The influence of personal factors on sales performance among salespersons in the Malaysian Banking Industry

Sales performance is essential in any business-oriented organisation because it helps generate revenue and gain business growth. Salespersons are pivotal in the sales division to ensure the organisation's success. They provide valuable insights into customer preferences and competitive landscapes, create customer value, manage customer relationships, and gather information for their firms. However, nearly half of them can still not fulfil their yearly target. This is very detrimental to their key performance indicator achievement. Hence, this study aims to investigate the personal factors that influence the sales performance of salespersons in the banking industry. The study examines the relationship between improvisational behaviour, adaptive selling, self-efficacy, and sales effort on sales performance with the mediating role of customer orientation among salespersons working in seven local commercial banks in Malaysia. Social Exchange Theory was employed to explain the relationship between the studied variables. Six hundred seventy salespersons from the seven commercial banks were obtained using cluster random sampling. The data collected was analysed using Partial Least Square Structural Equation Modelling (PLS-SEM). The empirical result revealed that improvisational behaviour, adaptive selling, self-efficacy, and sales effort have significant positive relationships with sales performance. Meanwhile, customer orientation mediates the relationship between improvisational behaviour and adaptive selling with sales performance. However, no mediating effect is found between self-efficacy and sales effort and sales performance. The findings from this study support Social Exchange Theory. The results contribute new knowledge on the factors influencing salespersons’ sales performance to meet their targets. This study also provides scholars and practitioners with recommendations on strategies to improve salespersons’ efficiency and customer service quality