Picture two salespeople with identical resumes and the same level of self-confidence in their abilities. One works a quiet territory with few rivals. The other operates in a market where competitors slash prices, copy products, and chase the same customers. Will their shared confidence translate into the same ability to adapt and perform? A new study suggests the answer is no, and that the gap between them comes down to how their inner drive responds to outside pressure.
The research, published in the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, examines a long-standing puzzle in sales research: why a salesperson’s belief in their own abilities sometimes predicts strong performance and sometimes seems to make no difference at all.
A Question With Inconsistent Answers
Belén Bande, a professor of marketing at the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in Spain, worked with colleagues in Spain and Japan to investigate this question. Their focus was on what researchers call adaptive performance, which they define as how well individuals cope with, respond to, and support changes in their roles, whether as individuals, team members, or members of a broader organization.
The sales role has shifted considerably in recent decades. Digital tools, demanding customers, and rising competition mean salespeople constantly face new situations they must adjust to. A natural assumption is that self-efficacy, meaning a person’s belief that they can perform their job well, would help them adapt. But the existing research is mixed. Some studies found that confident workers adapt better. Others found no link at all, and a few even suggested that very high confidence can backfire, leading people to stubbornly stick with strategies that no longer work.
The authors argue that these conflicting results may stem from studies looking at self-efficacy in isolation, without accounting for what happens inside a person’s head and what is happening around them in the market.
A Framework Built on Three Ingredients
To untangle this, the team turned to a model from marketing and management research known as the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability, or MOA, framework. The idea is straightforward: for effective behavior to happen, a person needs three things at once. They need the ability to act, the motivation to do so, and the opportunity that makes the action relevant.
The researchers matched each of these ingredients to a specific factor in a salesperson’s life. Ability was represented by self-efficacy, the salesperson’s belief in their own capability. Motivation was represented by intrinsic motivation, meaning the drive to do the work for the enjoyment and satisfaction of the work itself, rather than for an external reward like a bonus. Opportunity was represented by competitive intensity, the degree to which the market is crowded with aggressive rivals and demanding customers.
Their central proposal was that self-efficacy does not directly produce adaptive performance. Instead, they suggested confidence first feeds intrinsic motivation, and that motivation, in turn, drives the ability to adapt. They also proposed that competitive intensity acts like a switch that determines whether this whole chain gets activated.
To explain why competition might matter, the authors borrowed from a separate idea called the Job Demands-Resources perspective. From this angle, intense competition is a kind of job demand. For a confident salesperson, that demand can feel like a worthy challenge worth rising to. For a salesperson who doubts their abilities, the same competitive pressure can feel like an obstacle that wears them down.
Surveying Salespeople and Their Bosses
To test these ideas, the team surveyed 145 pairs of salespeople and their supervisors. The companies were located in the Galicia region of Spain and spanned industries including manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, technology, finance and insurance, and food and beverage. Of the 151 companies approached, only six declined to take part.
Each pair filled out a set of questionnaires. Salespeople reported on their own self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation. To avoid the problem of people rating their own performance too generously, the supervisors evaluated each salesperson’s adaptive performance instead, judging how the employee handled change at the individual, team, and organizational levels. Supervisors also rated the competitive intensity of the market the company operated in. The salespeople in the sample were about 39 years old on average, with roughly eight years of sales experience.
The researchers then ran a series of statistical analyses designed to trace not just whether the factors were connected, but how and under what conditions they linked together.
What the Numbers Revealed
The first finding confirmed the proposed chain. Salesperson self-efficacy was positively linked to intrinsic motivation, and that motivation was, in turn, positively linked to adaptive performance. The data showed that self-efficacy had no direct effect on adaptive performance on its own. Its influence ran entirely through motivation. In other words, confidence appeared to matter only to the extent that it sparked a genuine desire to do the work.
The second finding addressed the role of competition, and this is where the picture grew more detailed. The strength of the link between self-efficacy and motivation depended heavily on how competitive the market was.
When competitive intensity was high, the relationship between self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation was sharply positive. Confident salespeople in tough markets showed a strong jump in their internal drive. But when competitive intensity was low, that relationship disappeared. In fact, the slope turned slightly negative, though the effect was not statistically meaningful. The indirect path from self-efficacy to adaptive performance was significant only as competition rose, and it was strongest among salespeople facing the most intense competition.
The authors interpret this through the concept of fit, the idea that people are most motivated and effective when their personal strengths match the demands of their environment. A confident salesperson in a fierce market has a setting where their skills are genuinely needed, which appears to energize their motivation. A confident salesperson in a sleepy market lacks that spark. The lowest levels of motivation and adaptive performance showed up in a particular mismatch: salespeople with low self-efficacy facing high competition. For them, the pressure seemed to function as a hindrance rather than a challenge.
One result emerged that the researchers had not predicted. Competitive intensity was also directly and positively associated with intrinsic motivation on its own. This hints that demanding markets may carry their own motivating quality, at least for some salespeople, though the study’s central focus remained on competition as a condition that shapes how confidence translates into drive.
What It May Mean for Sales Teams
The authors suggest several practical takeaways for managers, while noting these flow from their interpretation of the patterns. They propose that organizations consider the competitive environment when trying to boost adaptability. Building self-efficacy through training, goal-setting, constructive feedback, and public recognition may help, but the payoff appears greatest when that confidence meets a genuinely challenging market.
The team also suggests that fostering intrinsic motivation deserves attention, especially in competitive settings. Job design that increases autonomy, task significance, and a sense of purpose may help make sales work feel rewarding in itself. They offer a more tailored idea as well: assigning stretch goals and complex accounts to highly confident reps, while giving lower-confidence reps more support and resources so that competitive pressure does not become a source of strain.
A few caveats are worth keeping in mind. The study captured a single snapshot in time rather than tracking people over months or years, so it cannot firmly establish the direction of cause and effect. Competitive intensity was rated by supervisors rather than the salespeople themselves, and individuals may perceive their markets differently. The sample also came from one region of Spain. The researchers point to longer-term studies and additional market conditions, such as technological change, as directions for future work.
Still, the study offers evidence for a tidy reframing of an old question. Confidence alone does not make a salesperson adaptable. That confidence has to light a fire of genuine motivation, and the market has to be demanding enough to make that fire worth lighting.
