Abstract
The finesse with which a sales person handles customers and clients is critical to success on the job. Because interpersonal behavior is a nontechnical, noncognitive element of job performance, we used items from theHogan Personality Inventory (HPI) to develop a new Sales Potential Inventory (SPI) for use as a selection procedure. The HPI is a well-researched measure of normal personality which was developed specifically to evaluate real-world interpersonal competencies. The SPI was developed as part of a concurrent, criterion-related selection study for the position of Sales Representative in Preston Trucking Company, a large freight transportation company with 82 terminals concentrated in the nation's Middle Atlantic and Northeast Regions. A thorough job analysis revealed that activities concerned with customer requests and complaints, calling on existing and potential clients, and other face-to-face client interactions were both the most crucial and time-consuming for sales representatives. Additionally, incumbents (N=127) endorsed the adjective descriptors “friendly,” “confident,” “dependable,” “competitive,” “good memory,” and “energetic” as being characteristic of the “ideal” sales representative. Homogenous Item Composites (HICs) from the HPI scales were combined to produce a measure (the SPI) that would assess the personality dimensions shown to be important to success in the sales representative job. Correlations between scores on the SPI and various criteria ranged from .19 (p<.05) to .53 (p<.01) for the total sample. These results are consistent with other research findings that measures of normal personality can successfully be used to predict job performance.
Published Version
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