A leading worldwide hospitality chain uses AQ to discover the key element in its marketing / sales results.
Sample
Complete VPG and AQ data were available for 561 people from marketing and sales from all sites. The total number of people in sales was 365; the total in marketing was 196.
Download all validation studies in PDF format.
Starwood Vacation Ownership
Overview
A true sales predictor would have tremendous performance, cost, and bottom-line implications for Starwood Vacation Ownership. Consequently, the company conducted an internal analysis and counted 26 factors that might affect sales performance. One of these factors was Adversity Quotient® or AQ®.
This independent study examined the relationship between AQ and Starwood’s primary performance indicator — volume per guest (VPG) — for its sales and marketing staff.
Results
Despite the resulting complexity in predicting and potentially influencing VPG, AQ turned out to be a robust predictor of this performance metric for both sales and marketing.
- There is a positive, statistically significant correlation between AQ and VPG across the population.
- For sales, those in the top quartile of AQs sell 43 percent more than those in the bottom quartile of AQs, on average.
- For marketing, those in the top quartile of AQs sell 30 percent more than those in the bottom quartile of AQs, on average.
- AQ and mean AQ varied significantly across portals.
- AQ accounts for about 12 percent of the median VPG across the sales portals, a substantial value.
- The Reach dimension was most predictive for sales VPG.
- The Control dimension was most predictive for marketing VPG.
- As is typical for a sales-related function, the average AQ of this group (160) was substantially above the global average from all functions (147.5 for version 6.0) but not as high as some top- performing sales groups (mid 170s).
