Overcoming emotional exhaustion in a sales setting

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how sales organizations can become sustainable by reducing or mitigating emotional exhaustion in their sales employees. Specifically, this paper examines how organizational support, sales creativity, grit and emotional engagement impact emotional exhaustion. A sample of 361 business-to-business sales employees across a variety of organizations and industries were included in the study. Results indicated that perceived organizational support and emotional engagement negatively influenced emotional exhaustion. Although grit and sales creativity did not directly impact emotional exhaustion, both positively impacted emotional engagement. For sales organizations, these findings have important applications. First, employers need to hire employees that exhibit high levels of grit and sales creativity. Second, organizations need to provide a supportive and creative environment in order to minimize the impact of emotional exhaustion for their sales employees.