Regulation of emotions, interpersonal conflict, and job performance for salespeople (original) (raw)
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Personal selling is a dynamic profession and a salesperson's ability to manage his/her emotions is crucial. This research examines the role that a salesperson's ability to regulate his/her emotions has on burnout, motivation, selling behaviors and perceived performance. It highlights an emotion regulation strategy which is especially adaptive for managing negative emotions, cognitive reappraisal. A conceptual framework is developed to illuminate the role of cognitive appraisal on salesperson emotional well-being, adaptive selling behavior, motivation and perceived performance. Findings indicate that cognitive reappraisal is positively related to adaptive selling behavior which is positively related to perceived performance. Further, cognitive reappraisal is negatively related to ruminative propensity and emotional exhaustion. Results are discussed in relationship to their implications for managers and researchers.
Emotions and salesperson propensity to leave: The effects of emotional intelligence and resilience
Industrial Marketing Management, 2015
Emotions constitute a powerful psychological force that can significantly influence the behavior and performance of salespeople. However, emotions in the workplace still constitute an underdeveloped area of study, mainly in the field of sales. Sales turnover is also particularly important in relation to sales management due to the nature of sales positions, their historically high turnover levels, and the difficulty involved in filling them. In view of the need to broaden knowledge on how to more successfully retain valuable salespeople, and the fact that B2B selling jobs are not the same across the board, this paper, while controlling the type of selling situation, analyzes the influence of two emotional skills (i.e. emotional intelligence and resilience) on salesperson propensity to leave their organization, both directly and indirectly, through their impact on work-family conflict and emotional exhaustion. The moderating effect of servant leadership perceived by salespeople on the relationship between emotional exhaustion and intention to leave is also addressed. Information provided by 209 salespeople from 105 enterprises from various industries confirms the hypotheses put forward and highlights the importance of encouraging the development of emotional skills as a way of alleviating work stress and reducing salesperson turnover. In addition, the results confirm the contribution of servant leadership towards reducing the effect of emotional exhaustion on salesperson intention to leave.
Sales manager support: fostering emotional health in salespeople
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of sales manager support in promoting the subjective well-being of salespeople as well as the function of the sales manager in cultivating positive, motivating and productive environments. Design/methodology/approach – An exploratory assessment of the relationship between sales manager support and emotional health in salespeople was conducted by interviewing sales professionals from diverse industries. The insight offered from these individuals, in conjunction with prior literature, provided the basis for the development of a conceptual model that elucidates the impact of sales manager support on the emotional well-being of salespeople and subsequently salesperson effectiveness. The model was tested using 154 salespeople. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings – Results indicate that sales manager support is negatively related to emotional exhaustion and rumination, but positively associated with fostering positive working environments and future expectations. Salesperson motivation is positively related to positive working environments and customer-oriented selling and negatively related to emotional exhaustion. Research limitations/implications – The study is cross-sectional in nature and no causal relationships could be established. Future studies might include field experiments that assess the effect of sales manager support on salesperson’s well-being and behavior. Practical implications – The study demonstrates the important role sales managers have in promoting the subjective well-being of salespeople. Originality/value – This research addresses how sales manager coaching specifically impacts elements of a salesperson’s emotional health.
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. 5001-6182 Business 5546-5548.6 Office Organization and Management Library of Congress Classification (LCC) HQ2035 Personal life skills M Business Administration and Business Economics M 10 ERASMUS RESEARCH INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT
How and When Does Emotional Intelligence Influence Salesperson Adaptive and Proactive Performance?
European Management Review, 2015
Salesperson adaptivity and proactivity are two emergent forms of sales performance that are particularly important when work requirements cannot be clearly anticipated and employees need to address complex situations. This study attempts to contribute to the existing literature by exploring the underlying mechanism that links emotional intelligence (EI), an ability that is considered fundamental in customer interactions, to adaptive and proactive performance. A dyadic sample of industrial salespeople and their immediate supervisors reveals that EI has a positive influence on salesperson adaptivity and proactivity through its effect on their perceived self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. Additionally, the indirect effect of self-efficacy on adaptive and proactive sales performance is found to depend on a salesperson's perceived organizational support and ability to bounce back. Certain implications of this study, as well as suggestions for future research, are also addressed.
Power of person-job fit: emotional labour for salespeople and its relation to job satisfaction
International Journal of Work Organisation and Emotion, 2017
This study focused on the effect of person-job fit on the relationship between emotional labour and job satisfaction among salespeople in Turkey. Using survey data obtained from 204 salespeople working in different sectors, we analysed job satisfaction, person-job fit and three components of emotional labour, which are deep acting, surface acting and naturally felt emotions. We found that job satisfaction has a significant relationship positively with naturally felt emotions and negatively with surface acting. Although no significant moderation effect has been found for person-job fit, we found that person-job fit significantly mediates the relationship between job satisfaction and naturally felt emotions as well as the one between job satisfaction and surface acting.
The Role of Emotional Wisdom in Salespersons' Relationships with Colleagues and Customers
Emotional wisdom is defined as a set of seven dimensions of basic skills and meta-narratives concerning how to regulate emotions within specific domains in such a way that the individual's and firm's well-being are tied together. Using operationalizations of emotional wisdom for salespersons from a wide range of industries (Study 1) and in automotive dealerships (Study 2), with respect to both colleagues and customers, it is discovered that salespeople who score high on emotional wisdom cope differently with socially challenging situations and achieve better social relationships than those who score low on emotional wisdom.
Australasian Marketing Journal, 2017
Sales and customer service employees often face demanding or even abusive customers. This study utilized structural equation modeling to develop a preliminary model identifying relationships between interpersonal customer conflict, key consequences of such conflict, and potential means to avoid or reduce that conflict. Results confirm that interpersonal conflict with customers has a direct negative influence on job performance, and works through felt stress to increase turnover intentions among employees. However, results suggest that a salesperson's emotional understanding and customer-directed extra-role performance reduce that conflict and increase job performance. Comparisons with prior related studies, although none of those cover all relevant factors, indicate that these relationships are likely to be similar in developed and developing economies. Limitations and future research directions are also discussed.
An investigation of the influence of coping resources in salespersons' emotional exhaustion
Industrial Marketing Management, 2009
Salesperson burnout continues to be a major concern among industrial marketing organizations. In this work, the authors examine whether certain coping strategies moderate the impact of work-related stressors on salesperson burnout; a previously unexamined area in the marketing literature. More specifically, this work examines if problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping significantly moderate the impact of role stress (ambiguity, conflict) on feelings of emotional exhaustion in an industrial sales setting. Findings indicate that problem-focused coping strategies moderate the impact of role stress on salespersons' emotional exhaustion; actually reversing the overall impact from positive to negative. However, findings surrounding the moderating effect of emotionfocused coping are mixed, raising interesting questions for future research efforts. (J.E. Lewin), Sager@unt.edu (J.K. Sager). 1 Tel.: +1 940 565 3125; fax: +1 940 565 3837.