The Use of Instrumental and Expressive Personality Traits as Indicators of a Salesperson's Behavior

This paper examines the applicability of personality traits to specific selling behaviors. Significant correlations were found between instrumental and expressive traits and instrumental and expressive behaviors characteristic of selling jobs. The degree of congruence between the manager's evaluation of instrumental and expressive traits and the salesperson's self-perceptions was examined. Much of the evidence supported earlier reports of incongruity due to consistently higher self-ratings. However, rescaling and collapsing the seven response categories into dichotomies improved the agreement dramatically. The implications for the evaluation of salespeople are discussed.