What PSV is, and what it is not
PSV is a professional decision-support tool, developed from the practice of sales recruitment and assessment. It is not a psychological diagnosis, not a personality test, and not a promise to predict performance.
The distinction is deliberate. PSV was not developed in an academic setting and does not claim validity coefficients drawn from an experimental protocol. It was built differently: through repeated, structured observation of thousands of sales representatives over more than three decades, then through the gradual formalisation of those observations into a consistent assessment framework.
The founding principle. There is no single personality that makes a good salesperson. High performers are often strikingly different from one another. What they share is the ability to understand and execute the stages of a sales process suited to their role. That execution is what PSV assesses.
Origin: 1989
In the late 1980s, assessing a sales representative rested largely on the interview, references and the general impression a candidate left behind. Those sources remain useful, but they could not reliably separate social ease from selling competence.
A warm, articulate candidate naturally makes a favourable impression. Yet once the conversation moved into the detail of a real sale, gaps appeared: few discovery questions, superficial handling of objections, irregular follow-up, difficulty asking for commitment. Conversely, representatives who were less impressive in interview often demonstrated remarkable command of the sales process.
So the question changed. No longer “does this person seem like a salesperson?” but “what can this person actually do in a selling situation?”
What thirty-five years of observation make possible
Since 1989, more than a hundred representatives have been met each year through recruitment, assessment, development and coaching engagements — thousands of sales professionals, observed across Quebec and Canada in very different settings: technical sales, territory development, account management, short and long cycles, industrial environments, services, construction, distribution and consultative selling.
The value of that accumulation lies not in the number of years but in the structured repetition of the observations. An isolated impression can mislead. An observation that recurs across dozens and then hundreds of representatives becomes something to analyse. When the same gaps reappear across industries and roles, they make it possible to separate personal style from selling competence.
Three practices maintained the consistency
- A shared assessment grid, used from one representative to the next so that the same dimensions were observed rather than relying on the impression of the moment.
- Factual note-taking, recording observed behaviour rather than judgements formed.
- Field accompaniment, which tests what a representative says against what they actually do in front of a customer. This is the element an interview alone cannot replace.
The aim was never to eliminate professional judgement but to discipline it: observe the same dimensions, record the facts, compare consistently, and avoid mistaking a good interview for a sound sales process.
The 13 competencies
Formalisation meant grouping the accumulated observations into dimensions distinct enough to be assessed separately. The goal was not to multiply categories but to retain those that carry useful information for analysing a sales role.
| Competency | Underlying question | |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Approach | How does the person create the conditions for a sales conversation? |
| 2 | Discovery | How do they identify needs, stakes and decision criteria? |
| 3 | Presentation | How do they turn a solution into relevant value? |
| 4 | Objections | How do they understand and address resistance? |
| 5 | Negotiation | How do they protect value and manage concessions? |
| 6 | Closing | How do they secure a commitment or a next step? |
| 7 | Follow-up | How do they maintain momentum after the meeting? |
| 8 | Time management | How do they prioritise the activities that drive results? |
| 9 | Territory planning | How do they organise accounts, potential and travel? |
| 10 | Prospecting | How do they create new opportunities? |
| 11 | Listening | How do they actually use what the customer tells them? |
| 12 | Creativity and adaptability | How do they change approach when the situation shifts? |
| 13 | Professionalism | How do preparation, rigour, judgement and reliability show up? |
These thirteen competencies do not claim to explain all sales performance. They provide a structured vocabulary for analysing a significant part of sales execution, and allow profiles to be compared without assuming that one representative should resemble another.
Fifty questions and a scoring key
The thirteen competencies are assessed through fifty questions built around concrete selling situations. A useful question does not ask respondents to describe themselves: it places them in front of a commercial choice and observes what they prioritise.
Why several answers can be right
In real selling, a situation rarely admits a single correct action. Several responses may be relevant to varying degrees. All-or-nothing scoring would therefore discard useful information: it would treat identically a respondent who identifies three of four sound actions and one who identifies none.
The Jaccard index
For multiple-response questions, scoring uses logic based on the Jaccard index, a measure of similarity between sets. It compares the set of answers chosen against the set of relevant answers and awards credit proportional to the overlap rather than a single point.
The same logic penalises over-selection: ticking every option does not produce a high score, since the index accounts for both the correct answers retained and the irrelevant ones added.
The detailed scoring key is not published. Releasing it would allow a candidate to be coached on the questionnaire and would strip the instrument of its purpose.
Reading a profile
A PSV profile is not read as an overall grade. The question is not “is this representative good?” but “does this profile match the real demands of this role?”
The same score can be excellent in one role and insufficient in another. Weak prospecting does not carry the same weight for someone managing established accounts as for a representative charged with developing a territory. Success profiles differ depending on whether the role involves business development, account management, technical sales or long-cycle selling.
A weak competency is first treated as a question to validate in interview, not as grounds for exclusion.
Why there is no overall score
A PSV report carries no single overall score. This is deliberate, and it follows directly from the founding principle.
An average across the thirteen competencies would produce a number that is identical whatever the role. The same candidate would score the same whether assessed for territory development or for managing established accounts. A figure that does not move when the role changes cannot say anything about fit to that role.
What we produce instead is a weighted role fit: the thirteen competencies set against the importance you assigned them in the role brief. It varies from one role to the next — and that variation is where the information sits.
A single score is also the object a rushed process turns into a cut-off threshold. By not producing one, we remove the temptation rather than asking people to resist it.
Results can be read again
The thirteen scores are raw data. They do not depend on the role: discovery at 82% remains discovery at 82%, whatever position is under consideration. What the brief determines is the reading of those scores, never their value.
Prospecting at 47% is 47% in every case. If the brief marks it as low importance, the report concludes the gap is immaterial for this role. If it names it non-negotiable, the same figure becomes a priority to validate. Same data, opposite conclusions.
One practical consequence follows: a completed assessment can be read again against a different role brief. If a candidate is not selected for a development role and an account management position opens a few months later, a fresh reading can be produced without asking them for another hour of their time. The results already exist; only the lens changes.
Convergence with published research
The work below does not validate PSV and is not presented as doing so. It offers a frame of comparison: the sales literature likewise distinguishes customer adaptation, customer orientation, development and account-management orientations, and the specific demands of strategic accounts.
| Finding in the literature | Related PSV competencies |
|---|---|
| Adaptive selling | Creativity and adaptability, Listening, Discovery, Presentation |
| Customer orientation | Discovery, Listening, Follow-up, Presentation |
| Development and account-management orientations | Prospecting, Approach, Time management, Follow-up |
| Key account management | Follow-up, Professionalism, Discovery, Negotiation, Adaptability |
This work shows that a central principle drawn from our experience — that there is no single high-performing sales profile — is consistent with a literature that likewise distinguishes several selling behaviours and orientations.
References
- Franke, G. R., & Park, JE. (2006). Salesperson Adaptive Selling Behavior and Customer Orientation: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(4), 693–702.
- Spiro, R. L., & Weitz, B. A. (1990). Adaptive Selling: Conceptualization, Measurement, and Nomological Validity. Journal of Marketing Research, 27(1), 61–69.
- Saxe, R., & Weitz, B. A. (1982). The SOCO Scale: A Measure of the Customer Orientation of Salespeople. Journal of Marketing Research, 19(3), 343–351.
- Kaynak, E., Kara, A., Chow, C. S. F., & Laukkanen, T. (2016). Role of Adaptive Selling and Customer Orientation on Salesperson Performance. Journal of Transnational Management, 21(2), 62–83.
- Zheng, Y., Liao, HY., Schrock, W. A., Zheng, Y., & Zang, Z. (2023). Synergies between salesperson orientations and sales force control. Journal of Business Research, 155, 113451.
- Hengstebeck, B., Kassemeier, R., et al. (2022). What comprises a successful key account manager? Industrial Marketing Management, 106, 392–404.
- Lacoste, S. (2018). From selling to managing strategic customers — a competency analysis. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 38(1), 92–122.
How long a profile remains valid
A PSV profile describes acquired competencies — methods and reflexes built through practice. These evolve, but slowly. A profile does not expire on a fixed date: it loses relevance when the situation it described has changed.
| Situation | Guideline |
|---|---|
| Reference profile, role unchanged | 24 months |
| Reuse for a comparable role | 12 months |
| Genuine change of role — development to account management, new market, strategic accounts | Reassess, whatever the date |
| After a structured coaching programme | 12 to 18 months |
| Minimum interval between two sittings | 12 months |
The minimum interval has a technical reason. A respondent retaking the same fifty scenarios at short intervals remembers the questions. Their score rises without any change in competence: the second sitting would measure familiarity with the questionnaire rather than the representative’s development.
Protection of personal information
An assessment profile is personal information under Quebec’s Law 25 and under the GDPR in European markets. Our approach rests on a simple principle: do not keep what we have no need to hold.
We do not ask for the respondent’s name. The questionnaire is identified by a participation code issued by the client organisation, which alone knows who it refers to.
Questionnaire responses are not retained. They are processed to produce the report, then destroyed.
Our copy of the report is deleted on delivery to the client organisation.
A respondent’s answers are never added to our reference data, which consists of aggregated findings with no individual records.
The consequence is worth stating plainly: because we do not know who the respondent is, we cannot release results to them. The client organisation holds the report. This limit is disclosed before the person answers rather than discovered afterwards.
Full details — respective roles, retention periods, rights and the contact for the person responsible for the protection of personal information — appear in our privacy policy.
Responsible use and limits
A tool’s credibility also rests on what it declines to claim.
PSV does not assess personality as a whole, general intelligence, motivation in all its dimensions, product knowledge or organisational culture. Sales results also depend on the market, price, territory, opportunity quality, brand, management support, effort and sometimes the economic moment. PSV illuminates the sales-competency dimension — it does not explain results on its own.
The instrument is designed for consultative B2B selling. It is not suited to transactional, retail or high-volume outbound roles, where the drivers of performance differ.
What we ask of users
- Do not reduce a person to an overall score.
- Do not interpret a weakness without reference to the role in question.
- Do not use PSV as an automatic screening filter.
- Do not substitute it for the interview, references and documented achievements.
- Do not present PSV as a psychological diagnosis.
- Do not treat an older profile as permanent truth if the role or the person’s experience has moved on.
The final decision belongs to the manager. PSV is most useful when it helps ask better questions than when it claims to supply a definitive answer.