PEI Sales Testing: SSP & SPQ

PEI Sales Testing: SSP & SPQ

SSP Sample Report
SPQ Sample Report

The costs involved with hiring a salesperson are staggering. Estimates range from over $1,000 to recruit and train a new salesperson, to over 6 months of compensation before the person actually begins “paying” for him/herself. The use of sales testing can dramatically reduce the wasted dollars involved in making a poor hiring decision and increase the effectiveness of your new hire.

SSP – $ales $uccess Profile

Measure skills—Not Personality!

The Sales Success Profile (SSP) is a 50 question multiple-choice written sales assessment used worldwide. It reveals the precise skill level of your candidate exactly where to target your training.

The SSP assesses the salesperson’s strengths and weaknesses in 13 critical areas including: approach & involvement, handling & overcoming objections, ability to close sales, ethics, politeness & courtesy, friendliness & warmth, handling problems, ability to qualify buyers, prospecting & cold calling, presentations, time management, telephone technique and call enthusiasm. The 50 multiple-choice questions have more than 360 possible answers. The candidate is then ranked by percentile to a national database of over 350,000 people in order to gauge your company’s standards against other companies. The SSP provides a graphic analysis and multiple pages of narrative including recommendations for training and individualized tips to improve the candidate’s productivity, skills and profitability. The SSP has been scientifically validated, has passed the test for reliability and is non-discriminatory. Average time for completion: 30-45 minutes.

Not only can you determine the sales ability of prospective employees, the Sales Success Profile can be used on existing salespeople as an organizational development tool. Sometimes salespeople lose track of some of the basics of selling. The results are less earnings, a loss of self confidence in their abilities and the inevitable sales slump. The Sales Success Profile actually pinpoints the problem areas, so the salesperson can be coached back to success.

SPQ Gold – “The Sales Call Reluctance Test”

Salespeople are a unique breed of employees. Along with the skills involved to actually perform the job go the fears and inhibitions of doing so. In other words, the person may know the “technical” steps involved with the selling process but have a conscious/unconscious fear of performing them. This 110 question sales test can be used in hiring, promoting or investigating performance problems of current staff members. Variations of Call Reluctance include:

• “Yielder” – Fear of closing and hesitation to prospect for new business due to being viewed as pushy or intrusive.
• “Role” – An unexpressed, unresolved sense of guilt or shame associated with being in sales.
• “Referral Aversion” – Experiences emotion-based resistance when asking their clients for referrals.
• “Telemarketing” – Fear response occurs when trying to use the phone for self-promotional or prospecting purposes. Highly targeted fear. Face-to-face forms of prospecting may be unimpaired.
• “Doomsayer” – Continually expecting the worst possible outcome, rarely re-approaches a contact that has once turned him/her down.

Results are typically available within 1-2 hours. Average time to complete: 30-45 minutes.

Call Reluctance® and SPQ*GOLD® are registered trademarks of Behavioral Sciences Research Press, Inc., Dallas, Texas.