Measuring and testing the impact of interpersonal mentalizing skills on retail sales performance

The advancement of theory of mind in general, and development of interpersonal mentalizing (IM) skills measure in particular, has opened new avenues for sales research and practice. To further explore and validate this critical measure, we examine the impact of interpersonal mentalizing through the parallel as well as serial mechanisms of self-efficacy and adaptive selling. Modeling these constructs in an input-process-output framework as well as within the neurological brain network, we analyze sales data across two retail contexts. Interpersonal mentalizing skills not only directly increase performance in both the real estate and automobile sectors, but work indirectly through self-efficacy and adaptive selling. Our rival model uncovers a serial mediation from interpersonal mentalizing to self-efficacy to adaptive selling and, ultimately, to performance. Results further validate IM skills measure, bridge retail and neurology literature as an avenue of future research, and provide managers with a guide on how to transform salesperson traits into organizational outcomes.