Coping with emotional challenges among salespersons

Salespersons encounter some of the most stressful events in their daily endeavors to make sales as they handle people with widely varying emotional intelligence. This makes them have emotional challenges that is not dealt with can grow to worse conditions. This research will look at the most effective way of the salesperson participating in the handling of the emotional challenge they get themselves in. there will be a conceptual framework drafted that will help in understanding the concept of expressive suppression as a way of handling emotional challenge among sale persons leading to emotional stability among the salespersons. By the end of the research, it is expected that a positive correlation between the emotional well being of the sales person and the expressive suppression will be established as opined by Science China Press, (2014).

Making sales in the contemporary society often takes the form or face to face interaction with the potential client, or the now widely used video conversation to reach distant clients. The telephone is yet another common medium for sales or pitching for one. These forms often tax the mind of the salesperson, often subjecting them to emotional strain and emotional challenges during and after the sales encounter. Unfortunately, there has been little done in equipping the sale people across the varying cultures with the requisite skills to cope with the emotional challenges. There is need hence to have mechanisms of dealing with the emotional challenges among the sales persons which in this case will be expressive suppression. The human behaviorists indicate that an individual can keep their emotions from showing during social interactions, this is what is called expressive suppression (Butler E.A. & Egloff B., 2003). Though there are other ways of suppressing emotions like the cognitive reappraisal, the expressive suppression is seen widely to be more effective.

The process of regulating emotions in an individual involves the person striving to regulate the kind of emotion they display to the people they are with or speaking to as well as the emotions they have within them and at what times to have these emotions. There are other ways of regulating emotions like the cognitive reappraisal method which involves actually reappraising an event and deciding what meaning to assign to the event and consequently the emotions to assign them (Huffington, 2013).
However, of greater significance herein is the expressive suppression as a way of emotional regulation. This involves avoiding ones emotions from showing during a social interaction. It is a way of controlling free expression to suit the particular context within which the individual is operating. This is a method found to be effective when carrying out a sales pitch where the sales is the ultimate focus and the individual portrays to the client what the client needs to see as his emotional disposition. This approach helps dampen the negative emotions within the salesperson and is known to be more effective than the reappraisal method. Once the salesperson has successfully dampened the negative emotions, he is able to carry out his activities with the positive emotions and approach only taking control of the sales process. This approach to emotional control is productive and constructive to both the salesperson as it helps them keep a level head throughout the working days as well as client as it helps them see a receptive and open minded sales person hence able to free make their enquiries.
It is instrumental to highlight that the salespersons encounter both the easy and the difficult clients who can be emotionally draining. The expressive suppression however helps the sales person to see the difficult clients to as impossible to handle but as a chance to turn their emotional difficulty into a closed sales pitch just like the easy and receptive clients.

There is a positive relationship between expressive suppression and emotional stability.
There is a negative relationship between sales attrition and expressive suppression.
There is a positive relationship between the performance of salesperson and their long term job enjoyment at the long run.

The research will be designed in a manner that there will be two sets of participants to be observed; the control and the intervention sets. The control set will have the normal sales process go on to a number of potential clients and on the intervention set, they will be first trained on what expressive suppression is and how to use it in a sales process before being allowed to conduct a sales pitch. There will then be an interview from the potential clients from both sides on how well they felt in terms of being handled by the sales people. The overall rate of satisfaction will help show which set gave the customers a general sense of satisfaction and confidence.

The first data collection will be from peer reviewed articles from previously conducted researches and the pertinent issues noted. Then there will be data collected from both the sets of sales persons and the clients. There will be interviews conducted on both the control and the intervention sets of clients and clients as well with the aim of seeing if the intervention made the emotional equilibrium better and if this equilibrium reflected on the customers. 50 sales people are targeted with 25 being on each set and another 50 clients also targeted for the data collection.

The expected results in the research are that there will be a positive relationship between the expressive suppression and the emotional stability of the sales people in the process of the sales pitch. Further, it is expected that there will be displayed lesser attrition in sales with better emotional stability. The research also expects to establish that there is a positive relationship between the performance of the salespersons and their liking of the job of the enjoyment of the job after mastering the art of expressive suppression.

The intent of the study will bring forth the approaches that can be used to result in emotional stability among the sales people and the practical benefit of the emotional balance in the process of making a sales pitch. This is aimed at influencing the human resources managers into considering regular trainings of the sales staff members on the issue of emotional intelligence and the expressive suppression. This is an instrumental way of ensuring the sales staff is equipped to handle the continued stress of the job and clients of varying emotional intelligence as well as delivering the best possible services in the process.

The study will be centre around the expressive suppression and the effect on the salespersons emotional disposition as well as the sales process. The role of this measure on the satisfaction of the clients is also covered and the control and intervention set approach gives the observable effect that the expressive suppression can have on the sales process. There is need to have further research done to look in more ways of attaining the emotional balance over the ever changing contemporary society with information technology rapidly changing and shaping our society.