Marketing Communications

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Marketing Communications
Personified Promotion

TESTING

The purpose of testing is to quantify the various characteristics of psychological make up that may have
bearing on a candidate’s future performance as a member of the sales force.

Test will focus on (1) Mental ability or intelligence (2) Personality (3) Sales aptitude (4) Interest (5) Social
intelligence (6) Mechanical aptitude for engineering products.

•    MENTAL ABILITY TEST

It is a rated test usually graded with minimum score or cut-off point to screen out intelligent

candidates.

•    PERSONALITY TEST

Such tests are concerned with identifying the mix and measuring each of the behaviour

traits or aspect of personality that will permit a person to be successful in selling.

•    SALES APTITUDE TEST

This test measures a person’s innate or acquired capacity for selling. Cone type of sales

aptitudes test poses various hypothetical selling situations about which questions are asked

the candidates to measure his/her degree of sales sense.

•    SOCIAL INTELLIGENCE TEST

The vast extent of interpersonal contact experiences by a salesman means an essential need

for the job because of the candidate’s ability of getting along with others.

SALES FORCE TRAINING

There are basically two types of training for salesperson. The initial or induction training which is
concerned with preparation and orientation. The second form of training is continuous training which
acts to refresh, bring improvement and update selling proficiency.

INITIAL OR INDUCTION TRAINING

The principal objective of initial training is preparation for a particular sales task. If a firm has more
than one category of sales task, separate training will have to be designed for each. Initial training
programmes may last from a few days to several years depending on the size of the organization and
task to be assigned to the salesman.