Paper was accepted for publication in Special issue of the Journal of Financial Services Marketing in 2014
NEIL LILFORD
Division of Industrial Marketing
Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden
DEBBIE VIGAR-ELLIS
School of Management, IT & Governance, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, South Africa
& Division of Industrial Marketing Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) Stockholm, Sweden
DEON NEL
Department of Marketing Management University of Pretoria
Pretoria, South Africa
ABSTRACT
Identifying the personality traits of effective sales people has been a long-standing challenge to sales managers and researchers in a wide range of contexts, from business to business, to retail and services. A definitive identification of the characteristics of the ideal salesperson remains elusive. We investigate the impact of the Big 5 personality traits on the performance of salespersons in a large financial services organization, our purpose being to graphically illustrate how personality traits differ, according to different levels of sales performance. We present the results graphically using Chernoff faces. The study demonstrates that this approach provides valuable insights to sales managers, and has several possible applications in relation to financial salesperson-performance management.
Key words: Financial salesperson performance, Big 5 Personality, Chernoff faces