The authors propose that the emotional intelligence–sales performance link can be better understood by considering a salesperson’s confidence in how they use emotions, known as emotional self-efficacy (ESE). Four multisource studies across diverse sales industries offer evidence of the interactive effect of a salesperson’s emotional intelligence and ESE—which the authors term “emotional calibration”—on salesperson performance. They find that sales performance suffers when salespeople are either overconfident or underconfident in their emotional skills and that salespeople perform best when they are calibrated. Further, the authors demonstrate that the performance gains associated with emotional calibration (1) are attenuated when salespeople are under stress and (2) occur because emotional calibration encourages positive avoidance emotions (calmness and relaxation) among salespeople that result in improved customer rapport, but only among salespeople with relatively longer job tenures. Overall, the research highlights the critical role of ESE as an essential but neglected aspect of a salesperson’s emotional competence.
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