The Human Layer Behind Sales Performance

Sales teams have more support than ever.

They have playbooks, call recordings, CRM workflows, AI summaries, objection libraries and instant access to product information.

Yet two salespeople with access to the same knowledge can respond very differently when the buyer:

• Goes silent.
• Challenges the price.
• Rejects the proposal.
• Introduces a new stakeholder.
• Changes the decision criteria.
• Delays the next step.
• Chooses a competitor.

The difference is not always knowledge.

It can be found in how the salesperson interprets the situation and decides what to do next.

This is the human layer behind sales performance.

What do we mean by the human layer?

The human layer sits between the sales event and the salesperson’s response.

A buyer says:

“We need to think about it.”

One salesperson accepts the statement and schedules another follow-up.

Another assumes the deal is lost and withdraws.

Someone else becomes anxious and offers a discount.

A fourth salesperson asks what remains unresolved in the decision.

The buyer’s words were the same.

The interpretation and response were different.

IncaZing™ examines seven research-informed areas that can influence this space between what happens and what the salesperson does next.

1. Explanatory style

Explanatory style describes how people habitually explain positive and negative events.

After losing a deal, a salesperson may conclude:

“I’m not capable of enterprise sales.”

That explanation is broad and relatively permanent.

Another salesperson may decide:

“I didn’t involve the right stakeholder early enough.”

That explanation is specific and creates a possible next action.

Research by Martin Seligman and Peter Schulman studied explanatory style among life-insurance sales agents.

Among 94 experienced agents, those in the more optimistic half of the assessment sold 37% more insurance during their first two years than those in the less optimistic half.

In a separate study of 103 newly hired agents, those in the more optimistic half remained in the role at approximately twice the rate and sold more insurance.

These were differences between groups in the populations studied. They were not the results of an IncaZing intervention or a guaranteed training outcome.

The commercial relevance is straightforward.

A lost deal does not only affect the opportunity already gone. The explanation carried forward may influence prospecting, recovery and the next buyer conversation.

2. Rejection response

Rejection is expected in sales.

Protective behaviour can still develop around it.

Verbeke and Bagozzi studied sales-call anxiety among 189 mortgage salespeople. They described it as fear of negative evaluation or rejection combined with a desire to avoid functional actions required in selling.

The researchers identified:

• Negative self-evaluation.
• Expected negative evaluation from the customer.
• Physical anxiety responses.
• Protective actions during sales interactions.

These dimensions negatively influenced performance in the group studied.

A later study of 171 salespeople found that task concentration and sales perseverance could reduce dysfunctional protective actions. Their usefulness depended on whether the difficulty involved negative thoughts or stronger physiological sensations.

In practice, rejection response may appear through delayed prospecting, weakened commercial questions, premature concessions or excessive attention given to buyers who feel safer.

The salesperson may remain active.

The quality of the action changes.

3. Sales self-efficacy

Self-efficacy is a person’s belief that they can execute the actions required in a particular situation.

It is more specific than general confidence.

A salesperson may feel capable of presenting the product but uncertain about discussing commercial consequences with a CFO.

They may be comfortable with discovery but hesitate when a buyer challenges their recommendation.

Barling and Beattie developed a self-efficacy questionnaire using 200 insurance representatives and tested it in a separate sample of 97 representatives.

Self-efficacy beliefs were associated with objective measures including calls per week, policies sold, sales revenue and a combined performance measure based on actual commission.

The authors described the relationship as correlational, not causal.

Other sales research has connected learning effort with self-efficacy and self-efficacy with performance.

The important question is not whether someone sounds confident.

It is whether their confidence relates to the specific task—and whether their demonstrated response supports that belief.

4. Buyer value recognition

Value does not exist only as a product claim.

It also depends on what the buyer is trying to achieve, what they must change and how different stakeholders evaluate the decision.

Lindgreen and Wynstra reviewed the literature on value in business markets.

Their work distinguished between:

• The value of goods and services.
• The value of buyer–supplier relationships.

A CFO, sales leader, RevOps manager and frontline salesperson may all evaluate the same purchase differently.

The product remains the same.

The decision context changes.

This is why a generic value proposition can sound relevant to the organisation without becoming important enough to any individual stakeholder.

Value recognition comes before value communication.

The salesperson first needs to understand what the buyer values before deciding how to discuss it.

5. Adaptive selling

Playbooks create structure.

Buyers create variation.

Franke and Park combined research from 155 samples involving more than 31,000 salespeople.

Their meta-analysis found that adaptive selling behaviour was positively related to self-rated, manager-rated and objective performance.

Adaptive selling does not mean changing direction whenever a buyer reacts.

The salesperson needs to:

• Notice a meaningful signal.
• Interpret what it may mean.
• Decide what should change.
• Preserve the commercial objective.
• Observe whether the change worked.

Without this judgement, adaptation can become improvisation or appeasement.

The buyer changes.

The salesperson needs to understand whether the sales approach should change with them.

6. Applied emotional intelligence

Sales conversations contain emotional information.

Tone changes.

Pauses become longer.

A buyer becomes more direct.

A stakeholder withdraws.

These signals matter, but they are not complete explanations.

Kidwell and colleagues conducted three field studies involving real-estate and insurance sales professionals.

Exchange-specific emotional intelligence was positively related to sales performance, including revenue generation and customer retention, after accounting for broader emotional intelligence, self-reported emotional intelligence, cognitive ability and other variables.

Later research across four multisource studies examined emotional calibration: the relationship between emotional ability and confidence in using that ability.

Performance suffered when salespeople were either overconfident or underconfident in their emotional skills. Performance was strongest when ability and confidence were better calibrated.

Reading the buyer is not the same as reading them correctly.

The salesperson must separate observation from interpretation and test assumptions before acting on them.

7. Goal-directed persistence

Sales requires persistence.

But not every opportunity deserves unlimited effort.

B2B sales research by Dugan and colleagues found positive relationships between salesperson grit, performance and job satisfaction in the context studied.

The research also identified boundary conditions and a potential dark side.

A broader meta-analysis by Credé, Tynan and Harms included 584 effect sizes, 88 independent samples and 66,807 individuals.

The authors found that grit was moderately related to performance and retention, overlapped strongly with conscientiousness and was more useful through its perseverance-of-effort component than consistency of interest.

The conclusion is not that persistence lacks value.

It is that persistence needs direction.

Salespeople need to distinguish between:

• Continuing.
• Repeating.
• Adapting.
• Escalating.
• Pausing.
• Disengaging.

The best decision depends on the evidence available in the opportunity.

These areas do not operate separately

A sales situation may involve several human mechanisms at once.

A buyer rejects a proposal.

The salesperson explains the loss as evidence that they cannot sell to enterprise buyers.

Their self-efficacy falls.

They avoid similar prospects.

When another buyer challenges the price, they discount early to reduce the risk of rejection.

The behaviour cannot be fully understood through one construct alone.

Another salesperson may show the opposite pattern.

They remain highly confident, persist with a weak opportunity, ignore new buyer information and continue repeating the same value proposition.

What appears to be grit may actually contain poor adaptation and weak value recognition.

This is why the human layer cannot be reduced to a single personality score.

Where IncaZing fits

IncaZing does not claim ownership over these psychological and sales constructs.

They come from established academic research.

Our work is in how they are brought into relevant sales situations.

Participants respond to moments involving:

• Buyer silence.
• Rejection.
• Commercial pressure.
• Stakeholder changes.
• Stalled opportunities.
• Emotional tension.
• Uncertain next steps.

We examine the reasoning behind the response.

What did the participant notice?

What did they assume?

Which information mattered?

What influenced the action?

What alternative response could produce better information or movement?

The participant then receives guided development and opportunities to practise a more useful response.

What IncaZing does not claim

Published research can establish that a mechanism deserves attention.

It cannot automatically prove that an IncaZing programme will create the same outcome.

For example:

The 37% sales difference reported in explanatory-style research is not an IncaZing performance promise.

The adaptive-selling meta-analysis does not mean every participant will increase sales by a fixed percentage.

An association between emotional intelligence and revenue does not prove that emotional-intelligence training will cause an identical revenue increase.

IncaZing programme outcomes must be measured using IncaZing programme data.

Commercial outcomes should then be examined using the client’s operating data.

Keeping these evidence layers separate protects the credibility of the work.

How improvement should be measured

The first question is whether the participant’s response improves.

This can be examined through:

• Pre- and post-programme situations.
• Quality of reasoning.
• Evidence used in the response.
• Appropriate behavioural choices.
• Confidence-capability calibration.
• Manager observation.
• Application after the programme.

The next question is whether relevant operating behaviour changes.

Depending on the programme and client, this may include:

• Prospecting consistency.
• Follow-up quality.
• Opportunity progression.
• Discounting behaviour.
• Sales-cycle movement.
• Manager coaching repetition.
• Pipeline quality.

Only after this should the organisation examine relationships with revenue, conversion, margin, ramp or retention.

The role of AI

AI can provide information, recommend questions, summarise conversations and identify patterns.

This will continue improving.

But information does not make the final sales decision.

A human still decides:

• What the buyer’s silence means.
• Whether an objection is genuine.
• Whether the strategy should change.
• When to challenge.
• When to persist.
• When to disengage.

AI can support the sale.

The human remains responsible for the interpretation and next move.

The IncaZing view

Sales performance is not produced by knowledge alone.

It is also shaped by what the salesperson does when knowledge must be applied under pressure.

IncaZing works on this human layer: how sales professionals interpret setbacks, respond to rejection, judge their capability, recognise buyer value, use emotional information, adapt and allocate persistence.

Because the CRM records what happened.

It does not always reveal the human judgement that helped produce it.

Research sources

Seligman, M. E. P., & Schulman, P. (1986). Explanatory style as a predictor of productivity and quitting among life insurance sales agents. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50(4), 832–838.

https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.50.4.832

Verbeke, W., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2000). Sales call anxiety: Exploring what it means when fear rules a sales encounter. Journal of Marketing, 64(3), 88–101.

https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkg.64.3.88.18032

Belschak, F., Verbeke, W., & Bagozzi, R. P. (2006). Coping with sales call anxiety: The role of sale perseverance and task concentration strategies. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 34(3), 403–418.

https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070306286535

Barling, J., & Beattie, R. (1983). Self-efficacy beliefs and sales performance. Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 5(1), 41–51.

https://doi.org/10.1300/J075v05n01_05

Lindgreen, A., & Wynstra, F. (2005). Value in business markets: What do we know? Where are we going? Industrial Marketing Management, 34(7), 732–748.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2005.01.001

Franke, G. R., & Park, J.-E. (2006). Salesperson adaptive selling behavior and customer orientation: A meta-analysis. Journal of Marketing Research, 43(4), 693–702.

https://doi.org/10.1509/jmkr.43.4.693

Kidwell, B., Hardesty, D. M., Murtha, B. R., & Sheng, S. (2011). Emotional intelligence in marketing exchanges. Journal of Marketing, 75(1), 78–95.

https://doi.org/10.1509/jm.75.1.78

Kidwell, B., Hasford, J., Turner, B., Hardesty, D. M., & Zablah, A. R. (2021). Emotional calibration and salesperson performance. Journal of Marketing, 85(6).

https://doi.org/10.1177/0022242921999603

Dugan, R., Hochstein, B., Rouziou, M., & Britton, B. (2019). Gritting their teeth to close the sale: The positive effect of salesperson grit on job satisfaction and performance. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 39(1), 81–101.

https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2018.1489726

Credé, M., Tynan, M. C., & Harms, P. D. (2017). Much ado about grit: A meta-analytic synthesis of the grit literature. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 113(3), 492–511.

https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000102