Masking the Role or Masking the Toll? The Effects of Career Fit on Salesperson Burnout

ABSTRACT Purpose This paper examines emotion management through social exchange as an important aspect of coping with the emotional burden of person-career misfit. Person-career misfit, the degree to which the salesperson believes that the sales role is inconsistent with one’s identity, carries a heavy emotional toll when one finds oneself in a poorly-fitting career. A heavy emotional toll can result in myriad negative outcomes and can be troubling for the salesperson who is experiencing the burden. Emotion management and misaligned career-fit are under-researched areas in the domain of professional selling. Moreover, emotion management strategies also warrant study because the world of professional selling is rapidly changing, and the emotional impact of these changes is not fully understood. Method A survey of 325 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople was conducted; the sample frame was a Qualtrics panel. Structural equation modeling with AMOS 27 was applied to examine the proposed framework. Findings When person-career fit is poor, salespeople report greater use of emotion, regulation of emotion, and interpersonal mentalizing. The effects of the emotion management strategies are mediated by emotional labor, which then influences diminished accomplishment and depersonalization. Depersonalization then leads to emotional exhaustion, but diminished accomplishment does not. Emotional work is a necessary and important part of any sales role and engaging in normal customer interactions can have a profound impact on the emotional health of the salesperson. Burnout is a long-standing and pernicious issue for salespeople, and we identify an important antecedent, a poor fit between the salesperson and the sales role. Research Implications Persevering in the face of lack of career fit carries emotional burdens that lead to emotional exhaustion through use and regulation of emotions, as well as interpersonal mentalizing. Burnout is a highly complex process that is unique for salespeople. For example, diminished accomplishment may be a form of coping and warrants further research. The sequencing of burnout also warrants future research. This is especially true as more salespeople are now in a hybrid or work-from-home (WFH) format and might not have as much contact with management or coworkers as in previous times. Organization-level role rejection is potentially very rich and nuanced theoretical outcome that warrants future study. Because of the sheer number of students that go into a sales role, it is highly likely that role rejection and poor career-person fit are common outcomes. This is evidenced by high levels of turnover in many sales roles. Yet, person-career misfit is an insidious form of role stress that remains understudied and under-understood. In addition, quit-while-succeeding is another theoretical extension that deserves future attention. Quit-while-succeeding means that a salesperson will do well and in spite of such success, suddenly leave the profession. It is likely that salespeople who quit-while-succeeding are doing so because of poor career person fit. Much like role rejection, this phenomenon also remains understudied, and we encourage future research into both topics. Practical Implications Companies should screen for career fit during the selection process. Our research also highlights the benefits of being involved with a collegiate sales program. For example, sharing job characteristics and expectations transparently and experientially, such as those common in many collegiate sales programs, may enable poor fits to avoid such positions. Our research also suggests that being fully transparent about the sales role will pay off in the long run, as it will help to curtail poor fit. Identifying misfit after hire is also important, as a valuable employee may be saved by a transfer to a more appropriate role. Finally, monitoring of salesperson depersonalization and diminished accomplishment can yield interventions that minimize emotional exhaustion. This means that management should take an active role in monitoring the emotional health of their salespeople. Salespeople with poor fit will leave hints and management should be prepared to intervene and help the salesperson. The sequential nature of our model indicates that there are possibilities for intervention prior to burnout. For example, managers can pay attention to how their salespeople are engaging in various forms of interpersonal mentalizing and emotional labor (i.e. deep and surface acting). This means that managers should be prepared to intervene when they see that something is amiss with their salespeople. Because of the complexity of human emotions, the number of potential clues is nearly infinite, but management should be prepared to intervene if they notice faked sincerity or see hints of cynicism. Our research suggests that diminished accomplishments are not a salient feature for salespeople who are experiencing poor career person fit. This means that greater attention should be paid to other aspects of the burnout process. Management should also foster a healthy informal culture where salespeople are encouraged to share their emotions and work through issues with colleagues. Contribution This paper adds to role theory by developing career misfit as a form of role stress with implications for burnout. Role stress and burnout are common occurrences in today’s professional selling environment, and our research offers a glimpse into the emotional mechanisms that salespeople utilize to cope with role stress and burnout. The manuscript also extends the affect theory of social exchange by challenging the concept that a party must feel positive about a sales career. Through emotional intelligence and emotional labor, role-rejecting salespeople take on emotional baggage that is an untenable burden. Finally, we explore the implications of masking the toll of person-career misfit. Specifically, we find that masking the toll will lead to emotional exhaustion.