The Importance of Delayed Gratification in B2B Sales

Salespeople play a pivotal role in organizations as they are responsible for revenue streams. Finding the qualities that increase salespeopleâ s probability to perform at high levels when selling in a business to business environment, and how such qualities influence them to want to remain in the organization, are very important questions for companies. Delayed gratification is an important self-regulation construct that provides salespeople with the ability to develop long-term relationships with buyers that will increase business opportunities for both organizations. Establishing the relationships between delayed gratification, performance, and intentions to leave is the main objective of this research. Additionally, finding how two of the Big Five personality traits, consciousness and neuroticism, influence the individualâ s propensity to exercise delayed gratification is a secondary objective of this study. While sales performance and salespeople intentions to leave have been analyzed from several perspectives, to date, no research has been done to relate delayed gratification ability to these two constructs for salespeople. A similar endeavor for this research is how personal traits relate to salespeopleâ s delayed gratification. A field study will be employed to empirically test the four hypotheses that support the relationship between delayed gratification and performance, intentions to leave, conscientiousness, and neuroticism for salespeople.