Recognizing that associations between personality and job performance can depend on situational characteristics, three samples of proactive, commission-earning sales-people were studied. Objective sales were found to be a function of individuals' Achievement Orientation and Potency, but also of low Agreeableness. Associations with Conscientiousness were not contingent on the level of other Big Five characteristics. V inchur, Shippmann, Switzer, and Roth (1998) have summarized pre-1997 research into personality and objective sales performance within a framework based on the Big Five factors. Linked to Hough's (e.g., 1992) expansion of that 5-factor taxonomy, they examined published findings for each of the factors, and also for two aspects of Extraversion (Affiliation and Potency) and of Conscientiousness (Achievement Orientation and Dependability). Strongest associations were found for particular sub-components of Extraversion and Conscientiousness: mean correlations with sales of Potency and Achievement Orientation were .15 and .23, respectively. The lowest mean values were .03 for Openness to Experience and À .02 for Agreeableness. This paper addresses two issues that go beyond that general pattern -differences between situations in the associations between personality and sales performance, and possible statistical interactions between different personality predictors. We will examine objective indicators of performance in three samples of sales-people.

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Tamsin Martin leads on talent management at PwC with responsibility for the design and delivery of the firm’s strategy for identifying, managing and developing talent. Her work involves defining what the firm means by ‘potential’, deciding how to evaluate it, monitoring the effectiveness of talent review groups, designing leadership development programmes and coaching Directors on the track to becoming Partner. Tamsin works closely with the assessment and development teams, which both employ a number of occupational psychologists. In this article, Tamsin outlines how and where the organisation use psychometric measures.