Personality, grit, and psychological capital as they relate to sales performance

Abstract

Salespeople produce significant value for organizations. The ability to identify or hire a salesperson with the capacity for higher than average performance is therefore important to sales managers and business owners. The extant literature has identified two personality traits that contribute to success as a salesperson: Conscientiousness and Extraversion. However, the recent emergence of new personality-related constructs of Honesty-Humility, grit, and psychological capital provide new opportunities to model job performance in a sales environment. The present study analyzed a complex model built with these constructs and found that Extraversion, fully mediated by psychological capital, drives performance. The study provides new insight into grit and psychological capital along with suggested new research opportunities.