The History of Sales Competency Testing
Long before anyone called it a "sales assessment," companies were already trying to answer one stubborn question: what separates a great salesperson from an average one?
The history of sales competency testing stretches back further than most people realize — and understanding it helps you see why so many of today's tools still fall short.
Where It Started: Early Aptitude Testing
The roots of sales aptitude testing history go back to the early 20th century. During World War I, the U.S. Army developed the Army Alpha test to quickly classify recruits by cognitive ability. After the war, industrial psychologists adapted those methods for business.
By the 1920s and 1930s, companies were experimenting with written tests designed to screen job candidates — including salespeople — for basic intelligence, verbal ability, and numerical reasoning. The assumption was simple: smarter candidates would sell more.
It was a reasonable guess. It wasn't a complete answer.
The Personality Turn: Mid-Century Sales Testing
By the 1950s and 1960s, the focus shifted. Researchers began questioning whether raw cognitive ability predicted sales success — or whether personality traits mattered more.
This era gave rise to some of the most enduring frameworks in sales personality testing origins. The DISC model, for example, traces its conceptual roots to psychologist William Moulton Marston's 1928 work on behavioral styles. DISC history in sales accelerated through the 1970s as trainers and consultants adapted behavioral profiling directly for sales hiring and coaching.
Other widely used tools — including the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and various motivational inventories — followed a similar path from academic psychology into corporate sales floors.
The Diagnostic Era: Measuring What Salespeople Actually Do
Personality profiles could describe how someone behaved. They struggled to explain why a rep with a great profile still missed quota.
That gap drove the next phase in the evolution of sales assessments: diagnostic tools that measured specific sales skills, beliefs, and behaviors — not just personality type. Researchers like David Kurlan and the team at Objective Management Group began building assessments designed specifically for sales, not adapted from general psychology.
The sales diagnostic tools evolution moved the conversation from "what type of person is this" to "can this person sell, and where exactly are they breaking down?"
That was a meaningful shift.
What This History Tells You
Each phase of sales competency testing tried to solve a real problem. Aptitude tests screened for basic capability. Personality profiles added behavioral context. Diagnostic tools got closer to actual selling skills.
None of them solved execution. A rep can ace every assessment and still lose deals because follow-up slips, the inbox runs the day, and reactive habits replace a real sales process. The complete guide to sales assessments covers what today's tools actually measure, where they fall short, and how to choose one that's worth your time.
Understanding where assessments came from helps you use them honestly — as one input, not a verdict.
Assessment Tells You the Gap. Your System Closes It.
Knowing you have a follow-up problem is different from solving it. That's where a system built for salespeople matters more than another personality report.
Sell Sm@rter with Microsoft Outlook is a complete sales productivity system built around Microsoft Outlook — designed to close the execution gap that no assessment can fix for you. If your inbox is running your day and follow-up is falling through the cracks, that's where to start.
