How the SalesAP works
The SalesAP is a questionnaire, not an ability test. Criteria says there are no correct or incorrect answers: your responses build a personality profile, and some traits and profiles are simply more associated with success in particular roles. It is meant for sales representatives, sales associates, retail sales and other sales-related jobs, and Criteria offers it everywhere except the Asia-Pacific region.
The 140 items are written at a sixth-grade reading level and take about 10 minutes. Behind the five main scales sit more detailed trait scores. Criteria’s sample report lists Motivation, Goal Orientation, Planning, Initiative, Team Player, Managerial, Assertiveness, Personal Diplomacy, Extroversion, Cooperativeness, Relaxed Style, Patience and Self-Confidence, each as a percentile.
The report and the validity scales
The report opens with an overall recommendation for sales work, then marks areas as strengths, potential strengths or in need of attention, with a percentile and a full explanation for each trait. Criteria’s overview cites one company where employees the test highly recommended earned 25% more revenue per day than those it did not recommend.
Criteria states that the SalesAP’s validity scales "identify applicants who exaggerate strengths or minimize weaknesses" and that the test adjusts those applicants’ scores automatically. The sample report shows three: Inconsistent Responding, for whether you paid attention to what the statements meant; Self-Enhancing, for an unusually positive self-presentation; and Self-Critical, for an unusually negative one.
How to approach it
Because the validity scales exist to catch an inflated profile and adjust it, claiming every sales strength at once is the pattern most likely to be corrected. Answer for how you actually sell, and read each statement for its meaning, since careless answering is what the Inconsistent Responding scale picks up.
How our practice version works
Our SalesAP practice uses 74 statements rather than 140, on a five-point agree and disagree scale, covering the same five main scales plus two validity checks mixed in among the ordinary items. It is untimed. When your answers look inflated, our validity checks pull the main scores down, and the report shows adjusted and unadjusted scores side by side so you can see the size of the correction.
The correction rule and the cutoffs for our three recommendation bands are ours. Criteria does not publish either, so treat our recommendation as an indication rather than a prediction of an employer’s result.