Overcoming emotional exhaustion in a sales setting

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sales organizations can become sustainable by reducing or mitigating emotional exhaustion in their sales employees. Specifically, this paper examines how organizational support, sales creativity, grit and emotional engagement impact emotional exhaustion. A sample of 361 business-to-business sales employees across a variety of organizations and industries were included in the study. Results indicated that perceived organizational support and emotional engagement negatively influenced emotional exhaustion. Although grit and sales creativity did not directly impact emotional exhaustion, both positively impacted emotional engagement. For sales organizations, these findings have important applications. First, employers need to hire employees that exhibit high levels of grit and sales creativity. Second, organizations need to provide a supportive and creative environment in order to minimize the impact of emotional exhaustion for their sales employees.

本文的目的是研究销售组织如何通过减少或减轻其销售人员的情感疲惫来实现可持续发展。具体来说, 本文研究了组织支持, 销售创造力, 勇气和情感投入如何影响情感疲惫。这项研究的样本来自不同组织和行业的361位B2B销售人员。结果表明, 感知到的组织支持和情感投入会对情感疲惫产生负面影响。尽管毅力和销售创造力并没有直接影响情感疲惫, 但两者都对情感投入产生了积极影响。对于销售组织来说, 这些发现具有重要的应用价值。首先, 雇主需要雇用具有高毅力和销售创造力强的员工。其次, 组织需要提供一个支持性和创造性的环境, 以最大程度地减少情感疲惫对其销售人员的影响。

KEYWORDS:

• Emotional exhaustion
• grit
• sales creativity
• emotional engagement
• organizational support

关键词::

• 情感疲惫
• 毅力
• 销售创造力
• 情感投入
• 组织支持

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Dean’s Fund for Research Excellence, Jones College of Business.