A Nuanced Analysis of Salesperson Grit: Exploring Perseverance, Consistency, and Mind-set

Abstract

ABSTRACT Purpose The increasing interest of grit research in sales represents an opportunity as sales-dependent organizations stand to benefit significantly from an enhanced understanding of how grit arises and how it affects sales performance. The nature of sales, with high levels of stress and rejection, presents conditions in which individuals possessing high levels of grit should find greater success than their less gritty peers. However, three predominant issues limit the findings of previous research on grit in a sales and marketing context: scholars have elected to measure grit (1) with adolescents before personality traits are fully established, (2) in non-sales contexts, or (3) using only one of the two dimensions of grit, generally assessing perseverance but not consistency. Thus, due to differing opinions among researchers regarding the usefulness of grit’s proposed subdimensions, perseverance and consistency of interests, the scant research in that has examined grit within organizational contexts presents a muddled picture of grit’s potential utility for the field of sales. Therefore, this study addresses all three concerns by investigating grit in a B2B sales setting, with adult salespeople, and on both dimensions of grit. Methodology Survey data were collected from 473 B2B salespeople (i.e. employed full-time in business-to-business sales as a salesperson) representing a cross-section of industries, including advertising, auto parts, business solutions, computer and technology-related sales, insurance, promotional products, telecommunications, and transportation and logistics. The model design allowed for exploration of two antecedents to grit, growth mind-set and self-efficacy, and two outcomes of interest, salesperson performance and organizational commitment. Further, we incorporate the contingent role managers can have on the relationships between growth mind-set and self-efficacy with perseverance of effort and consistency of interest by expanding a salesperson’s locus of control. All of these relationships were tested with Mplus v8, using a maximum likelihood estimator with robust standard errors. Findings Our findings build upon previous sales research examining the effects of grit on sales outcomes by demonstrating that each of grit’s dimensions has a positive relationship with performance and determining that the positive effects of grit extend to salesperson commitment to the organization. Moreover, we determine that a growth mind-set and self-efficacy are predictive of salesperson grit and that locus of control plays a moderating role in these relationships. However, we demonstrate that grit’s perseverance and consistency dimensions are not impacted uniformly by a growth mind-set and locus of control, indicating that additional insights may be gleaned from assessing and analyzing the grit construct using both dimensions. In particular, the results show that a salesperson’s growth mind-set is positively associated with perseverance of effort and negatively associated with consistency of interest. Thus, salespeople with a growth mind-set are likely to persevere through long sales cycles but may find their interests gravitate toward new opportunities over time (e.g. sales role with another company, management opportunity). However, the negative relationship between a growth mind-set and consistency of interest is attenuated when the salesperson has a higher perceived locus of control. Implications Salespeople with a growth mind-set need to work in environments that continually provide them with new opportunities, or decreases in consistency of interest may negatively impact their performance and commitment to the organization. Thus, the candidate with the growth mind-set may be an ideal fit for select opportunities within the sales organization that would allow them to progress more quickly, such as accelerated training programs, programs offering relatively rapid progression from junior standing to full-standing, or programs that would place them on a management track. Further, taking into consideration the contingent role of locus of control, sales managers can monitor and develop a salesperson’s locus of control to mitigate a decline in consistency of interest by permitting flexibility and autonomy, providing tools and feedback, and empowering the salesperson with the capabilities and opportunities they need to execute the sales process successfully. Originality This research strengthens the recent trend in grit-based research by exploring both dimensions of grit in a B2B sales setting with adult salespeople. This study also introduces research on growth and fixed mind-sets in a sales setting. Further, even with grit being increasingly studied in the sales domain, very little research had examined how grit affects sales outcomes to date. Therefore, this research delivers some of the first findings on both dimensions of grit and growth mind-sets to the sales and marketing literature by highlighting factors that can enhance salesperson performance and organizational commitment.