PLM International Inc: Your Greatest Asset

personality assessment

Your Greatest Asset, Your Greatest Challenge

Today, more than ever before, the only true and lasting competitive advantage is the quality of your people. Finding and keeping the best people is both your greatest challenge and your greatest opportunity.

In his recent book Good to Great, Jim Collins articulates the common traits of companies that have gone from good to great, significantly outperforming all competitors and the market as a whole. It turns out that most of the similarities have to do with people. We think his observations have never been more relevant.

“The ultimate throttle on growth for any great company is not markets or technology or competition or products. It is the one thing above others; the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.”

“The key point is to get the right people on the bus before you decide where to drive it. The 2nd key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a company from good to great.”

“The ‘who’ question comes before the ‘what’ decisions, before vision, before strategy, before organizational structure, before tactics. First ‘who’, then ‘what’—as a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.”

Now, consider the following:

“A top quartile performing salesperson is 14 times more productive than an average performer.” McKinsey Quarterly, Volume 3, 2000
80% of all terminated employees do not fail because they lack the skill or know-how; they fail because they lack the temperamental suitability or cannot get along with people.
The full cost of hiring or promoting the wrong person is estimated to cost between 2 and 5 times their annual salary.
How much does it cost you to hire and train someone who doesn’t work out? Beyond the direct costs, how about the indirect costs (such as lower morale, damaged relationships with clients, sales opportunities missed, excess time spent both on the person who didn’t work out and recruiting and training someone new)? The costs are exorbitant if you are seriously willing to add them up. Studies have estimated the full cost of turnover to be as much as 5 times the individual’s salary.

On the positive side, how much opportunity and benefit lies in bringing on someone who turns out to be not just average or fairly good, but very good or great? We have found, for example, that in the average company, 20% of salespeople—2 out of 10—perform very well. Just imagine the opportunity of having 3 or 4 or 5 out of 10 performing at this high level instead of 2.
Finding the “Natural”

What essentially makes someone “very” or “extemely” good at selling, managing, or almost any endeavour is something underlying personality, surface skills, education and experience. This most difficult-to-appraise something is a set of dispositions that enables him or her to be a “natural” in a particular role.

If you can find the “natural”, you dramatically increase your likelihood of success and at the same time decrease your exposure to the staggering costs of less-than-good performance and resultant turnover.

We take you beyond the current state-of-the-art methods of appraising people to identify to what degree someone will be a natural in your particular role. With the sophistication of the ADVANCED ANALYSIS (C), you’re able to pinpoint and select someone not just fairly well-suited or well-suited, but very well-suited; someone who will not just likely be fairly good or good—but great.

So, if you are serious about your success and the importance of putting the right people in the right positions, can you afford not to use the most advanced and effective tools available?

Click here for more information the ADVANCED ANALYSIS.