“I think I can…I think I can”: The impact of perceived selling efficacy and deal disclosure on salesperson escalation of commitment

Salespeople have considerable autonomy in the choices they make with respect to both the types and amounts of resources they deploy in pursuing potential customer accounts and specific sales opportunities. Building from a prospect theory framework and also leveraging self-justification theory, this research reports the results of three experimental studies conducted on practicing salespeople. The experiments help shed light on several factors that might influence a critical form of salesperson resource allocation decision — the allocation of the salesperson's own ‘selling time’ which is devoted to a specific sales opportunity. Study 1 establishes that an escalation of commitment effect exists when salespeople pursue a new customer opportunity, and that “competitive intensity” is a key variable that attenuates the escalation of commitment effect. Study 2 demonstrates that a salesperson's “selling efficacy” – or their confidence in their abilities and decision-making in sales – has important, but mixed, effects on the salesperson's allocation of scarce resources. Finally, study 3 broadens this research by showing that environmental factors such as the extent to which the salesperson has ‘disclosed’ their pursuit of a new sales opportunity within their own organization can also influence the escalation of commitment effect on how they allocate resources in pursuit of that business. The article's broader contribution is that it offers an overdue and preliminary glimpse into the levers which shape and influence how, when, and why salespeople apply resources in the pursuit of new customers.     

Do business customers perceive what salespeople believe? Perceptions of salesperson adoption of innovations

A salesperson's commitment and effort toward an innovation can determine whether the customer agrees to buy it, such that customers' perceptions of such commitment and effort are critical. But these perceptions also might differ fundamentally from the salesperson's self-perceptions of commitment and effort. Therefore, this paper presents a theoretical framework of the relation between salesperson-perceived and customer-perceived commitment and effort, as exhibited by the salesperson while selling an innovation, which represents salesperson adoption. In the framework, job satisfaction factors also exert contingent, moderating effects. The authors gather unique, dyadic data from surveys of salespeople and their (potential) business customers during visits to sell a conventional, incremental innovation, complemented by objective purchase data gathered from company records. Three key insights emerge fromt this study. First, salespeople's own perceptions of their commitment and effort have only moderate influences on customers' perceptions of salespeople's commitment and effort. Second, customers seem to recognize salesperson effort more readily than salesperson commitment, although salesperson commitment has a higher sales performance impact than salesperson effort. Thus, sales managers should seek to encourage and support both the commitment of salespeople and also perceptions of that commitment among customers. Third, while a higher organizational support or job autonomy strengthens customers' perceptions of salesperson adoption, a higher pay satisfaction diminishes it. Thus, firms might need to find ways to increase the support for the salespeople and their autonomy and to reduce salespeople's satisfaction with their (direct) payments. In total, these findings suggest significant scientific and managerial implications.     

How salesperson perceptions of customers' pro-social behaviors help drive salesperson performance

By conceptualizing customers' organizational citizenship behavior as a communication cue, a customer evaluation criterion, and a sales performance facilitator in a relational selling context, the authors empirically demonstrate the effect of salespeople's perceptions of their customers' voluntary, prosocial behavior on three components of sales performance. The authors first hypothesize and confirm that salespeople can perceive their customers to exhibit organizational citizenship behavior, and that this important customer cue can serve as a customer evaluation criterion. The authors then demonstrate how salespeople can respond to their perceptions of customers' organizational citizenship behavior in performance-enhancing ways. Results from a sample of 628 business-to-business salespeople suggest that customer-involved sales performance fully mediates the relationship between customers' organizational citizenship behavior and salesperson behavioral performance, and that salesperson behavioral performance partially mediates the relationship between customer-involved sales performance and salesperson outcome productivity. These findings highlight the important role customer-involved sales performance plays as an antecedent to a salesperson's individual performance. Support for the notion that salespeople's perceptions and interpretations of their customers' organizational citizenship behavior can facilitate personal selling and augment sales performance has implications for sales training, salesperson evaluation, and customer evaluation. The authors discuss these and other implications for B2B researchers and practitioners.     

Alone on an island: A mixed-methods investigation of salesperson social isolation in general and in times of a pandemic

Industrial salespeople spend more time outside of the firm than inside of the firm. As a consequence, they may be particularly prone to salesperson social isolation - or feelings of being disconnected from coworkers and colleagues. Potentially magnified by the 2019 coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the prevalence of social isolation may become a more common and modern-day challenge for salespeople. As part of this, managers must consider the notion of salesperson social isolation and its impact on job performance. To explore this phenomenon, we employ a multi-study, mixed-methods approach. In Study, 1 we conduct a quantitative survey-based study (with a sample of 233 industrial salespeople) investigating the relationship between salesperson social isolation and salesperson performance and the processes through which it occurs. In Study 2, we utilize a discovery-oriented theories-in-use qualitative approach (with a sample of 27 sales professionals) to investigate the nature of salesperson social isolation (with certain pandemic related factors), its consequences (also considering pandemic related factors), and important manager and salesperson actions that offset the negative effects of salesperson social isolation. Altogether, our findings shed some light into the if, how, what (in much more detail), and when aspects of salesperson social isolation. Theoretical and managerial implications are also discussed.     

Social media in B2B sales: Why and when does salesperson social media usage affect salesperson performance?

The importance of social media usage by B2B salespeople has been well documented in the sales literature. In particular, a B2B salesperson's use of social media to prospect for customers and adapt their sales approach have primarily been shown to explain sales performance. However, an increasing body of literature in the sales domain has called for B2B salespeople to be ambidextrous by engaging in service activities aimed at helping their customers. We argue that by giving B2B salespeople an opportunity to communicate directly with their customers, social media is used by salespeople to proactively service their customers and hence can play a critical role in driving sales performance. Drawing from the Task-Technology Fit theory, we develop and test a conceptual model in which B2B salesperson social media usage affects salesperson performance indirectly through value-oriented prospecting and proactive servicing. Additionally peer social media usage was a key moderator in the relationship between B2B salesperson social media usage on the one hand and value-oriented prospecting and proactive servicing on the other hand. We test the model with data from 171 B2B salespeople and find that salesperson social media usage relates positively with proactive servicing and value-oriented prospecting. While we did not find support for the relationship between social media usage and adaptive selling, we did find support for the impact of all three sales activities salesperson performance. In addition, results show that peer social media usage has positive moderating effects on the B2B salesperson social media usage and value-oriented prospecting/proactive servicing relationships.     

Can customer loyalty to a salesperson be harmful? Examining customer perceptions of salesperson emotional labor strategies post ethical transgressions

Past research suggests that customer loyalty is a critical component in successful business-to-business sales relationships. Challenging this view, this study suggests that customer loyalty may actually have an unexpected “dark side” to it. Specifically, grounded in Emotions as Social Information (EASI) theory, this research investigates the role that customer loyalty (to a salesperson) has on customer coping behavior post salesperson ethical transgressions. We take the often-underrepresented customer perspective in selling relationships to test our theoretical model using a field study that consists of 239 professional procurement specialists. Our results indicate that when customers believe that a salesperson is more genuine in displaying emotions, after an ethical transgression, customers are more likely to forgive, and less likely to seek revenge against or avoid the salesperson. On the other hand, when customers believe that a salesperson is “faking” emotions, customers are more likely to cope with ethical transgressions by avoiding and seeking revenge against the salesperson. Our study also finds that when an ethical transgression occurs, a “love becomes hate” effect occurs, where customer loyalty undermines a salesperson's efforts and does not always favor the salesperson.     

Social media use in B2b sales and its impact on competitive intelligence collection and adaptive selling: Examining the role of learning orientation as an enabler

This paper examines the use of social media by business-to-business (B2B) salespeople to assist in their job functions. The authors propose that a salesperson's attitude toward social media usefulness, as well as a salesperson's learning orientation, will influence how much a salesperson uses social media to assist in day-to-day job tasks. Additionally, the impact that the use of social media has on collecting knowledge about competitors, adapting to customers, and sales performance is considered. Accordingly, a broad literature review is provided to introduce extant theory contributing to the proposed model. The practical uses of social media by salespeople will be described, and then the theoretical foundation is built, encompassing social media use, goal orientations, and adaptive selling theory. Results of an empirical model are provided, followed by a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications.     

Navigating the demands of increasing customer participation through firm and individual job resources

Many firms are increasing the amount of customer participation required in B2B sales in efforts to improve firm performance. Unfortunately, little is known regarding how increasing customer participation expectations effects the firm's salespeople. To address this issue, using the job demands-resources model, this study examines how increases in customer participation influence salesperson burnout and salesperson investment in resources, while accounting for the job resources of job autonomy and belief in innate selling ability. The potential moderating effects of competitive intensity are also captured. The findings, based upon a survey of 210 B2B salespeople, indicate that increasing customer participation does not increase salesperson burnout, but increases investments in resources aimed to increase salesperson professional development. Further, greater job autonomy was found to decrease salesperson burnout and increase investment in resources, with the latter being moderated by competitive intensity. Belief in innate selling ability, in contrast, was found to increase burnout and decrease investment in resources by salespeople, with the latter being moderated by competitive intensity. This study highlights the multiple positive and negative effects of increasing customer participation in B2B selling, providing new insights for how firms can set policies to enhance salesperson well-being and effectiveness in a B2B setting.     

Salesperson competitive intelligence and performance: The role of product knowledge and sales force automation usage

This research models and tests the relationship between a salesperson's product knowledge, competitive intelligence behaviors (SCIB), and performance. Moreover, the research examines how a salesperson's use of a sales force automation (SFA) system influences the knowledge–SCIB–performance relationship. Our model and empirical evidence suggest that a salesperson's product knowledge influences performance indirectly through SCIB, and that this indirect influence is moderated by salesperson SFA use. Results show that the indirect positive influence of salesperson product knowledge on salesperson performance through SCIB is attenuated as SFA use increases, and enhanced when SFA use decreases. Theoretical and managerial implications are presented, followed by a discussion of limitations and future research.     

How salespeople facilitate buyers' resource availability to enhance seller outcomes

Positive outcomes for buyers and sellers occur when the partners readily make their resources available and integrate those resources in a beneficial relationship. This research investigates how salespeople facilitate the use of these buyer resources. Taking the seller's perspective, this study examines the effect that the salesperson's interaction activities, and the availability of buyer resources, have on relationship outcomes.     

Activating salesperson resilience during the COVID-19 crisis: The roles of employer event communication and customer demandingness

Business-to-business (B2B) sales sector is among the business sectors severely affected by the COVID-19 outbreak. It is critical to understand how to help the workforce in the B2B sales sector grow resilient through such a crisis. The main aim of this study is to examine the role of employer event communication in fostering B2B salesperson resilience. The data were collected from 447 sales employees from manufacturing firms in an Asian emerging market during the pandemic crisis. The results revealed the positive link between employer event communication and salesperson resilience. Deliberate rumination was detected as a mediator for the relationship between employer event communication and resilience. However, while the significant and negative association was observed between employer event communication and intrusive rumination, the non-significant relationship occurred between intrusive rumination and resilience. Customer demandingness moderated the effects of intrusive and deliberate rumination on salesperson resilience. Discussions on theoretical and practical implications are displayed.     

Adoption of New Products by the Sales Force: The Construct, Research Propositions, and Managerial Implications

Some firms take salesforce commitment to any new product as a given, seemingly adopting the attitude, “If we build it, they will sell.” However, management has no guarantee of salesforce commitment to a new product. For various reasons, salespeople may fail to sell a new product, or they may engage in dysfunctional behavior during the selling process—for example, misrepresenting the product's benefits to gain short-term sales. Ensuring salesforce adoption of a new product requires careful consideration of the characteristics of the product, the competitive environment, the firm, and the members of the salesforce. In other words, managers who hope to engender support for a new product would do well to view the salespeople as a first line of customers. Successfully launching a new product to the company's salesforce requires the same high levels of creativity, energy, and managerial insight as does the product's launch into the marketplace. Consequently, managers and researchers need to examine more closely the factors underlying the successful launch of a new product to a firm's salesforce. As a first stop toward gaining greater insight into those factors, Kwaku Atuahene-Gima develops a model for exploring the characteristics that affect new-product adoption by the salesforce. His model suggests that a salesperson's commitment to a new product depends, to a large extent, on the salesperson's learning style, performance orientation, and problem-solving style. For example, he proposes that, compared to their colleagues with systematic problem-solving styles, salespeople with intuitive problem-solving styles are more likely to adopt a new product and are less likely to engage in dysfunctional behavior in the selling process. The model also suggests that the salesforce's perceptions of the firm's commitment to new products, tolerance for failure, and attitude toward intradepartmental conflict during the product development process play key roles in determining whether the salesforce will take an active, positive approach to selling the new product. For example, a firm that views occasional failures as opportunities for learning and growth offers an environment in which salespeople can accept the risks that selling a new product entails. The proposed model also takes into account the moderating effects of the product's innovativeness, the intensity of market competition, and the type of sales control systems that the firm uses.     

Salesperson influence tactics and the buying agent purchase decision: Mediating role of buying agent trust of the salesperson and moderating role of buying agent regulatory orientation focus

Little is known about antecedents of salesperson influence tactic usage or how and which influence tactics impact buying agent purchase decisions. To aid such understanding, we draw from the relationship selling literature, and both regulatory fit and focus theories, to propose a novel theoretical framework and test hypotheses. The study's findings, derived by applying the critical incidence methodology to a heterogeneous dataset of buying agents (n > 200) representing small and medium enterprises and acting as key informants on salespeople, show that: (i) salesperson influence tactics heterogeneously explain the buying agent's trust of the salesperson, (ii) trust of the salesperson serves as a mechanism through which influence tactics impact the buying agent's purchase decision, (iii) buying agent's regulatory orientation moderates the relationship between salesperson influence tactics and buying agent's trust of the salesperson, and (iv) salesperson regulatory orientation predicts a salesperson's use of particular influence tactics. The article concludes with a discussion of the practical and theoretical implications of the research.     

Developing benchmarks to capture relative performance for sales force incentives decisions: Lessons from B2B insurance industry

Performance-based incentives are widely used in B2B sales; however, sales managers find it challenging to customize such incentives. In response, we propose a new methodology to assess salespeople's capability using performance history data. To evaluate relative performance, we filter out the impact of systematic factors of job characteristics (e.g., channel type, territory, and market size). Therefore, by providing appropriate benchmarks, our approach captures the idiosyncratic component of performance, allowing a direct comparison of a salesperson with other counterparts in the firm. We also account for prospective customer characteristics that let us distinguish between competent salespeople and those fortunate enough to have a customer mix with a high predisposition to buy. Using a data set of automobile insurance sales to small business owners in the U.S., we model salesperson performance as consisting of three stages: generating leads, converting leads to customers and upselling. Our output, a “grade card” for each salesperson, contains metrics that can aid managers in setting individual level performance goals, in deciding who should be rewarded or let go, and in diagnosing salespeople's strengths and weaknesses. Our easy to implement methodology is useful for a wide variety of applications, wherever relative performance needs to be judged.     

How do the combinations of sales control systems influence sales performance? The mediating roles of distinct customer-oriented behaviors

By distinguishing customer-oriented behaviors into functional and relational ones, this study reveals how different combinations of sales control systems (namely activity control, outcome control, and capability control) affect a salesperson's distinct customer-oriented behaviors, which subsequently influence sales performance. By collecting data from business-to-business salespeople and their managers and using hierarchical linear modeling, we find that the outcome-capability control combination increases functional and relational customer-oriented behaviors. The outcome-activity control combination decreases functional customer-oriented behaviors. The activity-capability control combination increases functional customer-oriented behaviors but reduces relational customer-oriented behaviors. In addition, we find that both customer-oriented behaviors not only boost sales performance individually, but also complement each other to positively affect sales performance. These findings provide important theoretical and practical implications by demonstrating that combinations of control systems have a significant impact on a salesperson's functional and relational customer-oriented behaviors.     

Salespeople's work toward the institutionalization of social selling practices

While the use of social media has become widespread among business-to-business organizations, the diversity of the social selling practices undertaken by salespeople and the extent to which they rely on them for their sales approach remain limited. Contrary to previous studies that emphasize the benefits of top-down approaches, we adopt a salesperson-centric approach, with the belief that the salesperson's agency is a key factor in the development of new sales practices related to social media. Using the concept of practice work and building upon institutional theory, we argue that social selling practices emerge in a bottom-up way, depending on the work initiated by salespeople. Based on a qualitative study of 32 B2B sales professionals, we show that salespeople perform three kinds of practice work: promotion, reconciliation, and disruption. These efforts can diffuse but also thwart social selling practices in sales organizations. This article offers new insights into how organizations can develop salespeople's depth of social media usage, and encourages firms to support salespeople's social selling initiatives instead of controlling them.     

Market Share in the Real Estate Brokerage Industry

This paper is concerned with the factors that determine the market share of listings and the market share of sales for brokerage firms. Models are developed and tested in a SMSA that conveniently corresponds exactly to a particular Multiple Listing Service area. Indices of firm specialization and market concentration were computed in addition to more conventional characterizations of the market and the data used in the study.
The regression results reveal a small degree of consistency in the impacts of the explanatory variables over the two years of the study and over the listing and sales markets. The number of salespeople is the most consistently significant variable. Indeed, market share per salesperson appears to be a non-monotonic function of the number of salespeople. The presence of a franchise and the quantity of display advertising are occasionally significant. Classified advertising, Yellow Pages advertising, and open houses all do not significantly affect market share per salesperson.     

Selling Value in Business Markets: Individual and Organizational Factors for Turning the Idea into Action

Modern business-to-business firms focus increasingly on understanding and selling value, as a strategic priority and to achieve marketing and sales excellence. Yet many companies struggle to implement their value orientation, without sufficient knowledge of how to translate it into sales practice. This study therefore examines value-based selling (VBS) as an implementation of value-based marketing at the sales force level. The proposed motivation–opportunity–ability framework integrates individual- and organizational-level antecedents, outcomes, and moderators in an attempt to explain the adoption and performance outcomes of VBS in business markets. Multilevel path modeling with cross-sectional survey data from 944 salespeople and managers in 43 sales organizations confirms the prediction that VBS enhances salespeople's performance, beyond that achieved with established selling approaches. However, firms need specific types of salespeople and dedicated organizational support for effective VBS implementation. A salesperson's learning orientation and networking competencies emerge as critical antecedents. Organizational value assessment tools can compensate for individual salespeople's lack of learning orientation; reference marketing efforts also strengthen the performance outcomes of VBS. Finally, VBS is most effective in organizational settings where perceived customers value demandingness is lower, enabling salespeople to use VBS as a proactive selling approach.     

Sales management control level and competencies: Antecedents and consequences

The pursuit of superior salesperson performance and higher levels of sales organization effectiveness is a growing management priority. Management control is an important antecedent to several aspects of salesperson performance and organizational effectiveness. However, prior research has neglected two important issues. First, the impact of market orientation on sales manager control approaches has not been previously considered. Second, sales manager competencies in behavior-based control have not been examined, as research has focused on the level and form of control. Market orientation and the critical sales skills required of salespeople have strong antecedent relationships with sales manager control. Also, sales manager control competencies play a significant role in shaping salesperson performance, and the impact of control competencies is larger than control level. Sales manager control competencies play an important mediating role between sales manager control level and salesperson performance and sales organization effectiveness. Our findings are based on a study of British companies in which five hundred sales managers were sent surveys and 300 usable responses (a response rate of 60%) were returned. Three important implications derived from this study include: (1) sales managers need to translate market orientation into sales force behaviors; (2) control strategy should be aligned with sales force priorities; and (3) time and resources should be invested in training sales managers.     

An antecedent and contingent outcome model of fail fast strategy in sales force management

Sales practice and scholarship have each called for optimizing the manner in which sales managers strategically interject themselves in the sales process. As a unique approach that reflects the high incidence rate of failure within sales, managers may strategize for salespeople to fail fast as an agile implementation of intelligent failure. Fail fast strategy allows managers to intervene early on in the business-to-business sales process in order to optimize resources and exert greater control over failures within their sales teams. With this strategy in mind, the following questions remain: Does fail fast strategy have a beneficial or deleterious effect on salesperson behaviors? What organizational- and individual-level factors direct a sales manager's strategic attention toward failing fast? The authors use an attention-based view to theorize the drivers of fail fast strategy, as well as investigate the moderating effect of sales force resources on the relationship between fail fast strategy and salesperson extra-role behaviors. The authors test the model using survey data of 274 business-to-business sales managers. The conceptualization, operationalization, and theory around fail fast strategy contribute to a better understanding of failing fast in sales. The results provide contributions to theory and practice as well as guidance for future research opportunities.