Assessments

On paper, it almost always fits

Finding a candidate with the right CV is not hard. Knowing whether that person will carry the revenue in your organization is another matter. In a senior commercial role, the gap between a good and a wrong choice can easily be a year of growth. And a year with the wrong person is a year you won't get back.

That is why more and more clients want a substantiated view before they sign. An investor wants to know after the acquisition whether the current commercial team can deliver the plan. A family business wants certainty about the candidate the owner will soon work closely with. And HR and management at a corporate often want an independent view from someone who knows the sales profession, to complement their own assessment.

The questions we answer for you

• Will this candidate perform in your organization, or only in the previous one?
• Who in your current team can carry the growth plan, and where is the risk?
• Is your best salesperson also a good leader?
• Where will the new leader need support in the first months?
• How does your team compare with other sales organizations in your market?

Built on our own research

Most assessments are generic: the same test for a controller as for a Sales Director. Ours is built for sales, and largely on research we did ourselves. Bart Dietz holds a PhD in sales leadership and has published with colleagues in journals including the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Applied Psychology and The Leadership Quarterly. What we found in that research, we measure in every assessment. And we have been doing so in practice for over 15 years.

What predicts sales performance. A meta-analysis of more than 25 years of research found five factors most strongly linked to sales performance: knowledge of product, customer and market; adaptiveness in the customer conversation; clarity about one's own role; cognitive ability; and engagement with the work. The article has been cited more than a thousand times and is an international reference work. These five factors form the basis of our model.

Why intelligence alone is not enough. Smart salespeople perform best, but only if they are socially strong as well. Combine high intelligence with weak social skills, and you get the lowest performers. A stand-alone ability test tells you little. We look at the combination.

Who wants to be the best, and compared with whom? People driven to outperform others perform better. But whether that helps the team or only themselves depends on how strongly the team identifies as a team. That emerged from research among sales teams. With a leader, we therefore also look at whether that ambition works in your team.

Leading in a profession where no is normal. Sales is a profession in which most attempts fail. Good sales leaders know how to keep their people going. In a field experiment in a contact center with 290 employees, people performed better for five months when their manager deliberately shaped how they compared themselves with each other. It only worked when that manager also created a climate of collaboration. How a candidate deals with setbacks and comparison weighs heavily in our assessment.

What we measure: the SalesQuarters Performance Model

Every assessment maps three layers:

1. Can. Commercial knowledge, adaptiveness and cognitive ability. What someone brings to sell or lead in your market.
2. Will. Engagement, ambition and what drives someone. Is that ambition aimed at the team or at personal results?
3. Lead. How someone gets a team to perform when things get tough, coaches, sets priorities and gives role clarity. And where the pitfalls are that could become a risk later on.

We always assess these layers in the context of your organization: the growth stage, the culture and what the role must deliver in 12 and 24 months.

Three applications

Selection. An independent view of finalists, also when you found the candidates yourself or when it concerns an internal candidate. You know why someone fits, and where the risk lies.

Team scan after an acquisition or reorganization. We assess the current commercial team and compare it with our benchmark of sales leaders in the Netherlands. You see who can carry the plan, who can grow and where reinforcement is needed.

Development and succession. For high potentials and sitting leaders. The assessment shows what someone needs for the next step. Our leadership programs and personal coaching build on that.

Discuss your assessment question with SalesQuarters. Call +31 20 226 90 00 or email info@salesquarters.nl.

How it works

1. Intake. Together we define what the role must deliver, and therefore what we assess on.
2. Measurement. A combination of online instruments and an in-depth interview by an assessor who knows the sales profession.
3. References. We take two references from people who have seen the candidate work up close. That lets us test what we see in the measurement against what someone has shown in practice.
4. Report and conversation. You receive clear advice: strengths, risks and what someone needs to succeed. The candidate receives feedback as well. That is part of a fair process, and it helps that person develop.
5. Follow-up. Where needed, we translate the outcome into a plan for the first months or a development program.

Why this matters for attracting talent

Assessments also help you attract the best people. Our research among more than a thousand participants showed that emphasizing high pay mainly attracts less qualified candidates. Strong candidates respond to the prospect of growth. A candidate who receives serious, substantive feedback during the process sees your organization as a place to grow. That is also the idea behind our Development Driven Search®.

Want to talk it through?

Unsure about a candidate, or about the team you inherited after an acquisition? In a first conversation we work out what you want to know, and whether an assessment is the right tool for it.

Call SalesQuarters on +31 20 226 90 00 or email info@salesquarters.nl.

The research behind this assessment

• Verbeke, W., Dietz, B., & Verwaal, E. (2011). Drivers of sales performance: A contemporary meta-analysis. Have salespeople become knowledge brokers? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 39(3), 407-428.
• Verbeke, W. J., Belschak, F. D., Bakker, A. B., & Dietz, B. (2008). When intelligence is (dys)functional for achieving sales performance. Journal of Marketing, 72(4), 44-57.
• Dietz, B., van Knippenberg, D., Hirst, G., & Restubog, S. L. D. (2015). Outperforming whom? A multilevel study of performance-prove goal orientation, performance, and the moderating role of shared team identification. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(6), 1811.
• Waltré, E., Dietz, B., & van Knippenberg, D. (2023). Leadership shaping social comparison to improve performance: A field experiment. The Leadership Quarterly, 34(5), 101720.
• Waltré, E. A., Dietz, B., & van Knippenberg, D. (2018). Sales leadership as the leadership of perseverance? A theoretical synthesis and research agenda. Academy of Management Proceedings.
• Lee, S. Y., & Dietz, B. (2025). Beyond pay: The effects of interviewers' emphasis on pay and career growth on attracting highly qualified applicants. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 33(4), e70033.