The Importance of Personality Tests in Franchises

The Importance of Personality Tests in Franchises

I have written on this subject in the past, and will probably continue to write about it in the future because I have become very passionate about the subject.  The reason being is that I spent many years in a business which did not fit my personality.  A personality test could have helped me avoid that struggle.  Even though I became very successful in that particular business, I always wondered why it was such a struggle and why I hated it.  Now that I am in a business position that fits me to a tee I really enjoy my business and don’t find it to be a struggle at all.  I love it.

Personality tests help in a variety of areas, by beginning with some very broad parameters and questions.  Am I a promoter?  Am I salesperson?  Am I a manager?  Am I an engineer?  They don’t give you specific answers like, “Should I take this job or the other?”  However, a personality test can help guide you in the right direction.

When you find a business that doesn’t fit your personality there are many things that are going to be a struggle.  

Different types of people think differently and the type of thinking you do is applicable differently to different businesses.  Using extremes to illustrate this let’s look at a Promoter and an Engineer.  Neither personality is inherently good or bad and both people may have lots of friends, nice families and lasting marriages or, they may not. The Promoter is going to have a personality that is constantly trying to get attention.  They’re good at that, they like it and if they need to draw attention to their business as an inherent part of that business there isn’t anyone better.  They also won’t like the attention to detail that an engineer’s personality fits very well with.  So, just like you wouldn’t have the engineer promoting a business, neither would you have the promoter design a bridge.

One of the problems with personality tests is that it’s hard to understand someone else’s way of thinking.  For instance the engineer may think, “Why don’t they just clean that up?”  The promoter will think, “Why don’t they just make a decision?”  The personality test might come back and tell the engineer that they are not a good salesperson.  The engineer thinks, “But, I’m a great salesman, I just sold a multi-million dollar bridge!”  The problem is that the bridge is a consultative sale where it takes a long time and many, many details to make the sale happen.  The promoter’s test may come back and say they are a great salesman but the promoter can’t figure out why his last client didn’t buy a bridge.  You have to take the time to work through these types of details and you have to put perspective behind it all.

The solution is to find a good personality test and find someone else to help explain it to you…and then you have to listen to them.  That’s the hard part because they probably don’t think the same way that you do.  Maybe that is one of the reasons I have become so passionate about this subject, because after a lot of years, I am just starting to understand that these tests could have saved me a lot of heart ache along the way.

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