 Lonely and Insecure: How salesperson Well-Being impacts performanceValerie Good, Amy Greiner Fehl and Stephanie M. Mangus Journal of Business Research, 2024, vol. 184, issue C Abstract: Loneliness has become increasingly common in society, especially for salespeople as they navigate the more remote, digital world of selling. Understanding how loneliness impacts the behaviors of salespeople – particularly as they interact with customers – is critical for firms aiming to improve sales performance and support their sales teams. Using objective self-awareness (OSA) theory as a lens, we explore the effects of loneliness and find it increases social insecurity in salespeople. Social insecurity subsequently damages salesperson outcomes by increasing sales call reluctance and conspicuous overspending on customers while inhibiting listening. As such, loneliness and social insecurity reduce sales performance, even when measured objectively from the records of a national sales firm. Results also demonstrate that rejection further exacerbates the effect of loneliness on social insecurity, and unfortunately, servant leadership does little to help. We thus offer recommendations to help managers lessen the challenges faced by lonely salespeople. Keywords: Loneliness; Social Insecurity; Rejection; Call Reluctance; Mental Health; Personal Selling; Sales Performance (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:184:y:2024:i:c:s0148296324003916 DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2024.114887 Access Statistics for this article Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier |
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