The authors propose that the emotional intelligence (EI)-sales performance link can be better understood by considering a salesperson’s confidence in how they use emotions, known as emotional self-efficacy (ESE). Four multi-source studies across diverse sales industries offer evidence of the interactive effect of a salesperson’s EI and ESE – which we term emotional calibration – on salesperson performance. We find that sales performance suffers when salespeople are either overconfident or underconfident in their emotional skills and perform best when they are calibrated. Further, we demonstrate that the performance gains associated with emotional calibration (1) are attenuated when salespeople are under stress, and (2) occur because it encourages positive avoidance emotions (calmness and relaxation) among salespeople that result in improved customer rapport, but only among salespeople with relatively longer job tenures. Overall, the research highlights the critical role of ESE as an essential but neglected aspect of a salesperson’s emotional competence.

作者提出，可以通过考虑销售人员对他们如何使用情绪的信心来更好地理解情绪智力（EI）-销售绩效的联系，这被称为情绪自我效能（ESE）。跨不同销售行业的四项多来源研究提供了销售人员的EI和ESE交互作用的证据-我们称其为情感校准–关于销售人员的表现。我们发现，当销售人员对自己的情感技巧过分自信或不自信，并且在进行校准时表现最佳时，销售业绩就会受到影响。此外，我们证明，与情绪校准相关的性能提升（1）在销售人员承受压力时会减弱，而（2）发生是因为它鼓励销售人员之间积极回避情绪（镇定和放松），从而改善了客户的融洽性，但仅工作期限相对较长的销售人员中。总体而言，该研究强调了ESE的关键作用，它是销售人员情感能力的重要但被忽略的方面。