The Relationship Between Personality and Social Factors and Success as a Sales Representative, Both of a Petrol Company and an Animal Food Company

Abstract

An oil company’s and an animal food company’s salesmen were interviewed and tested. The interview was largely biographical, but particular emphasis was placed on collecting information on the involvement in leisure time activities of the subjects, as this was considered to be a good guide to the level of activity-passivity of our subjects. It was hypothesised that level of activity would bear a relationship to success in at least some types of selling. The subjects were given the Morrisby General Ability Test (verbal). The supervisors of the subjects provided ratings of their success as salesmen. The various items of data were correlated with the ratings to examine what personality factors and background factors tended to be related to success at the job. It was found that the type of person who succeeded as a petrol representative showed, in general, a number of characteristics which differentiated him from a successful animal food salesman. The successful petrol representative tended to be passive (and therefore, without much involvement in leisure time activities), and a product of the public schools. The successful animal food salesman tended to be active (although this was not a simple relationship), also from a public school but unlike the petrol salesman, interested in the general field he worked in - in this case - agriculture. In both groups of subjects no relationship was found between rated success and verbal ability, age, length of experience, training, and experience of other selling jobs. It was suggested that the data collected could be a valuable guide to the type of person the companies should be looking for if they were anxious to improve the standards of their sales force.