• Workplace testing like SPQ Gold empowers you to hire smarter by uncovering candidate strengths and hidden barriers that don’t surface on resumes.

• SPQ Gold assessments help organizations identify and address sales call reluctance, motivational drivers, and other key behavioral traits essential for sales roles.

• By seamlessly integrating SPQ Gold into the recruitment process, organizations enhance hiring precision, eliminate guesswork, and ensure hiring decisions reflect their strategic goals.

• Data and insights from SPQ Gold inform targeted coaching, rapid onboarding, and personalized training plans that strengthen your team.

• When we measure the impact of SPQ Gold, the proven bottom-line results are reduced turnover, increased productivity, and consistent revenue growth.

• Organizations can customize SPQ Gold to their requirements, providing a versatile instrument for continuous recruiting and talent management efforts.

It’s a proven tool to help you make better hiring decisions. SPQ Gold checks for sales call reluctance – helping you spot the real talent and weed out potential misfits.

Top companies use it to increase team performance and reduce attrition. This post deconstructs how SPQ Gold works, why it matters, and what to expect from using it in the hiring process.

Workplace Testing

Workplace testing is a tangible method to improve hiring by emphasizing actual skills and behaviors, not just resumes or interviews. It identifies latent potential, eliminates guesswork, and aligns individuals with positions they are born to excel in.

Research finds that employing talent analytics can increase productivity by 30%. Testing additionally assists companies in locating talent that’s aligned with their objectives, which is crucial, as 70% of leaders state that skill gaps impede business.

With engagement at a mere 23% among workers, workplace testing along with consistent feedback and coaching can increase both engagement and retention.

The Problem

A lot of companies are… hired folks who appeared right on paper but underachieved later on. Too often hiring glosses over indications of sales call reluctance or emotional blocks, resulting in lost sales and demoralized teams.

Candidates can conceal their doubts, and these can silently influence how they engage with customers or embed within groups. For instance, a candidate may shy away from calls or baulk at closing deals, despite having a pristine resume.

Such hesitance, unchecked, can slow workgroup performance by as much as 40%, reducing the entire team’s output. These internal doubts can impact interpersonal collaboration, rendering the workplace less productive and more stressful for all involved.

The Solution

SPQ Gold is designed to uncover these concealed patterns and assist managers in selecting the appropriate individuals for sales positions. With SPQ Gold, companies observe actual behaviors, not just what candidates say in interviews.

SPQ Gold insights reveal where an individual may be withholding, allowing teams to mentor new hires in methods that count the most. For example, if a candidate exhibits call reluctance, specific feedback can assist in boosting their confidence.

To bring SPQ Gold into hiring:

1. Add SPQ Gold assessments early in the screening process.

2. Review detailed reports with hiring managers to spot patterns.

3. Use those results to inform interviews and probe further.

4. Establish coaching for new hires tailored to their specific needs.

This approach promotes skills-based hiring, which 78% of companies say works well. It sidesteps mis-hires — up to $50,000 per sales person per month!

The Impact

Teams using SPQ Gold experience increased sales and reduced turnover. Good hiring supported by smart testing can generate sales improvements as high as 85%.

Consistent feedback and coaching make employees feel appreciated, which increases engagement and retains more people on the team. Addressing these gaps creates a safer, more supportive workplace.

Metric	Without SPQ Gold	With SPQ Gold
Revenue Growth	+2%	+10%
Team Performance	Flat	Up to +40%
Candidate Selection	1 in 3 succeed	3 in 4 succeed

What is SPQ Gold?

SPQ Gold is a 72-minute online assessment built to measure both emotional strengths and sales skills in candidates. Used worldwide, it helps hiring managers spot who is likely to thrive in sales by looking at patterns of hesitation, motivation, and drive.

It goes beyond routine questions, breaking down 12 types of sales call reluctance and four “impostor” behaviors that can hide true hesitation. With a predictive accuracy rate of 85% or better, SPQ Gold delivers a clear, research-backed way to match people with the right sales roles.

The assessment uses a “Brake & Accelerator” scoring system, showing how much a person’s hesitation holds them back and how their motivation pushes them forward. A 45-minute feedback session follows each assessment, offering each person actionable steps for growth. This approach makes SPQ Gold a strong tool for recruiters who want to build effective, motivated sales teams.

1. Sales Call Reluctance

Sales call reluctance manifests itself in a variety of ways, from fear of cold calling to embarrassment over self-promotion or follow up. SPQ Gold divides these into 12 categories, including role rejection, referral aversion, and stage fright.

Some like to avoid prospecting, some hesitate to ask for referrals or close. These kinds of reticence can drag down team sales figures—and spirit. If ignored, they can lead to churn and blown goals.

By mapping out these behaviors, SPQ Gold allows hiring managers to see where a candidate could struggle. This aids in tailoring training to actual requirements. Once identified, reticence can be mitigated with focused assistance.

For instance, a high role rejection individual could take advantage of role-play or mentoring. Just-in-time feedback and skill-building can transform hesitation into action.

2. Motivational Analysis

Motivation determines how sales reps behave in the wild. SPQ Gold explores which motivators move candidates ahead—appreciation, accomplishment, or monetary compensation. The evaluation reveals both internal and external drivers.

By examining the motivational profiles, recruiters can place individuals into roles that align with their motivations. This results in increased engagement and improved performance.

By matching individual motivators with organizational objectives, you make sure that your squads remain aligned towards common goals. A culture that rewards initiative and supports personal growth helps keep motivation high.

Removing obstacles, such as ambiguous objectives or insufficient feedback, helps.

3. Goal Level

Goal level measures how big or small a candidate’s ambitions are. SPQ Gold shows whether someone prefers to set high, medium, or low goals.

Goal orientation influences the way salespeople attack their jobs. High-goal people tend to take more risks and bust their butts to hit targets. Lower-goal candidates may require additional scaffolding to push outside of comfort zones.

Recruiters can leverage this information to inform training and establish realistic expectations with new hires.

4. Control Orientation

Control orientation relates to the degree of control one wants to exert on their own work. In sales, this equates to making decisions, planning, and troubleshooting.

SPQ Gold determines who takes initiative and who takes direction. Active individuals tend to decide more quickly and navigate change well. The less control-oriented may require additional coaching.

Teams thrive when control orientation is well-balanced. Decision training can amplify this trait where necessary.

5. Social Drive

Sales relies on building trust and strong business ties. Social drive measures a candidate’s comfort with networking, meeting prospects, and forming connections.

SPQ Gold aids in identifying socially potent individuals. Strong social motivation can translate into more new leads and consistent client relationships.

Groups with mixed social drive can assist one another, with mentoring and collaborative learning. In designing an open, positive work environment, it develops social skills for all!

Beyond the Resume

Resumes are just a piece of the hiring puzzle. In our rapidly transforming job market, skills, experience, and even titles can change at a rapid pace. Depending on resumes alone, hiring managers remain blind to numerous elements that influence actual performance.

SPQ Gold surfaces these hidden insights, giving teams a richer understanding of every candidate. Resumes emphasize experience in previous positions and superficial skills. Career gaps and non-linear paths get ignored or misinterpreted. They rarely show personality, motivation, or emotional intelligence.

Old-fashioned resumes can mask impediments like sales call reluctance or stress management. Cultural fit and adaptability are hard to gauge from a document. Biases can creep in, favoring style over substance.

Unseen Barriers

There’s a lot that can stand in the way of candidate success that a resume won’t reveal. These hidden obstacles may not appear in interviews or background checks. Emotional intelligence, stress response, self-doubt, or fear to contact new individuals can all come into play.

Some examples of these unseen barriers include:

• Sales call reluctance

• Low emotional intelligence (EQ)

• Poor stress management

• Lack of motivation or drive

• Fear of rejection or failure

• Weak communication skills

SPQ Gold reveals these hidden obstacles by digging deeper than the surface. The tool looks for patterns, such as avoidance of sales calls or inability to respond to failure. This allows you to identify what could potentially derail someone, even if their resume reads perfect on paper.

Teams can then leverage these insights to craft strategies that help new hires succeed. For instance, if a candidate is bad at rejection, managers can establish peer support or coaching. These targeted supports do help to level the playing field and supercharge long-term results.

Objective Data

Data-driven decisions are gaining ground, with assessments up 30% since 2021. SPQ Gold adds hard data — not just gut instincts — to selecting the right people. It de-biases and levels the playing field.

Evaluation outputs provide transparent input on qualities associated with achievement, like elevated EQ, grit, or rapid ideation. Teams scour the data to select candidates who match both the position and company culture. It can increase the likelihood of hiring high performers, with proven instruments forecasting outcomes as much as 85% of the time.

Objective information assists managers in supporting their decisions with data. It informs choices about whom to hire, what development to provide, and how to align new hires with team demands.

Future Performance

SPQ Gold looks forward, not only in the moment. By demonstrating trends in attitude and behavior, it assists teams in predicting how an individual could develop with the organization or accomplish future objectives. This is important in roles where skills evolve quickly, such as sales or technology.

Teams leverage these insights to schedule training that aligns with each individual’s strengths and blind spots. If they’re high in learning ability and low in handling stress, managers can mold onboarding around stress management.

Consistent check-ins not only monitor the success of your hires but provide insights on how to optimize hiring for next time.

Strategic Implementation

Strategic implementation of SPQ Gold means constructing a system that links evaluation to corporate objectives, leverages input, and evolves as requirements change. By bringing the science to the art, organizations can squeeze more from their hiring process and make smarter decisions that stick.

Integration

SPQ Gold can fit right into current recruitment steps. Begin by mapping where the assessment sits in the hiring timeline and make sure it lines up with other tools already in use. Assign team members to manage this change, which helps keep everyone on track and builds accountability.

Getting HR and sales on board is crucial. These teams must exchange feedback frequently — so all parties understand the benefit and can identify issues in advance. Collaboration might take the form of joint review meetings or shared dashboards of evaluation results.

Technology can assist. Numerous platforms power SPQ Gold tests, facilitating the convenient dispatch, scoring, and analysis of them. Establishing automatic reminders keeps candidates flowing through the pipeline. Periodic check-ins and feedback loops illuminate what’s working and what needs to shift.

For instance, if the time to hire falls by 10% post-integration, capture what actions made that occur. Keep an eye on data such as yearly turnover or internal promotion rates. These metrics demonstrate the actual impact of utilizing SPQ Gold and assist in steering subsequent adjustments.

By journaling what you learn along the way, you craft a record of best and worst practices.

Customization

Each organization comes with different needs. Personalizing SPQ Gold refers to adapting questions and metrics so they align with the competencies and mindsets your sector prioritizes. For example, a tech company might prioritize agility and fast learners, whereas a retail company might seek grit and collaboration.

Reports should emphasize what strengths at your company care most about. Make these reports personal so hiring managers see at a glance where a candidate shines. Tweak the evaluation over time as you get feedback and observe how accurately it forecasts success.

This might involve adjusting questioning sets or calibrating the scoring framework post every hiring cycle. Define specific targets, such as increasing qualified leads by 20% in three months, and monitor regularly. Monthly reviews or coaching can let you know if the changes are effective or whether something else is needed.

Interpretation

Managers need to understand what the SPQ Gold results signify, not just what they are. Some trainings should include reading your scores and next steps. Give clear, straightforward instructions that demonstrate how to transform the data into action.

Get teams to discuss their discoveries in team meetings. This fosters a culture of transparency and collective learning, where feedback is appreciated and leveraged for development. Leverage what you learn from SPQ Gold to inform coaching plans, identify strengths to nurture, and uncover skill gaps.

Measurable ROI

SPQ Gold helps companies make hiring smarter by showing what works and what doesn’t. Measuring actual data — not estimates — equals measurable ROI. With a future-proof thinking, they record a 20-30% increase in productivity by applying improved tools and clever moves.

A bias-free measure such as SPQ Gold can enhance recruitment decisions, increasing ROI by up to 7%. Top performers, which these tests frequently uncover, can provide as much as 2.6x the ROI of average colleagues. If the cost of one wrong hire can hit $50,000 per month per salesperson, good choices matter.

For clear tracking, teams need strong metrics:

• Turnover rates: How often do people leave after hiring?

• Productivity index: Are reps meeting or beating sales goals?

• Time-to-productivity: How fast do new hires get up to speed?

• Retention savings: What is saved by keeping top talent?

• Training impact: Do training hours drop as fit improves?

These measures provide clear indicators of progress, ranging from incremental to transformational.

Reduced Turnover

Companies using SPQ Gold see fewer people leave. Employee retention saves up to $50,000 per month for each salesperson kept. SPQ Gold points out who is likely to stay, using clear data instead of gut feelings.

Key factors that help lower turnover include hiring for true sales drive, not just past job titles. Teams that use assessment insights shape better support plans, keeping people engaged longer. Now retention can be more about job fit, ongoing feedback, and skill development.

A conducive work environment, based on what SPQ Gold uncovers, enhances contentment and allegiance. Fewer exits equals less lost knowledge and less cash wasted on starting over.

Increased Productivity

Once SPQ Gold is in play, its tracking output exhibits a marked increase. Productivity can increase by 20-30% if hiring is smarter and teams deploy the right skills. Experience shows a correlation between scores and sales.

Managers can leverage this to construct teams where talents align, so everyone contributes maximum value. They come from call reluctance, less call reluctance, and more bold calls—shorter sales cycles, higher close rates. This can save $50,000 a rep a month.

By sharing results and team goals, leaders drive for consistent growth and more victories. A culture of honest feedback and regular check-ins assists. That way, teams get to learn from what works and repair what doesn’t–no blame.

Faster Onboarding

SPQ Gold accelerates new hire onboarding. Insights help shape training to fit each person’s strengths. This shaves down the extended learning curve—at times by months.

Targeted training equals time saved and better focus. Onboarding can transition from “one size fits all” to “what works best for you.” New hatchlings hit targets earlier, reducing lost sales during ramp-up.

Teams check progress frequently, employing actual figures to adjust the process as required. A transparent journey assists newcomers in getting acclimated and executing quicker, conserving hours and dollars.

The Future of Hiring

The future of hiring is defined by intelligent, actionable strategies to recruit and retain talent. Companies are leaving behind gut instinct in favor of fact and hard patterns to lead the way. Behavioral science has a new, bigger role in hiring. By focusing on human behavior and problem solving, hiring teams can identify patterns that generate impact.

For instance, in sales positions there are tests that measure things like drive and grit—not titles from previous jobs—helping to minimize errors in picking new people. These tests can forecast sales performance up to 85% accuracy, reducing bad hires and saving as much as $2,500 per person in training costs.

Technology is at the center of hiring. Tools that skill test, resume check and even scan for EQ signs are becoming more prevalent. Talent analytics platforms analyze turnover rates, job switching frequency, and various other trends to identify which hires are poised to stick around and excel.

This data usage is demonstrated to increase team productivity by as much as 30%. More companies use software that helps sort out best fit for a role, making the process more fair and less likely to overlook top talent of all backgrounds.

Never stop getting better is now an imperative. With the market evolving so quickly, hiring can’t sit still. Businesses leverage persistent data to refresh their team selection. Instead of only annual reviews, many now provide real-time feedback and coaching — which helps people develop and remain aligned.

That is, teams are more prepared to address new demands as they arise. Data-driven decisions are key—metrics like turnover between roles or new hire success in their first six months guide adjustments to hiring plans.

Orgs have to prepare for new market demands. Skills-based hiring is accelerating. Approximately 78% of teams discover that this approach yields improved outcomes over adhering to strict degree or experience guidelines.

It’s all about a shift to what people can do and not just what’s on paper. Adaptability is a big deal. The search is on for problem solvers, grittiest and best connectors — so teams can remain strong as demands evolve.

This transition not only reduces the threat of expensive hiring mistakes, but positions companies to be agile and prepared for what’s ahead.

Conclusion

SPQ Gold provides teams a fresh way to identify authentic sales motivation. The test gets beyond buzzwords and finds the folks who want to sell and how to do it. You get crisp test scores that illustrate what each individual contributes. Teams leverage these scores to make the right hire and reduce hiring risks. SPQ Gold slips into hiring process with minimal disruption and provides evidence that helps teams build confidence. Firms report improved sales numbers and reduced churn. For any team looking to expand, SPQ Gold delivers powerful, actionable insights. Looking to employ with greater expertise and less trial and error? Test drive SPQ Gold and watch the difference in your next hire!

Frequently Asked Questions

What is SPQ Gold?

SPQ Gold is a workplace assessment tool. It measures sales potential, identifying behaviors that impact job performance. Companies use it to hire candidates who are likely to succeed in sales roles.

How does SPQ Gold improve the hiring process?

SPQ Gold helps employers look past resumes. It exposes candidates’ actual sales ambition. This results in smarter hiring and cuts expensive errors.

Is SPQ Gold only for sales positions?

SPQ Gold’s guidance can assist in other customer-focused roles. It picks up on characteristics, such as motivation and persistence, which are useful in practically any discipline.

How quickly can companies see results from using SPQ Gold?

Many companies experience results within their first hire cycle. SPQ Gold simplifies the selection of candidates, with faster, better hires.

What is the ROI of using SPQ Gold?

SPQ Gold can reduce turnover and enhance employee performance. That means cost savings and higher revenue, producing a quantifiable ROI.

Can SPQ Gold be used globally?

Yes, SPQ Gold is suitable for global organizations. Its assessment measures are standardized, making it effective across diverse cultures and regions.

Is SPQ Gold easy to implement?

SPQ Gold provides easy integration. Training and support assist companies begin employment of the tool rapidly, with minimal disturbance to existing processes.