Personality Characteristics and Salespeople's Choice of Coping Strategies

Abstract

The issue of whether salespeople cope with sales stressors in ways consistent with their personality characteristics remains largely unaddressed in the empirical literature. Should certain personality characteristics make sales—people more stress resistant, implications for the selection of sales candidates already possessing such characteristics or for the cultivation of such characteristics within existing salespeople could be developed. A framework is developed suggesting why salespeople with certain personality characteristics—those high on challenge, self-determination, and involvement in self and surroundings—may employ different coping strategies. Support for hypotheses was developed in a study that used a stratified random sample of 322 sales organizations. Salespeople high on challenge, self-determination, and involvement were found to use more problem-focused coping strategies.

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