Personality Traits and Business Intelligence: A Model to Improve Direct Selling Systems

Abstract

Direct selling is a business model that presents opportunities for personal, professional and economic development for all those people who wish to obtain income through the generation of their own business, based on the formation of sales networks. For that reason, direct sellers have objectives that transcend the sales activities themselves, such as establishing sustainable interpersonal relationships with their clients in the medium and long term and being able to run their own business. In this work, we study personality traits and personal profiles of sellers who operate under this modality through the DISC test, studying the twelve main combinations. These results are subjected to statistical analysis and then incorporated into a business intelligence platform which contains traditional data such as sales, billing, personal data and seniority. The results, in the first place, validate those desirable traits for a traditional seller, referenced in the bibliography, such as kindness and persuasiveness. Nevertheless, this research highlight other personality traits that contribute to the success of the direct sellers and that are especially desirable for this business, for example, long-term reliability, self-motivation, proactivity and the ability to make decisions under pressure. The incorporation of this type of data supposes an added value for the management of direct selling businesses. Besides, the integration with business intelligence platform contributes to the efficiency of the information management.