Willy and Individual Opportunity

What does Willy believe about ‘individual opportunity’? What does he thinks makes someone able to be successful?

Willy believes that to be successful, you have to be well-liked. To him, that means that you have to be popular and liked for your personality, not your ethics or virtues or good things. He bases his whole mindset off this idea. He expects people like Biff (and, I think, Happy) to be successful and respected because they're social and friendly. Supposedly, anyway. He can't understand that being simply hardworking and intelligent will get you places.

To me, liked in Willy's mind stands for being respected as we think about it and well-liked stands for simply less. When you're well-liked, people think you're a great person, they love you and invite you to parties and stuff but don't give you great jobs. When you're liked, you're more likely to be respected. You don't have to like someone to respect them. I expect there are people who hate their bosses, but if their boss is efficient and fair, then they respect them. They don't like them personally, but professionally they do, if that makes sense. Willy doesn't understand that, and that's why he gets fired at the end. He doesn't understand that he isn't respected- he may be a nice guy (or in his case, may have been a nice guy)- but he is not good at his work.

(Personally, I think Willy's a dense idiot, but that has nothing to do with the question so I won't say anything else.)