Sales Achievement Predictor (SalesAP)

Predict Sales Success with a Sales Aptitude Test

The Sales Achievement Predictor (SalesAP) is a sales aptitude test that measures personality traits that are critical to success in sales and sales-related fields such as customer service, sales management, marketing, and public relations. The SalesAP was created by Sander I. Marcus, Ph.D., Jotham G. Friedland, Ph.D., and Harvey P. Mandel, Ph.D. It assesses traits that are not apparent in an interview or resume, such as inhibitions about cold calling, reluctance to ask for a sale, and poor motivation to follow through once on the job. Validated against actual sales performance, the SalesAP helps companies select, place, and train salespeople. The test contains 140 items and is written at a sixth-grade reading level. Validity scales identify applicants who exaggerate strengths or minimize weaknesses — and automatically adjusts the scores of those applicants.

Detailed Score Reports

The SalesAP presents an overall recommendation about an individual’s suitability for sales work:

• Not Recommended
• Basically Recommended
• Highly Recommended

This recommendation is based on three Sales Success Scores in combination with the full SalesAP profile, which includes 15 subscales that measure individual traits that are important for success in sales and sales-related fields.

Validity Information

Construct Validity: SalesAP scale scores have been compared with a number of external measures of similar individual characteristics, including the Sixteen Personality Factor (16PF) and the Edwards Personal Preference Schedule (EPPS) scales; these comparisons provide very strong support for the construct validity of the SalesAP scales.

Concurrent Validity: Several validity studies have confirmed the concurrent validity of the SalesAP as a means of predicting the job performance of salespeople. For example, two studies comparing SalesAP scores to supervisor’s ratings for real estate salespeople and insurance salespeople showed strong, statistically significant correlations between supervisor’s ratings and the Sales Success Scores of the SalesAP, especially Sales Disposition and Initiative (Cold Calling). These studies involved samples of 156 real estate salespeople and 71 insurance salespeople, respectively.

Reliability: The estimated test-retest reliabilities for SalesAP scale scores range from .67 to .90 and are well within acceptable psychometric limits.