Conscientiousness, extraversion, and field sales performance: Combining narrow personality, social skill, emotional stability, and nonlinearity

Abstract

Although prior research indicated that extraversion and conscientiousness are uniformly beneficial to sales performance, recent evidence suggests that scholars should consider nonlinearity, narrow personality, social skill, and the research context in the personality-performance relation. Further, scholars have found conscientiousness to have inverted U-shaped relationships with performance. Taking these into account, the present study examines the nonlinear relation that the combined conscientiousness facets of discipline and achievement motivation (i.e., disciplined achievement motivation) have with objective sales performance in a predictive study with a nine month time interval. We argue that stable social potency, composed of the activity facet of extraversion, social skill, and emotional stability, will moderate this nonlinear relation in the context of insurance field sales, such that the greatest sales performance will be from those high on both constructs. Our findings support our hypotheses, demonstrating that a relevant social-related trait (i.e., stable social potency) can offset the potential downsides of high disciplined achievement motivation (e.g., perfectionism, and workaholism), helping such individuals to achieve high objective sales. Implications for theory and future research directions are discussed.