The role of sales representatives in cross-cultural business-to-business relationships

This study responds to the call for the “internationalization of sales research” by collecting data from 160 international buyers spanning 33 countries and regions. Based on survey data, archival sales records and cultural-distance indices, this research examines the performance-enhancing effect of sales rep-owned commitment as well as its antecedents under varying degrees of cultural distance. Our results show a strong and direct impact of rep-owned commitment, independent of the effect of firm-owned commitment, on enhancing performance indicators including sales volume, importers' purchase share, and importers' future purchase intentions. Moreover, we find two important antecedents to rep-owned commitment: benevolence trust and capability trust. Interestingly, cultural distance moderates the effects of benevolence and capability trust on rep-owned commitment: the larger the cultural distance, the stronger the effect of benevolence trust but the weaker the effect of capability trust. We conclude with theoretical and managerial implications to international marketing research and practice.     

分散决策下的双渠道供应链补偿策略——基于消费者渠道选择行为

为了有效解决由于对消费者的争夺从而引发的渠道之间关于定价、服务水平、利润等方面的冲突,基于消费者渠道选择行为,构建了网络直销市场与传统零售市场需求模型和双渠道供应链利润模型,运用Stackelberg模型,在制造商与零售商实施分决策时,通过制造商对零售商实施补偿激励前后的对比,分析了消费者渠道选择行为对网络直销渠道和传统零售渠道定价、制造商与零售商利润以及供应链总利润的影响,并求得最优定价及制造商的最优补偿额度和零售商的最优销售努力水平,进行了不同情况下的双渠道供应链利润的比较分析。结果表明,无论制造商是否实施补偿激励,都应随着网络消费者比例的增加而增加其网络直销价格;零售商的零售渠道价格应根据网络消费者比例的增加先降低到一定水平后再提升。当更多的消费者选择网络直销渠道时,制造商的补偿激励水平和零售商的销售努力程度均会下降。制造商应提高其补偿水平,进而激发零售商提高销售的努力水平,并使双方利润及供应链总利润最大化。研究结果为基于消费者选择行为的供应链补偿研究提供了新方法,对双渠道的供应链补偿研究有借鉴意义。     

Deliberate learning as a strategic mechanism in enabling channel partner sales performance

As suppliers increasingly depend on their indirect sales channel, enablement of channel partners has become a strategic asset. We focus on the central role of deliberate learning within strategic enablement strategy. Specifically, we conceptualize deliberate sales learning as a three-dimensional construct (knowledge articulation, knowledge codification, knowledge certification) and identify the mechanisms through which it impacts on channel partner sales performance. Based on a survey of channel partners (N = 383) of an FT100 company, we establish exploitative and explorative learning orientations as antecedents of deliberate sales learning, where this relationship is moderated by channel partners' preference for online learning formats. The relatively weaker relationship between explorative learning orientation and deliberate sales learning is positively enhanced for those channel partners with a preference for interactive online modules. Further, we demonstrate that deliberate sales learning and deliberate sales practice act in serial mediation to positively impact sales performance. In addition to future research opportunities, we identify three core implications for the practice of strategic sales enablement; enhancing return on investment, managing learner motivation and activating learning engagement of channel partners.     

The influence of formal and informal sales controls on customer-directed selling behaviors and sales unit effectiveness

Adaptive selling (AS) and customer-oriented selling (COS) constitute two key customer-directed selling behaviors for the success of the modern sales force. However, knowledge regarding the organizational factors that can induce salespeople to engage in those behaviors is strikingly limited. Against this background, we develop a comprehensive model that delineates the influences of formal and informal sales controls on AS and COS and, through them, on sales unit effectiveness. Based on a sample of sales managers in a major European Union country, we present new evidence that (a) formal and informal sales controls exert differential impact on salespeople's AS and COS behaviors; (b) AS directly and positively influences sales unit effectiveness; (c) COS affects sales unit effectiveness only indirectly, i.e. by fostering AS; and (d) outcome and cultural controls directly improve sales unit effectiveness. We conclude with a discussion of our findings for academics and practitioners.     

Creating value in business relationships: The role of sales

Understanding the creation of value in business relationships has been a long-standing goal of researchers and managers alike. By adopting a relational perspective, recent research on business relationships has made much progress in understanding value-creating processes. As the sales function is thought to be a pivotal part of the value-creating processes in business relationships, the evolving view on creating relationship value clearly has implications for our understanding of the role of sales in these processes. In contrast to its importance, the question of how the sales function contributes to creating value in business relationships has been largely neglected in extant literature. The objective of our paper is to answer this question by systematically linking the relational value creating process to the sales function's content. Interpreting value creation as interaction process, we identify four features of value-creating processes in business relationships suggested in recent research (i.e., jointness, balanced initiative, interacted value, and socio-cognitive construction) and, based on these, outline a framework that is used to define a set of tasks that are key to creating value in business relationships and hence become critical for sales in its hitherto neglected role as co-creator of relationship value. We illustrate the various tasks of this new role of sales with data from 43 interviews with sales managers and salespeople. Along with related normative recommendations in extant literature, the interviews provide support for the validity and relevance of our framework for understanding the role of sales in creating relationship value. This framework puts forward a much-needed first effort towards a theory of sales' role in creating relationship value and offers several opportunities for future research.     

Antecedents and consequences of CRM technology acceptance in the sales force

Two conceptual approaches [Davis, F. D. (1989). Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology. MIS Quarterly, 13 (3), 319-340; DeLone, W. H., & McLean, E. R. (1992). Information systems success: The quest for the dependent variable. Information Systems Research, 3 (1), 60-95] are unified into a conceptual model that offers a comprehensive explanation of CRM acceptance antecedents and consequences in a sales force setting. Based upon responses from 240 salespersons that utilize a CRM system, the model is tested and explanations are offered for the system's acceptance. Specifically, the most prevailing influence on CRM acceptance comes from CRM perceived usefulness, followed by the setting of accurate expectations regarding system usage, the salesperson innovativeness towards new technological tools, the CRM perceived ease-of-use, and the supervisor encouragement and support. Surprisingly, the model does not adequately explicate salesperson performance. Sales managers are presented with a discussion and implications of the findings.     

Beyond the retention—acquisition trade-off: Capabilities of ambidextrous sales organizations

Sales organizations aim to grow their firms' business by acquiring new customers while retaining their existing ones. Although customer acquisition and retention are complementary processes, they involve different sales process capabilities that often compete for investments. However, firms that succeed in effectively combining these capabilities are “ambidextrous” and will enjoy superior growth and profits. Although developing ambidexterity is a fundamental sales management task, it has received little attention in research. Based on the Motivation-Opportunity-Ability framework we identify a set of organizational sales capabilities that can help sales organizations' joint management of acquisition and retention capabilities, and explain their influence drawing on Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) theory. Survey and time-lagged archival performance data from 174 firms provide an empirical test of the conceptual model and hypotheses developed. Results confirm that incentive management, cross functional cooperation, and the interaction of cross functional cooperation and sales training capabilities are positively correlated with sales organization ambidexterity. In addition, we find a positive correlation of customer prioritization on ambidextrous selling. Results confirm that firms with high levels and aligned acquisition and retention capabilities enjoy superior organic growth. However, contrary to expectation, increases in profit growth are only accomplished if acquisition capabilities are high.     

Studying the antecedents and outcome of social media use by salespeople using a MOA framework

The innovative impact of digital technologies on sales forces is largely unexplored. Particularly, the understanding of drivers of social media use by salespeople remains fragmented and scant. Drawing on motivation-opportunity-ability theory, this study develops an integrative framework. The individual's opportunities to use social media, including perceptions about market readiness, peer influence, and organizational support are considered as important antecedents of individuals' motivation (perceived usefulness) and ability (perceived ability to integrate social media in the sales tasks) to use social media in their job. Next to a positive effect of social media use on sales performance also a potential negative impact through distraction is accounted for. The framework and hypotheses are tested using a sample of 345 salespeople. The results largely support the model and hypotheses. Market readiness, peer influence, and organizational support positively affect salesperson motivation, and except for organizational support, the individual's ability to integrate social media in his/her sales job too. Findings further show that motivation and ability together drive social media use in sales, but that a lack of ability shuts down the positive influence of motivation on social media use. Finally, a positive effect of social media use on sales performance is detected, suggesting that social media can be an important tool to enhance sales growth. Support for a dark side effect of social media is not found.     

An examination of salesperson bricolage during a critical sales disruption: Selling during the Covid-19 pandemic

COVID-19 has proven to be a disruptive and world-altering event often forcing professional salespeople to rapidly change the manner in which they do business. Thereby, this pandemic illuminates the importance of understanding salesperson characteristics and behaviors that enable sales success in disruptive environments. This study identifies COVID-19 as a Critical Sales Event and introduces the concept of “bricolage” to the larger body of sales literature. Bricolage is a combination of “making do” under environmental conditions of resource constraint. Bricolage characterizes a salesperson's ability to utilize available resources effectively by assessing available resources and working to reconfigure them in order to meet new challenges and create opportunities. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research from professional salespeople, this study identifies a salesperson's creativity, learning-orientation, and grit as three important antecedents to salesperson bricolage. Moreover, this study shows that salesperson bricolage relates positively to sales performance under conditions shaped by the COVID-19 disruption; with salesperson bricolage becoming more strongly related to sales performance when sales environments are more highly disrupted by the pandemic.     

Purchasing-driven sales: Matching sales strategies to the evolution of the purchasing function

The personal selling field has witnessed the emergence of various sales strategies, including relationship, value, key account, and solution selling. Despite claims about their effectiveness, recent work challenges the relevance of existing sales strategies across buying contexts. Specifically, emerging sales strategies often focus on the user in the customer organization, without being explicitly aligned with the increasingly important purchasing function. To define the critical role of the purchasing function for sales effectiveness, this study collects data from 32 firms in two markets; their purchasing departments reveal four stages of purchasing evolution: passive (price focused), independent (cost-focused), supportive (solution/innovation focused), and integrative (strategy focused). The research demonstrates that each stage of purchasing evolution then requires distinct sales strategies by selling firms and any mismatch of purchasing evolution and sales strategy may be detrimental to sales. This novel view and the supported findings offers several implications for both research and practice.     

Valuable strategy and firm performance in the O2O competition

When the manufacturer opens an online channel to compete with its traditional retailer, what valuable strategy can be utilized to alleviate the O2O (online to offline) competition and conflict and improve the performances of all channel members? Our research addresses this important question by initiating an innovative strategy considering the retailer's sales effort and the manufacturer's support in local advertising simultaneously in a manufacturer – retailer O2O supply chain. Our results show that although the retailer's sales effort helps improve the channel coordination and leads to a win-win solution for both the manufacturer and the retailer, investing in both the retailer's sales effort and manufacturer's support in local advertising is a more effective strategy to be employed to coordinate the O2O distribution and achieve higher profits for all parties in the manufacturer - retailer supply chain. In addition, our results also show that compared to the simultaneous mode, the Stackelberg leader-follower mode provides no competitive advantage to the manufacturer or the retailer when the retailer's sales effort and manufacturer's support in local advertising strategy is implemented to coordinate the O2O distributions.     

How buyer–seller relationship orientation affects adaptation of sales processes to the buying process

Adaptation in sales is common in business relationships. The purpose of this study is to understand how the buyer–seller relationship affects sellers' sales process adaptation to customers' buying processes. The results reveal how the buyer–seller relationship orientation affects sales process adaptation and its effects. The main sources of information in this qualitative inquiry are in-depth, semi-structured interviews with key informants representing a buyer–seller relationship. This study helps to shed light on how the buyer–seller relationship orientation affects sales process adaptation. The findings reveal that both the buyer and the seller have an impact on sales process adaptation. Extant research has recognized adaptation as a central aspect in relationships, while largely neglecting sales process adaptation. Thus, this study focuses on the effects of buyer–seller relationship orientation on sales process adaptation.     

Flexibility in marketing & sales interfacing processes

Preliminary insights in the marketing literature indicate that flexibility is important in marketing and sales processes and interaction. However, to date, marketing and sales management literature lacks an understanding of what flexibility in marketing-sales interfaces looks like, its potential organizational consequences, and potential boundary conditions. Using data from interviews with marketing and sales managers, this study explores the nature, outcomes and facilitators of flexibility at the marketing-sales interface. This study conceptualizes marketing-sales interface flexibility (MSIF) as a process of flexible cross-functional resource exchange and finds that MSIF has positive organizational outcomes (both in terms of performance and relationship quality), that MSIF is essential for firms when dealing with exigencies in turbulent environments, and that the utility of MSIF is conditioned by the speed with which MSIF is implemented. The research contribution is twofold. At a theoretical level, the study defines the construct for the first time, revealing MSIF's conceptual composition for examination, and develops theory regarding MSIF's direct relationships with key business outcomes, as well as likely contingencies that shape its importance. At a practical level, the study's framework offers a tool that managers can use to help build organizational success through enhanced flexibility in their marketing-sales interfaces.     

Why are you really losing sales opportunities? A buyers' perspective on the determinants of key account sales failures

Key account sales are important for business organizations. Understanding why some of these sales proposals fail from the buyer's perspective has organization-wide implications for improving firm performance. Extant literature lacks a clear understanding of the process-based determinants of sales failure within a key account context. Another problem with this research stream is its reliance on data from the salesperson, sales manager, and/or selling firm, which can introduce attribution biases. Our research overcomes sales failure attribution biases by collecting data from the industrial buying center's perspective. Thirty-five semi-structured interview cases were conducted with buying decision makers following failed key account sales proposals. The result of this inquiry is a model which outlines the determinants of sales failures. We identify three common drivers of sales failure: adaptability, relationship-potential, and cost considerations. Results indicate that these established constructs are more complex than previously specified, each having multiple attributes as defined by key account buyers.     

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.     

A comparison of export sales forecasting practices among UK firms

Although the practice of sales forecasting is a widely researched area, only recently have empirical studies differentiated between export and domestic sales forecasting. To identify whether firms adapt their export sales forecasting activities according to the organizational and environmental context in which they are operating, this investigation develops a typology of exporters which is then used to contrast export sales forecasting practices and performance. The findings show how export forecasting activities are adapted according to organizational and environmental influences facing the firm; the impact of such influences on both perceived and actual forecast performance is also noted.     

Do supplier perceptions of buyer fairness lead to supplier sales growth?

Despite the growing number of studies focusing on fairness perceptions in buyer–supplier relationships, the pertinent literature mostly focuses on understanding the buyers' perceptions of fairness. In this study, we argue that sellers' perceptions of the fairness of the buyer are equally important but often overlooked. Moreover, existing research fails to provide empirical evidence for examining the long-term effects of fairness on sales growth. We address these gaps by reporting the results of a longitudinal study based on both primary data collected from automotive suppliers in 2009, and objective sales data for these suppliers from an automotive manufacturer over a three-year period after 2009. We employ a latent growth curve model, which reveals that only interactional and distributive fairness have a positive and significant effect on both trust and commitment. Our analysis further reveals that the positive effect of trust and commitment on sales growth is smaller as the supplier's level of dependency on the car manufacturer increases. When the buyer's perception of dependence is considered, these effects are reversed. Several managerial implications of these findings are provided.     

Joint determination of inventory replenishment and sales effort with uncertain market responses

An optimal joint operational and marketing decision is crucial for robust supply chain management. This paper addresses concurrent determination of inventory replenishment and sales effort decisions such as price, incentives to salesforce, and short-term promotions, or a combination of them. Market responses to sales efforts are typically highly uncertain, and demand in each period has its distribution dependent on the selected sales effort. In each period a replenishment order may be issued, which incurs both fixed and variable ordering costs, and at the same time the sales effort is also determined, the execution of which may incur costs. For such a model, the previously developed methods which are used for the joint inventory-pricing models become inadequate. A computational procedure for obtaining an optimal joint policy is addressed, and the conditions for the optimality of that policy are identified.     

Value-based sales process adaptation in business relationships

In business relationships, the seller is often expected to adapt to the buyer. The main purpose of this study is to understand how business firms adapt their sales processes to the buyer. The resulting framework, which reveals how different modes of adaptation are contingent upon the type of product being purchased, includes three layers: sales process adaptation, seller–buyer relationship orientation, and the purchasing portfolio. The study is a qualitative one and utilizes a retrospective case study, where the main sources of information are in-depth semi-structured interviews with key informants representing the seller and buyer counterparts in the ICT industry. Our study adds to the understanding of how different modes of adaptation are contingent upon the type of item being sold and purchased. Managerial implications include that to strategically adapt, the seller could focus on the purchasing portfolio. Although previous research has recognized adaptation as a central aspect in relationships, how the sales process could be adapted to the buyer has received little attention. This study focuses on the adaptation of sales to strategically match it to the buyer's situation.     

Salesperson communication effectiveness in a digital sales interaction

B2B buyers are exhibiting an increased preference to transact digitally with vendors. A topic which has yet to receive sufficient academic attention in this modern selling environment is salesperson communication effectiveness. Accordingly, this article: 1) defines digital sales interactions (DSIs) as technology-enabled, face-to-face buyer-seller exchanges; 2) proposes a typology of DSIs to set the stage to examine salesperson communication effectiveness; 3) introduces a framework that reifies the sender's auditory and visual cues that can influence receivers' thoughts (i.e., cognition, affect, intention) and activity (i.e., purchase behavior, advocacy); 4) suggests theoretical lenses that can illuminate various aspects of the salesperson's communication barrage; 5) advances how machine learning can be applied to understand what constitutes effective communication in a digital interaction by asking: to what extent does what a salesperson says (auditory cues) and how s/he says it (visual cues) impact her/his effectiveness in a DSI?; and 6) concludes by noting promising future research directions for B2B marketing researchers.