The Relationship Between Emotional Intelligence and Sales Executives' Performance

The effect of various components of El such as empathy, self-motivation etc. may bring better findings that could be effectively utilized in developing training programmes for enhancing the emotional intelligence [1]. A theory of perfonnance and he stated that an El based theory of perfonnance has direct applicability to the domain of work and organizational effectiveness, particularly in predicting excellence in jobs of all kinds, from sales to leadership. Consequent to the large number of research publications during the last one decade, El has been identified as a critical factor in the performance and success of individuals in varying roles in their personal and professional life [2]. Despite this popularity, however, there is little empirical research that substantiates the efficacy of emotional intelligence in many areas of individual performance [3]. The data were collected only from those executives who were directly selling to the end user and the universe excluded sales executives belonging to the group of channel salesmen or missionary salesmen. Executives who were selling products to the industrial buyers alone and executives who were doing telemarketing were also excluded. Hence, it would not be appropriate to generalize the findings of the study with such groups of sales executives [4].

The present study has proved a strong positive relationship between emotional intelligence and performance of the sales executives, which is of great value to the field of salesforce management [5]. The locus of control-internal and self-esteem are also proved to be two strong personality factors that influence the performance of the sales executives [6]. Poor performance of the larger share of sales executives and the high rate of sales executive turnover are the major headaches of any sales department. The amount invested by the firm for recruiting, selecting, and training the sales force is huge and the high sales executive turnover adds further to the cost side of the firm. The companies can benefit from the findings of this study in two different ways [7]. [i]. Firstly, companies can develop a new recruitment method which would help the sales departments to recruit sales executives with high Emotional Intelligence to ensure a substantial level of performance and thereby they can increase the percentage of performing salesmen in the company [8]. If they consider Self-Esteem and Locus of Control-internal of the sales executives along with Emotional Intelligence, the chances are high to bring positive results [9]. and other two traits of the sales executives in order to enhance the sales effectiveness of the existing sales executives of the company [10]. As mentioned during the problem formulation, all these three factors are developable qualities of an individual. Once the El is improved in the case of existing executives they would perfonn well as their empathizing skills and emotional management skills go up [11].

A significant relationship between El and career success and El and job satisfaction had been identified in an Indian study conducted among 291 Indian army officers [12]. They also found a strong relationship between El and transformational leadership. An exploratory study was conducted among 40 senior managers working within the New Zeland Public Service (NZPS) in order to explore the extent to which the claims for the importance of emotional intelligence as a predictor of leadership potential are borne out [13-15]. The investigators conducted the study at leadership development center and the participants completed an established measure of emotional intelligence - EIQ Managerial The results provide some evidence to support the relationships between El and leadership potential from the theoretical standpoint [16,17]. The leadership behaviors and effectiveness of these residence staff were rated by both subordinates and supervisors. Analysis showed that leaders who reported higher levels of emotional intelligence were perceived by their followers as higher in transformational leadership and more effective [18]. Interestingly, having high emotional intelligence was not related to supervisor's ratings of effectiveness. Supervisors associated greater job effectiveness with higher moral reasoning.

the relationship between El and some organizationally relevant variables among 250 middle-level male executives of two-wheeler automobile manufacturing organization’s in India showed that the dimensions of El were meaningfully related with personal effectiveness, organizational commitment, reputation effectiveness, general health, trust, employee turnover, organizational effectiveness and organizational productivity [19-21]. The El-factors predicted variance over and above the Big Five in competency to support. On the whole, top managers scored higher on the El dimensions compared with a general population sample [22]. High El scores were particularly found among managers from enterprising occupational environments that are environments dominated by activities that entail persuading and leading others to attain organizational goals or economic gain [20]. relating emotional intelligence with the individual performance generally and there was a severe dearth of domain specific studies in many areas [15]. The inferences of the present study are empirically valid with respect to the relationship between the sales perfonnance and the aforementioned variables [17]. Since the study reveals positive relationship between the variables (dependent and independent) that can be used for developing new performance models in the area of sales management.

The importance of self-esteem and locus of control internal or in other words the possible role of the broader trait core self-evaluation to a large extent in the performance of sales executives It can be concluded that Emotional Intelligence is a learnable trait of individuals/executives that can substantially influence their performance effectiveness. El is increasingly relevant in human resource management and the concept can be well utilized both in recruitment process and training programmes for the effectiveness of the organization as a whole. El involves "the intelligent use of emotions: you intentionally make your emotions work for you by using them to help guide your behavior and thinking in ways that enhance your results." Intelligent use of emotions in personal selling by the sales executives would definitely make their emotions work for them and would further result in enhanced performance. Though the role of El in performance is proved without any doubt, it does not mean that it is the only determinant of the executive performance.

1. Cherniss, C. (2000b). Social and emotional competence in the workplace In R. Bar-On & l. D. A. Parker (Eds.), The Handbook of Emotional Intelligence (pp. 433-458). San Francisco, CA: losses-Bass. 2. Cherniss, C. (2004). Intelligence, emotional. In C. Spiel Berger (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Applied Psychology (Vol. 2, pp. 31S-321) UK: Oxford. 3. Chien, G., Gully, S., & Eden, D. (2004). General self-efficacy and self-esteem: toward theoretical and empirical distinction between correlated self-evaluations. Journal of Organizational Behavior 25(3), 3 7S-3 9S 4. Chiu, C. K., Chien, C. S., Lin, C. P., & Hsiao, C. Y. (200S). Understanding hospital employee job stress and turnover intentions in a practical setting: The moderating role of locus of control. Journal of Management Development 24(10),837-855.

a moderator: A case of customer service employees Human Resource Development Quarterly, 16(4), 481-499 6. Chung, Y. Y., & Ding, C. G. (2002). Development of the sales locus of control scale Journal of occupational and Organization psychology 75,233-245 7. Churchill lr, G. A., Ford, N., M, Hartley, S. W., & Walker, O. C. (198S). The Determinants of Salesperson Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Marketing Research 22, 103-118. 8. Coleman, J. S., Campbell, E. Q., Hobson, C. l., McPartland, l., Mood, A. M. Wemfeld, F. D., et al. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity In. Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office. 9. Connolly, K. H. (2002). The new IQ. Nursing Management, 33(7),17-18. 10. Constantine, C. G. (2003). Emotional intelligence and its relationship with sales success Unpublished Dissertation, http://www.eiconsortium.org/ reference.htm., Depaul University. 11. Cooper, R. K. (1997). Applying emotional intelligence in the workplace Training and Development 51(12), 31-38. 12. Cooper, R. K., & Sawaf, A. (1997). Executive EQ: Emotional Intelligence in Leadership and organizations. In. New York, NY: Perigee Books, The Berkley Publishing Group. 13. Coopersmith, S. (1967). The antecedents of self-esteem In. San Francisco: Freeman. 14. Crandall, V. c., Katovsky, W., & Crandall, V. J. (1965). Children's beliefs in their intellectual-academic achievement situations Child Development, 36, 91- 109 15. Cravens, D. W., Ingram, T. N., LA Forge, R. W., & Young, C. E. (1993). Behavior Based and Outcome-Based Salesforce Control Systems. Journal of Marketing, 57,47-59. 16. Crocker, J., Brook, A. T., Niiya, Y., & Villacorta, M. (2006). The pursuit of self-esteem: Contingencies of self-worth and self-regulation. Journal of Personality, 74, 1749-177l worth for male and female engineering and psychology majors Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85,507-516 18. Crocker, J., Luhtanen, R K., & Bouvrette, S. (2000). Contingencies of self-worth in college students: Measurement and validation. Unpublished manuscript, University of Michigan 19. Crocker, J., & Park, L. (2004). The costly Pursuit of Self-Esteem. Psychological Bulletin, 130(3), 392-414. . 20. Crocker, J., & Wolfe, C. T. (2001). Contingencies of self-worth Psychological Review, 108,593-623 21. Cross, B., Travaglione, A., & Tony, T. (2003). The Untold Story: Is the Entrepreneur Of The 21 st Century Defined By Emotional Intelligence? International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 11 (3), 221-228. 22. Cyril, J. S., Martha, W. B., & Julia, L. W. (1985). Assessing Locus of Control, Perceived Stress, and Performance of Student Teachers Educational Researcher, 105(4),391-394.