Fearless happiness in apparel store sales performance and the two faces of conscientiousness

Abstract

Conscientiousness can be an important personality predictor of sales performance. However, it has been suggested that Conscientiousness may have two faces in the job performance context: the highly functioning worker and the nervous low performer driven by angst. Based on the moderated expression model of Conscientiousness in job performance and the apparel store sales context, we tested whether the Fearless Happiness trait, a compound trait of Emotional Stability and Extraversion, positively moderated the relation between salespersons' (N = 251) Conscientiousness and objective individual sales performance over one year in a large nationwide chain of apparel stores (N = 174 units). We found that individuals who possessed elevated trait levels of Conscientiousness and Fearless Happiness were the high-functioning salespersons, individually improving sales performance by more than €20,500 per year above beyond Customer Service Orientation. We discuss implications for the two faces of Conscientiousness in sales performance.