Relationship Marketing and the B2B Sales Force, Effects of Big Five Personality Traits

Abstract

In this article, multiple regressions using the stepwise method were utilized to analyze the effect of Big Five personality traits on the work of business-to-business (B2B) salespeople. To achieve this objective, the relationship between the five personality traits and different aspects of B2B salespeople’s work was analyzed. The sample consisted of 274 salespeople from different Spanish organizations and from different business sectors. Specifically, the effects of Big Five personality traits on sales performance, role conflict and ambiguity, ethical behavior, adaptive behavior, and job performance were analyzed. Our results show that Big Five is useful for predicting sales jobs. The traits that most affect the work of B2B salespeople are extraversion and conscientiousness. Neuroticism was the least influential and most negative trait.

Keywords:

• Big five
• business-to-business (B2B)
• personal selling
• sales job
• salesforce