The roles of political skill and intrinsic motivation in performance prediction of adaptive selling

Abstract

Previous studies have long recognized and examined adaptive selling behavior as an effective selling behavior in current selling situations. Although some studies assumed and revealed moderating factors that affect the effectiveness of adaptive selling behavior, few studies examined an individual’s skill as a moderator on this effect. This study focuses on political skill as a type of skill that has been recently found to have positive effects on sales performance. In addition, this study includes intrinsic motivation as an additional moderator that enables political skill to be invested for effective selling behavior. Our analysis of 249 salespeople and 145 supervisors in a matching sample largely supports our hypotheses that the positive effects of adaptive selling behavior on sales performance are the highest when both political skill and intrinsic motivation are high.