Are salespeople born or made? Biology, personality, and the career satisfaction of salespeople

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between personality traits and both job and career satisfaction among salespeople. The authors also wished to examine the extent to which biologically based personality traits provided insights into job and career satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – The authors used latent profile analysis (LPA) to assess a sample of 299 salespeople along the dimensions of emotional stability, extraversion, work drive, teamwork orientation, customer service orientation, optimism and both job and career satisfaction. Findings – The findings revealed two distinct groups, and these groups were markedly different along the biologically based traits of optimism, extraversion, emotional stability and along both job and career satisfaction. The differences across these groups were especially pronounced for career satisfaction. Practical implications – Our findings suggest that firms might wish to devote limited resources to improving the skill sets of...