Sales performance : A study of the correlation between personality traits and sales performance in the Swedish car dealership market.

Sammanfattning: Background: When a company is employing new salespeople, much is expected from these. The company is hoping that the new candidate is going to perform well and contribute to the fullest. One of the big questions that the organization has to face is how to evaluate and sift through sales candidates in order to find the best suited one. Previous studies have shown to some extent that a person's personality can be connected to how well they are performing in different occupations. One commonly used framework for assessing personality is the Five Factor Model (FFM) which is able to account for different traits without overlapping. One way to assess a person's personality traits is by the use of the big five inventory questionnaire (BFI). Purpose: To describe if there is a correlation between personality traits and sales performance in the Swedish car dealership market.Method: The research was a quantitative study of two Swedish car dealerships, where 60 out of 72 employees at Hedin Bil & Holmgrens Bil answered the BFI questionnaire. The response rate was 83%. The survey was sent out by mail to the two companies whose responsible managers divided their sales staff in three different groups (good performing, average performing and bad performing) according to the company's organizational goals.Conclusion: The conclusion of this study is that one of the hypotheses was supported and four rejected by the salespeople participating. The only hypothesis that was supported was that Neuroticism would correlate negatively with sales performance.