What defines a strong sales profile? It’s a crucial question. Naturally, the answer depends on the role and the individual’s experience. However, a high-performing sales professional typically demonstrates sharp social intelligence, an accurate understanding of client needs, effective stress management, and strong persuasion and negotiation skills—even in complex situations.
While personality assessments help define part of a sales profile, they’re often not sufficient to assess the specific sales-related aptitudes essential for success. Sales roles require real agility in managing interpersonal interactions, communicating with confidence, tactfully handling objections, staying resilient in the face of rejection, and maintaining persistence to convert opportunities into performance.
That’s exactly why Sales Profile-R was created: a behavioural assessment that evaluates the core competencies necessary for sales success and anticipates the development potential of both junior and experienced candidates.
Sales Profile-R: A Real-Time Measurement of Commercial Potential
Few assessments can provide an accurate analysis of an individual’s sales competencies. Sales Profile-R achieves this through a situational questionnaire developed by psychologists and experienced sales professionals.
By presenting business scenarios that closely reflect real-life sales situations, the tool measures an individual’s natural predispositions and motivation for sales.
In addition to positioning profiles against 34 job roles and 10 key sales competencies, Sales Profile-R is the only assessment on the market to evaluate all aspects of the sales process: prospecting, client acquisition, deal closing, and client loyalty.
For Recruitment: Identifying Commercial Talent
Sales Profile-R provides recruiters with complementary insight into a candidate’s ability to succeed in sales positions.
Its clear and user-friendly report offers a detailed analysis via the Sales Potential indicator, benchmarking the individual against top-performing sales professionals. The report also shows the individual’s proficiency in core sales aptitudes and their ability to adopt a sales role, based on three personality factors that frequently drive performance.
How to Use Sales Profile-R in Recruitment
While the test can be used on its own, it’s often helpful to combine it with a personality questionnaire—especially when managerial potential is involved. This allows for a deeper understanding of how a candidate may grow into a team leader or commercial project lead. Sales Profile-R may also be paired with a critical thinking test when evaluating candidates for complex, strategic sales environments.
In each recruitment case, out of the 12 dimensions measured, it’s best to focus on those most relevant to the position. For instance, in a junior sales executive role responsible for building a client portfolio, competencies like client focus, prospecting, tenacity, pitching, self-control, and deal finalisation should be prioritised. For junior profiles, some flexibility in scores is acceptable, knowing their potential can develop with experience.
For senior profiles, however, expectations are higher: scores should surpass the average to reflect mastery of key skills acquired through experience. Like with junior roles, the focus remains on the competencies aligned with the specific job. For example, in a sales engineer role, competencies such as needs analysis, strategic selling, pitching, confidence, and sales acumen will be closely examined.
For Team Audits: Leveraging Sales Force Strengths
One of the unique features of Sales Profile-R is that it can be used for both individual and group assessments. This allows organisations to assess the capabilities of their sales teams, highlighting strengths and identifying areas for improvement.
For the company, this means maximising performance by aligning roles with individuals' strengths and implementing targeted training programmes. For employees, it provides motivation by enabling them to develop their potential in areas where they naturally excel, increasing both self-confidence and job satisfaction.
How to Use Sales Profile-R for Team Audits
All sales team members complete the test, and the results are aggregated to create a clear picture of the team’s overall strengths and sales competencies. This data helps in restructuring roles to balance strengths across the team. For example, if someone excels in networking and customer satisfaction, they could be assigned client portfolio management, where trust-building and relationship skills will have a direct impact.
This team mapping also serves as a foundation for designing training plans. If several team members show low scores in commercial argumentation, this indicates a need for targeted upskilling. And since Sales Profile-R assesses evolvable aptitudes, it’s beneficial to re-administer the test post-training to confirm improvements.
For Career Guidance: Supporting Sales Career Development
A skills assessment is a valuable opportunity for individuals to reflect on their professional path and consider roles more aligned with their aspirations. While personality and interests are often prioritised, evaluating commercial aptitudes can confirm a genuine interest in sales and assess career potential. Sales Profile-R can also reveal latent skills that the individual may not have previously recognised—opening the door to new possibilities.
How to Use Sales Profile-R in Career Development
By identifying a person’s sales skills—such as prospecting, strategic selling, and persuasive communication—you can help them explore roles where those skills are valued. It also highlights development areas, enabling them to pursue targeted training to enhance employability.
Consider someone undergoing a career change, unsure whether to pursue a role in communications or business development. Sales Profile-R can help them uncover competencies such as needs identification, networking, negotiation, and prospecting, giving clarity on whether they have the right mindset and natural inclinations for a sales-oriented role. Based on results, they may be guided toward a sales specialisation, or advised to enhance certain skills for client-facing roles in communications.
