Personality characteristics that predict effective performance of sales people

In sales literature the role of personality traits in the prediction of salespeople's performance is a hot topic. This study, based upon an administered personality test, suggests that salespeople's personality traits — specifically, the ability to elicit information from others, to self-monitor during conversations, and to adapt during conversations — are good predictors of performance

Individual differences in emotional contagion of salespersons: Its effect on performance and burnout

This article explores the emotional contagion hypothesis, proposed by Hatfield, Cacioppo, and Rapson (1994), in a sales context. Specifically, the emotional contagion hypothesis explains how the emotions of two people (e.g., salesperson and customer) during a conversation are transmitted from one to the other via facial cues, and that these emotions affect the outcome of that interaction. The emotional contagion hypothesis implies that there are definitive individual differences concerning whether someone is either sensitive to emotions from others or able to transmit his or her emotions onto others. This study explores whether these individual differences are assets or liabilities over the long term for salespersons in a sales organization. The data in this study show that a salesperson's ability to infect others with his or her emotions is an asset (because it can lead to higher performance). In addition, being sensitive to the emotions of others is an asset (it can also lead to better performance); at the same time it is a liability (because of the higher risk of burnout). This study further explores how emotionally sensitive salespersons develop burnout as a consequence of role stress, which then affects their performance

Value Creation and Value Claiming in Make-Or-Buy Decisions

Transaction value analysis (TVA) integrates the concepts of resource heterogeneity and transaction cost economics into a single framework, which emphasizes both value creation and value claiming in firms' vertical integration decisions. Using a TVA perspective, we develop hypotheses to explain the firm's intent to outsource application services. A sample of 178 firms in the publishing and printing industry in The Netherlands is used to test the hypotheses. This paper finds that firms take both value-creation and value-claiming motivations into consideration, with value creation having on average a dominating impact, thus substantiating the TVA framework. However, we also find that if the risks of opportunism in outsourcing contracting are high, value creation becomes the less important factor in make-or-buy decisions. Furthermore, the paper shows that the need for flexibility is a major driver of governance choice for value-creation as well as for value-claiming motivations. Implications and future research directions are discussed

Social Consumer Neuroscience: Neurophysiological Measures of Advertising Effectiveness in a Social Context

The application of neurophysiological methods to study the effects of advertising on consumer purchase behavior has seen an enormous growth in recent years. However, little is known about the role social settings have on shaping the human brain during the processing of advertising stimuli. To address this issue, we first review previous key findings of neuroscience research on advertising effectiveness. Next, we discuss traditional advertising research into the effects social context has on the way consumers experience advertising messages and explain why marketers, who aim to predict advertising effectiveness, should place participants in social settings, in addition to the traditional ways of studying consumer brain responses to advertising in social isolation. This article contributes to the literature by offering advertising researchers a series of research agendas on the key indicators of advertising effectiveness (attention, emotion, memory, and preference). It aims to improve understanding of the impact social context has on consumers' neurophysiological responses to advertising messages

Exploring Emotional Competence: Its effects on coping, social capital, and performance of salespeople

We define emotional competence as a person’s domain-specific working model about how one can appropriately manage one’s emotions within interpersonal situations. Emotional competence is conceived as the integration of seven seemingly unrelated proficiencies: perspective taking, strategic self-presentation of emotions, helping targets of communication accept one’s genuine emotional reactions, lack of guilt when using emotions strategically, fostering self-authenticity, developing an ironic perspective, and incorporating one’s moral code into the self-regulation of emotions. A cluster analysis of responses to measures of the seven proficiencies by 220 salespeople revealed four distinct groups of people. The groups were defined by emotional competence syndromes consisting of combinations of different levels of the seven proficiencies. One group, the highly emotional competent, scored high on all seven proficiencies, a second group scored low on all seven. Two other groups resulted wherein one group was dominated by feelings of guilt in the use of emotions strategically, and the second was characterized by the inability to accept ambiguous and contradictory situations by assuming an ironic perspective. In a test of predictive validity, the highly emotional competent group, but not the others, coped effectively with envy and pride, achieved high social capital, and performed well

Personal selling constructs and measures: Emic versus etic approaches to cross-national research

Evaluates transportability of personal selling measures across cultural boundaries. Concept of measurement development; Emic and etic approaches to developing measures for cross-cultural applications; Cross-national dimensionality, reliability and construct validity of adaptive selling (ADAPTS) and customer-oriented selling (SOCO)

The Adaptive Consequences of Pride in Personal Selling

Study 1 investigates the beneficial effects of experiencing pride. Pride was found to have two different effects. First, it increases salespersons' performance-related motivations. Specifically, it promotes adaptive selling strategies, greater effort, and self-efficacy. Secondly, it positively affects organizational citizenship behaviors. Study 2 takes an emotion-process point of view and compares excessive pride (hubris) with positive pride. The results show that salespeople are capable of self-regulating the expression of these emotions via anticipated feelings of fear, shame, and regret. Salespeople in other words are affected by their emotions, but they also are capable of controlling them to their advantage

Drivers of Sales Performance: A Contemporary Meta-Analysis

It has been twenty-five years since the publication of a comprehensive review of the full spectrum of sales-performance drivers. This study takes stock of the contemporary field and synthesizes empirical evidence from the period 1982–2008. The authors revise the classification scheme for sales performance determinants devised by Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) and estimate both the predictive validity of its sub-categories and the impact of a range of moderators on determinant-sales performance relationships. Based on multivariate causal model analysis, the results make two major observations: (1) Five sub-categories demonstrate significant relationships with sales performance: selling-related knowledge (β=.28), degree of adaptiveness (β=.27), role ambiguity (β=-.25), cognitive aptitude (β=.23) and work engagement (β=.23). (2) These sub-categories are moderated by measurement method, research context, and sales-type variables. The authors identify managerial implications of the results and offer suggestions for further research, including the conjecture that as the world is moving toward a knowledge-intensive economy, salespeople could be functioning as knowledge-brokers. The results seem to back this supposition and indicate how it might inspire future research in the field of personal selling

Coping with Sales Call Anxiety and Its Effects on Protective Actions

We study how salespeople cope with sales call anxiety and find that two tactics ultimately reduce dysfunctional protective actions in selling interactions. That is, situation modification and attentional deployment both moderate the effects of felt physiological sensations and anxiety on protective actions

Advertising-induced Embarrassment

Consumer embarrassment is an important concern for marketers. Yet, little is known about embarrassment in passive situations like advertising viewing. The authors investigate when and why consumers experience embarrassment as a result of exposure to socially sensitive advertisements. The theory distinguishes between viewing potentially embarrassing ads together with an audience that shares the social identity targeted by the message and viewing the same ads together with an audience that does not share the targeted social identity. Four studies provide support for the theory, demonstrating that advertising targeting and social context jointly determine feelings of embarrassment and advertising effectiveness