This study examines the relationships among salespeople's goal orientation, attribution, psychological responses, and behavior following sales performance failure, with a focus on the attribution process that follows such failure. Specifically, this study seeks to identify the factors that influence ability attribution and effort attribution—which constitute internal attributions during sales performance failure—and to propose helplessness and expectation of future success as psychological responses resulting from these internal attributions, and to examine the effects of these two psychological responses on sales behavior. Additionally, this study investigates whether the degree to which internal attributions affect psychological responses differs according to salespeople's tenure. Prior studies have primarily focused on factors that influence salesperson behavior in general selling situations but have overlooked salespeople's psychological responses and behavior in situations of sales performance failure where targeted performance has not been achieved. However, actual selling situations are ones where there is a high probability of failing to achieve targeted performance, and therefore exploration of the process following sales performance failure in such situations is also necessary. The results showed that among salespeople's goal orientations during sales performance failure, learning goal orientation increased effort attribution and decreased ability attribution, while performance goal orientation increased ability attribution. Furthermore, ability attribution increased helplessness and decreased expectation of future success, whereas effort attribution decreased helplessness and increased expectation of future success. The psychological responses resulting from attribution—helplessness and expectation of future success—were found to affect salesperson behavior: helplessness decreased pro-consumer behavior, while expectation of future success increased pro-consumer behavior. Additionally, the degree to which effort attribution and ability attribution affected helplessness and expectation of future success was found to differ according to salespeople's tenure. These results suggest that the causal search process differs depending on salespeople's goal orientation during sales performance failure, and that psychological and behavioral responses differ depending on what the cause is perceived to be. In particular, it was observed that not all internal attributions lead to positive outcomes; rather, depending on the type of internal attribution, positive responses may be elicited but negative responses may also be provoked. Furthermore, as the degree to which attribution affects internal responses was found to differ according to salespeople's tenure, this suggests that reattribution training following failure should vary by tenure level. Therefore, not all salespeople who attribute failure to internal causes are positive, and in order to continuously elicit positive responses even in situations of sales performance failure, it is advisable for firms to guide salespeople toward positive attributions and away from negative attributions. This study provides a better understanding of salesperson behavior by examining the relationships among salespeople's goal orientation, failure attribution, psychological responses, and behavior in situations where target performance has not been achieved, and raises awareness of salesperson responses following sales performance failure while providing strategic implications for salesperson training in the wake of failure.