Neuroticism is certainly one of the Big Five personality traits, characterised by a bent to experience negative emotions comparable to anxiety, fear, and frustration. People with high levels of neuroticism are sometimes more sensitive to emphasize and more prone to react negatively to challenges.
This trait can have a big impact on job performance, mental health and overall life satisfaction, and can also exacerbate mental disordersin this comorbidity – co-occurrence of multiple disorders.
The negative effects of neuroticism are frequently transferred to healthcare systems, where the overall economic burden of neuroticism has long been exceeded the costs associated in the treatment of common mental disorders.
For sales professionals, the inherent uncertainties of the job—comparable to long sales cycles, complex negotiations, and reliance on commissions—can feed neurotic tendencies. This is particularly true for business-to-business (B2B) salespeople, whose work could be very different from the retail salespeople all of us take care of.
A retailer, for instance, could sell you a automotive—a process that may take just a few hours at most, with minimal repercussions if the deal fell through. A B2B seller, on the other hand, can be accountable for selling a fleet of vehicles to a big company or supplying wholesale parts to a automotive manufacturer.
These deals can take a protracted time to shut and involve large transactions, complex products, multiple stakeholders, and unpredictable outcomes. All of this significantly increases uncertainty.
Working in B2B Sales and Neuroticism
Our comprehensive studywhich surveyed some 1,700 B2B salespeople and 24,000 non-sales professionals, found a transparent link between B2B sales roles and increased neuroticism. Research shows that the constant uncertainty of B2B sales jobs triggers defensive emotional responses that, when ceaselessly activated, can reinforce and increase neuroticism over time.
This trend is driven by certain characteristics of B2B sales work:
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Complex customer needs: B2B sellers often take care of customers who’ve multi-faceted requirements that require customized solutions. This can result in lengthy decision-making processes and unsure outcomes.
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Long sales cycles: B2B sales cycles can last months, and success will depend on many variables, including the decisions of assorted stakeholders inside the client organization.
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Negotiation toughness: B2B sales often involve tough negotiations with clients who’ve experience securing the best deals. This can create a high-pressure environment in which the seller’s success is continually at risk.
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Variable pay: Many sales roles are heavily commission-based, meaning financial stability is directly tied to performance. This uncertainty can increase stress and anxiety, especially in periods of low sales.
Mental Health and Safety: Lessons from Construction Work
The harmful effects of chronic uncertainty in a salesman’s job – namely personality changes that can result in mental disorders – needs to be treated in much the same way as every other workplace hazard.
Just as the construction industry is taking steps to protect employees from physical harm, corporate organizations should consider protecting their employees from psychological harm, especially in high-pressure roles comparable to B2B sales.
While construction employees wear hard hats and safety gear, sales professionals need mental and emotional protections to scale back the risks related to their jobs.
The first step for each individuals and businesses is to acknowledge the risks related to B2B sales roles. For employers, this implies recognising that these roles can have a big impact on mental health – just as some jobs can carry physical risks – and supporting this by offering support to employees. For employees, it means accessing the facts and using them to make informed profession decisions, and taking their own mental health under consideration when accepting a brand new job.
Sales organizations can take proactive steps to support their employees’ mental health. This could include offering mindfulness programs, gym memberships, or access to mental health counseling, and ensuring employees have time to make use of these services. Providing paid time without work can also allow employees to take time without work once they need a mental health break, promoting a healthier work-life balance and helping to stop the rise of neuroticism.
Managers can also play a key role by redesigning sales roles to scale back the aspects that contribute to uncertainty and neuroticism. This could include simplifying sales goals, offering clearer feedback, or providing more stable compensation plans so salespeople are less depending on commissions.
Regular mental health checks also needs to be required. Just as safety checks are routine (and infrequently required by law) in physically demanding jobs, psychological assessments needs to be standard practice in sales organizations. By repeatedly assessing employees’ levels of neuroticism and other personality traits, firms can determine when intervention is required.
Finally, offering training programs that equip salespeople with the skills to handle long sales cycles and difficult negotiations can function each a developmental tool and a preventative measure against neuroticism. These programs not only improve job performance but also provide employees with strategies to take care of stressors that contribute to psychological harm.
