The 4 Most Desirable Personality Traits in an ISA

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Hiring an ISA can be a tricky process. It takes a special kind of person to grind it out every day, dialing for dollars. One of the best ways to make sure you’re bringing on the right person is to use a personality assessment to look for these four traits.


Video Transcription

We’re continuing our series on hiring an inside sales agent, and today I want to talk to you about the personality traits you should look for during the interview process. I mentioned in a previous video that one of the tools you should be using is an assessment tool, such as the Predictive Index (PI) or the DISC Assessment. At ReminderMedia, we use the Predictive Index (PI) to assess candidates. Today, I’ll walk you through the key traits we’ve identified in top-performing ISAs. Understanding these traits may help you hire the right internal sales agent for your team.

What the Predictive Index reveals about high-performing ISAs

The Predictive Index measures four behavioral character traits and can tell you a lot about your salespeople—dominance, extraversion, patience, and formality represented in the index by A, B, C, and D, respectively.

We’ve used the Predictive Index for years, and I’ve interviewed and hired hundreds of inside sales agents. We’ve found that our most successful ISAs score high in dominance (A) and extraversion (B) but low in patience (C) and formality (D). Let me explain what these results mean.

High A and B

Our best ISAs are very assertive, extroverted, and highly likable—they can walk into a room and befriend anybody. They score high on both the A and B scales; however, in our own company, we want our ISAs to have a B score that’s a little bit lower than their A score. We want our inside sales agents to be more assertive than likable because the truth is some can suffer for wanting to be liked, and that can hinder them at the close because they’re too worried about what that prospect on the end of the phone might say or think of them.

Low C and D

In terms of patience and formality,  an ISA with little patience will attack the phones and dial, dial, dial, almost rocking back and forth in their seats, willing someone to pick up so they can close them. A lower formality score is also desirable; you won’t want them to be overly concerned with details or excessively analytical. If they are, they may end up thinking too much about the call before they make it, or they’ll spend too much time on their documentation, and that makes them less efficient at doing what you hired them to do, which is to make calls.

The takeaway

So you want to look for assertive extroverts who aren’t overly concerned with being liked or tracking the details. If you like these tips make sure you subscribe to our YouTube channel, check us out on Facebook and Instagram, but most importantly guys take action on this today.

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