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The Real Power of Predictive Sales Assessments: Seeing What Others Can’t

Posted by Objective Management Group on Fri, Jul 18, 2025

This article was originally published by Objective Management Group and written by Ben Tagoe, CEO of OMG. It is shared here with permission. Anthony Cole Training Group is a Certified OMG Partner, helping organizations hire and develop high-performing sales teams using OMG’s industry-leading assessments and insights.

Why the strength of any model lies in its ability to separate success from struggle.

At OMG, we believe in empowering sales organizations through clarity. And clarity starts with knowing who will thrive—and who may need support.

In sales, not all assessments are created equal. The true value of any predictive model—whether you’re measuring creditworthiness, ad targeting, or sales skills—is in how well it can forecast real-world outcomes.

In our case, the outcome we care most about is success in sales.

At Objective Management Group (OMG), we use data to predict whether a salesperson is likely to succeed. But we don’t stop at theory—we track how well our model actually works by comparing assessment scores to real-world sales performance.

So, how do we know it’s working?

We look at two groups:

Top performers—those with above-average win rates and high-performance ratings from their companies.

Low performers—those who fall short on both.

And the difference between these two groups? It’s not just noticeable – it’s statistically significant. Our top performers consistently score higher on OMG assessments, with results separating out by a margin of three standard deviations. That means the model isn’t just accurate—it’s highly predictive.

 

Getting Stronger with Time

What excites us even more is this: the gap between high and low performers is growing.

Over time, our model has become even better at identifying the attributes of successful salespeople. That’s because we’re constantly learning. As more data flows in, our understanding sharpens—and so does the assessment’s predictive power.

This matters, because it helps sales organizations make better hiring decisions, build stronger teams, and provide the right coaching where it’s needed most.

 

Why it matters: It’s not just about predicting performance – it’s about unlocking potential.

Our goal isn’t just to sort people into “good” or “bad” buckets. It’s to give sales leaders clarity. To help them recognize top talent, support those on the rise, and invest in the kind of coaching that changes careers.

That’s what predictive modeling should do.

It should see what others can’t—and help people grow because of it.

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Topics: Sales Training, sales assessment

HireBetterSalespeople.com

Posted by Tony Cole on Tue, Oct 18, 2016

This is a blatant blog post boasting about our hiring deliverable - Hirebettersalespeople.com.  I normally don’t do this in this forum in such an obvious fashion, but I cannot help it today.  Allow me to explain…why this…why now.

I have a book on my shelf, Who, written by Geoff Smart and Randy Street.  Those two are famous in the world of hiring better talent.  Their first book, Top Grading, made the best seller list and is now in its third edition printing.  As I started to read Who, much of what I was reading was familiar and I assumed it was because I had read other materials written by the authors. Turns out that it was familiar because I had started reading that book years ago!

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Here is the premise of the book in a nutshell:  The “what” in your business is the easy part of business.  The “who” is what costs you time, money, freedom and maybe, eventually, your business if you don’t get the right “who”.  The “who” is what separates your business from every other business in your space. It’s the difference maker in your peace of mind and making the “what” actually happen.  In short:

Nothing else matters nearly as much as the “Who”.

In January of this year, 2016, we launched Hirebettersalespeople.com.  Actually, 3 years ago, I managed to capture the domain name and just kind of sat on it.  Over that time period, it seemed that every one of our clients who hired us for sales and sales management development complained about their difficulty in finding talent that would actually perform as expected when they were selected.

Sound familiar?

Based on these discussions with various associations and the on-going noise about the same issue I heard at every conference and workshop I went to, I decided to put our offering together and market it to our clients and prospects.

Hirebettersalespeople.com combines 1) our experience/expertise/knowledge about what it takes to be successful in sales and sales management, 2) Objective Management Groups #1 in the world pre-hire assessment tool and 3) Dave Kurlan’s Sales Talent Acquisition Routine. (STAR).  To learn even more about it, CLICK HERE to view our slidedoc on Hire Better Salespeople.

According to the research documented in the book, a bad hire of $100,000 can cost a firm 15x that amount in salary, training and development, lost opportunities and poor performance by others that this hire was supposed to be managing/leading.  How big is that number for you?

Stop the bleeding. Get the right people on board. Stop spending so much time on the “what” until you get the right “who” in place.  Nothing else you do in 2017 will have as much impact on finding, hiring, and coaching the right people to grow your revenue and company!

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Topics: sales assessment, hiring better salespeople


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    Anthony Cole Training Group has been working with financial firms for close to 30 years helping them become more effective in their markets and closing their sales opportunity gap.  ACTG has mastered the art of using science-based data and finely honed coaching strategies to help build effective sales teams.  Don’t miss our weekly sales management blog insights from our team of expert contributors.

     

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