Sales Preference Questionnaire™ (SPQ Gold)

Relevant applications

Appropriate for anyone in a contact-dependent work setting, including, but is not limited to, veteran salespeople, new salespeople, prospective salespeople, sales managers, trainers, consultants, psychologists, human resources practitioners and others who are either in sales or may influence the attitudes or behaviors of those who are in sales.

SPQ*GOLD is most appropriate for growth-oriented organisational settings in which initiating contact with prospective buyers on a consistent basis is necessary and expected for new business generation.

Norms

SPQ*GOLD has been used in a series of studies with samples representative of many organisations, industries and countries. The result is an array of norms detailing differences both within and between groups of interest. Norms for age, gender, education and other demographic variables of interest have also been obtained.

Norm data sources include the Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Hong Kong, US, Indonesia, Malaysia, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, the U.K., Italy, Spain, South Africa, and Canada.

Reliability

Good test-retest stability, averaging r=.75 overall scales (18 of 21 scales were significant at p<.01, theremainder p<.05). The stability of the Brake score, the overall diagnostic measure, is r=.91 (p<.01). Cronbach's alpha, one estimate of internal consistency, for the Brake score is r=.84.

Coefficient Alpha can vary somewhat because research has shown that the sales profession is not unidimensional. Radically dissimilar settings can exist within branch offices of the same company, across companies within the same industry and across industries.

In each case, the correlation of customer contact initiation to objective outcome measures can vary from extremely important (certain financial services companies) to considerably less important (some forms of retail sales).

Validity

An extensive body of research results have established good concurrent validity in a variety of disparate organisational settings, correlating significantly with objective outcome data (almost always measured in dollars).

SPQ*GOLD also has demonstrated excellent discriminant validity between groups such as successful salespeople, university students, and technical non-sales personnel.

Construct validity studies have shown that SPQ*GOLD subscale scores correlate significantly in expected directions with scales on established mainstream psychological instruments such as the 16PF, NEO, MBTI, CPI, MMPI and others. Many additional construct validity studies using objective outcome data have been completed.

SPQ*GOLD scales have been shown to predict a range of behavioral choices, in directions consistent with the construct of Inhibited Social Contact Initiation Syndrome.