Valued, overlooked, and sought after: the subjective well-being of top-performing B2B salespeople

Abstract

Top-performing salespeople are invaluable financial assets and role models within sales organizations, yet their well-being remains an unexplored topic in research. This study examines the subjective well-being (SWB) of top-performing business-to-business (B2B) salespeople, focusing on the unique challenges they face – including high performance pressure and what we term the “attention challenge”: the paradoxical experience of being highly valued but also potentially overlooked by management, while simultaneously being frequently sought out by colleagues for advice and support. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 27 top-performing salespeople and a validation webinar with five sales executives, we reveal three interrelated capabilities underpinning top performers’ SWB: work-performance, relational-contribution, and well-being management capability. Our findings extend the sales literature by providing a capability-based framework that integrates eudaimonic well-being perspectives and by introducing the attention challenge as a top performer-specific friction point. The study offers actionable insights for supporting the sustained well-being and performance of top-performing B2B salespeople.