Enhancing the Emotional Intelligence of Salespeople
Abstract
In today’s rapidly changing sales environment, successful salespeople must acquire skills that give them a competitive advantage. Emotional intelligence (EI), defined as perceiving, interpreting, and reacting to one’s own and others’ emotions, is offered as one critical skill that will allow salespeople to guide their behavior and think in ways that can enhance their sales performance. In this paper, we review emotional intelligence and discuss how it is related to existing theories of sales performance. Research propositions are then developed based on the Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) sales performance model. Strategies for sales practitioners are proposed, and additional opportunities for future research are identified.
Keywords
Citation
Sojka, J.Z. and Deeter‐Schmelz, D.R. (2002), "Enhancing the Emotional Intelligence of Salespeople", American Journal of Business, Vol. 17 No. 1, pp. 43-50. https://doi.org/10.1108/19355181200200004
Publisher
:MCB UP Ltd
Copyright © 2002, MCB UP Limited