

I will also post a note with full details here early next week

The second announcement is with regard to the bi-monthly newsletter – that is the frequency of distribution, not the title by the way: We have been thinking for some time now that this has become somewhat superfluous since the arrival of thejfblogit.

Therefore with immediate effect, we are replacing it with a monthly review, which will contain a brief overview of all the articles I have published during the previous month, not just those from the JF and jfa Group sites.

That’s two down and just one to go – I will announce the launch date of “The Top 10 Sales Articles” initiative next week and confirm where you can listen to it or read it every week.

As usual, there are new articles posted on the two main commercial sites:

On the Group site: thejfagroup.com I examine the findings of a recent report that suggests that Leaders need to develop their “soft” skills rather than become complacent and rely on traditional “hard” skills:

“What Leadership Was And What It Has Become”

Here is a brief extract:

“Leadership was once about hard skills such as planning, finance and business analysis. When command and control ruled the corporate world, the leaders were heroic rationalists who moved people around like pawns and fought like stags. When they spoke, the company employees jumped.

Now, if the gurus and experts are right, leadership is increasingly concerned with soft skills – teamwork, communication and motivation. The trouble is that for many executives, the soft skills remain the hardest to understand, let alone master. After all, hard skills have traditionally been the ones which enabled you to climb to the top of the corporate ladder. The entire career system in some organisations is based on using hard functional skills to progress, but when executives reach the top of the organisation, many different skills are required. Corporate leaders may find that although they can do the financial analysis and the strategic planning, they are poor at communicating ideas to employees or colleagues, or have little insight into how to motivate people. The modern chief executive requires an array of skills”. Continue Reading

And on my personal site: jonathanfarrington.com I examine the differing negotiation styles of the “four personality types”:

“How To Negotiate With The Four Personality Types”

Here is a brief extract:

“People negotiate differently and behave differently during the negotiation process. We can observe different styles of negotiation and how different types of behaviour can affect the outcome of negotiations.

In commercial negotiations, some people negotiate quickly and take risks, others take their time and try to avoid risk. Some buyers are very loyal, others will automatically shop around. Some negotiators can be quite intimidating to the point of being rude; others are quite passive and easily manipulated.

This makes selling and negotiating a real challenge. To negotiate with all these different buyer types we need to be able to adapt our behaviour and be flexible in our approach”. Continue Reading

I very much hope you will welcome and embrace the exciting changes I have announced and I look forward to chatting with some of you live next week.

In the meantime, as ever, have a great week wherever you are in the world and if you need inspiration, do visit the Article Vault

JF

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