Narcissism and achievement motivation as related to three facets of the sales role: Attraction, satisfaction and performance

Relationships were posited between two personality constructs-narcissism an d achievement motivation--and three facets of the sales role: attraction, s atisfaction and performance. As predicted, currently and previously employe d salespeople were more narcissistic and had stronger needs for achievement than individuals who were never employed in sales. Narcissism was positive ly associated with overall sales satisfaction and with level of comfort wit h ethically questionable sales behaviors; narcissism was unrelated to sales performance. In contrast, need for achievement was unrelated to sales sati sfaction, negatively related to comfort with ethically questionable sales b ehaviors, but positively related to sales performance. Practical implicatio ns of these findings for sales recruiters and trainers are discussed.