Factors influencing student perceptions of unethical behavior by personal salespeople: An experimental investigation

Historically, students have held negative perceptions about the ethics of salespeople. Using an experiment, this study explores which factors affect students' perceptions of how frequently salespeople behave unethically. Additionally, the study investigates whether the same factors influence the degree to which certain behaviors are considered serious ethical violations.John R. Sparks is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Dayton.Mark Johlke is a doctoral candidate in marketing at Texas Tech University. Dr. Sparks' research interests are in the areas of marketing ethics and marketing communication. Mr. Johlke's research interests are in sales management.     

A Cross-National Comparison of University Students' Perceptions Regarding the Ethics and Acceptability of Sales Practices

This scenario-based study examines the perceptions of university students in the United States and Australia regarding the ethics and acceptability of various sales practices. Study results indicate several significant differences between U.S. and Australian university students regarding the perceptions of ethical and acceptable sales practices. These differences centered on company-salesperson and salesperson-customer relationships. The findings are significant for the employer, and have consequences for customers and competitors. They also have implications for recruiters and managers of salespeople, academics with an interest in understanding cross-national differences in sales ethics, and educators preparing students for future careers as business professionals.     

Customer showrooming behavior,customer orientation,and emotional labor: Sales control as a moderator

Despite the popularity of customer showrooming behavior (CSB), few studies have investigated how this phenomenon affects salespeople's sales behavior. To answer this research call, we explored the effect of CSB on customer orientation (CO), as they are associated with emotional labor (EL) and perceived sales control as a moderator. We gathered data from 397 salespeople in South Korean department stores. Our study showed that CSB affected deep acting negatively by reducing CO. Perceived outcome-based sales control enhances CSB's negative impact on CO. Nevertheless, perceived behavior-based sales control does not moderate the relationship between CSB and CO. Our results indicate that supervising salespeople using outcome-based control only worsens the effect of CSB on salespeople who combat CSB.     

Better together: Trait competitiveness and competitive psychological climate as antecedents of salesperson organizational commitment and sales performance

This study assesses the direct and interactive effects of trait competitiveness and competitive psychological climate on organizational commitment and sales performance using data collected from industrial salespeople and company records. Findings indicate that the positive impact of trait competitiveness on sales performance is contingent upon a highly competitive psychological climate, helping to explain inconsistent findings in the literature and underscoring the need for firms to manage the fit between salespeople and organizational culture. Additionally, the study reveals continuance commitment’s negative moderation of the affective commitment–sales performance relationship. Taken together, the model reveals an interesting process such that managers should recruit salespeople with high trait competitiveness and foster a competitive climate internally to generate the best sales performance outcomes.     

Effects of considering uncontrollable factors in sales force performance evaluation

Sales managers often make adjustments for factors such as territory difficulty or representative experience when doing performance evaluations. These adjustments may be subjective, they may be simple ratio calculations (e.g., sales divided by territory size), or they may involve complicated regression analyses. This research attempts an explanation of how and why these adjustments influence perceptions of the performance evaluation process, particularly its fairness and usefulness. Data from two surveys are presented. The first is an exploratory survey of sales managers; the second is a fuller survey of salespeople. Results show that making adjustments for territory difficulty increases perceptions of fairness and usefulness of the evaluation system among both sales managers and salespeople. Feedback quality is a key mediator of these effects for both groups. A different pattern exists with regard to accounting for representative experience. For sales managers, there are no effects on feedback quality or fairness or usefulness. Salespeople, however, rate systems that account for representative differences as providing better feedback quality, as more fair, and as more useful. © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Salesperson implementation of sales strategy and its impact on sales performance

ABSTRACT

It has been observed in the academic and practitioner literature, a disconnect between the activities of salespeople and the sales strategy espoused by sales organizations. This study examines organizational and individual factors that can influence salespersons’ willingness and ability to implement sales strategy. This paper also seeks to examine the performance implications of sales strategy implementation by salespeople. Data were collected from a sample of 190 business-to-business salespeople in different industries. The study’s hypotheses were tested using partial least squares (PLS). The results of the study show that the different types of sales force control (behavior control and outcome control) has contrasting effects on salesperson market and technical knowledge and salesperson implementation of sales strategy. The results also demonstrate that when salespeople implement sales strategy as part of their sales process, it has a positive effect on their sales performance.     

Business-to-business selling in the post-COVID-19 era: Developing an adaptive sales force

The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how salespeople interact with customers and with business-to-business (B2B) organizations. Organizations must confront the shifts in how their salespeople operate. Recent research recommends firms develop an adaptive sales force to address disruptions like a pandemic and be prepared to meet such challenges in the future. Based on interviews with marketing and sales executives, we explore how firms have responded to these interconnected changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer insight into best practices deployed across industries.     

The Myth of the Salesperson: Intended and Unintended Consequences of Product-Specific Sales Incentives

Product-specific sales incentives (PSIs), or "spiffs," have instigated conflict in business and sales for more than fifty years. PSIs are exactly what they sound like: incentives offered by manufacturers to salespeople to encourage them to promote certain products above those of competitors. PSIs have provoked considerable controversy. They are sometimes likened to "bribes," in that their purpose is to motivate salespeople to offer advice that might contradict what they would otherwise recommend. If a salesperson's job is to sell an array of products, how is it equitable for him or her to receive additional compensation for selling certain products above others? In addition, how are we to justify the bias that the presence of PSIs introduces into the selling process. There is concern that this causes negative consequences for stakeholders, including manufacturers, retailers, salespeople, and, of course, customers. How does this affect the competitive process?The research conducted explores the reaction to PSIs by people of different ages. It reveals a correlation between age, education, and reaction to PSIs. The findings correspond with the Josephson Institute of Ethics report, which found that younger adults tend to exhibit higher tolerance for unethical behavior. Examination of PSIs, like other sales incentives, reveals intentional and unintentional consequences to a wide array of stakeholders. The research indicates that there is value inherent in considering both the propriety and manner of implementation of sales incentives, such as PSIs.     

The Interplay of Emotion Regulation and Sales Experience in Salesperson Conflicts: Evidence from an Emerging Economy

ABSTRACT

It is human nature that personal interactions are often charged with emotions and laden with conflicts. Workplace encounters are not immune from this reality. Despite this, few studies have examined ways to reduce interpersonal conflict in the workplace. This study examines the interpersonal impact of emotion regulation on salesperson relationships with stakeholders. Using structural equation modeling, results of the analysis showed that salesperson's regulation of emotions was negatively related to interpersonal conflict with co-workers as well as with customers; and positively impacted customer-oriented sales behaviors. The results also support the moderating role of selling experience in the relationship between emotion regulation and interpersonal conflict with customers. That is, the negative relationship between regulation and conflict with customers is stronger for salespeople with lower sales experience. These findings put forward important managerial implications with regard to the recruitment and training of sales professionals.     

Sales management coaching: a model for improved insurance company performance

Of all the things sales managers do to develop salespeople, many people believe the most important one is coaching. Coaching is defined as using skills, experience, and direction to help someone improve their performance. Coaching consists primarily of giving people feedback to reinforce what they do well while suggesting ways and means to improve. Coaching implies that everybody can improve and hopefully everybody wants to get better at what they do. Many sales managers erroneously believe that they have to be better than the person they are coaching at the skill set they are discussing in order to be a useful coaching resource to that person. To be a good coach requires an understanding of the skills being discussed and a desire to help someone improve in the performance of their job. The sales manager who knows how to provide that feedback will have more productive, effective, satisfied, and motivated salespeople. This paper provides an overview of the coaching sequence and the skills required to make it work with some comment on how this was successfully applied to a major national insurance company. Sales Management styles vary, and what works for one person may not work for another. Effective Sales Management Coaching can provide sales managers with the skills to help salespeople grow and develop professionally.     

Imparting negative news to salespeople

Sales managers often are required to give negative information to their sales personnel. Perhaps the salespeople's territories will be reduced, their compensation or expense program decreased, or their positions realigned or eliminated. Although extensive research has examined delivering negative news to sales personnel, no empirical work has yet explored how that inimical information should be disseminated to sales subordinates. Scholars in organizational psychology argue that providing adverse news to employees using interpersonal sensitivity is advantageous for both the individual and the organization. To date, though, this issue has not been investigated in a selling context. Therefore, this article reports the results of an exploratory study that investigated factors that influence whether sales managers provide negative communication to salespeople in an interpersonally sensitive fashion. © 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Motivating industrial salesforce with sales control systems: An interactive perspective

This research examines the interactive effects on industrial salespeople's intrinsic and extrinsic (I/E) motivation of outcome control, activity control, and capability control above and beyond their main effects. I/E motivation are disaggregated into their cognitive and affective dimensions. Moderated regressions using a sample of industrial salespeople find that (1) outcome control and capability control have positive interactive effects on task enjoyment and recognition seeking, (2) outcome control and activity control have a positive interactive effect on compensation seeking but a negative interactive effect on task enjoyment, and (3) activity control and capability control have a negative interactive effect on recognition seeking. Moreover, we find that compensation seeking has a stronger positive effect on sales performance when salespeople deal with more new customers whereas the opposite is true for challenge seeking; compensation seeking appears to elevate job satisfaction only when there is a lower percentage of new customers but the positive effect of recognition seeking on job satisfaction is enhanced when salespeople handle a higher number of new accounts. These findings offer important theoretical and managerial implications by providing compelling evidence that sales control interactive effects should be considered when studying relationships among sales control systems, salesperson motivation, and job outcomes.     

Is it better to be both nice and nasty? Investigating the co-occurrence of sales manager aggressiveness and caring

Empirical research has largely neglected to investigate the issue of sales manager's problem resolution styles in handling conflicts. Building on the qualitative work of Lee and Cadogan (2009), we investigate how sales manager's problem resolution styles, as reflected in both caring and aggressive interpersonal interactions with their salespeople, impact important sales force outcomes. The results show that depending on the level of caring that manager exhibits during the problem resolution process, the curvilinear effects of aggressiveness on salespeople emotional exhaustion and sportsmanship are dramatically altered. Our findings are interesting, and suggest that the almost wholly negative picture painted in current academic literature regarding aggressive managerial style is at least somewhat simplistic, and perhaps rather overstated. Therefore aggressiveness and caring further should be considered together, rather than separately.     

Assessing sales contest effectiveness: the role of salesperson and sales district characteristics

Sales contests are widely employed to improve short-term sales performance, but knowledge about their effectiveness at the individual salesperson level remains sparse. Proponents argue that contests increase sales by stimulating salespeople, while critics say that contests merely encourage strategic timing of sales efforts. The authors draw on the strategic sales timing literature and goal theory to hypothesize that in a consultative selling scenario, sales will dip below the baseline before the contest but increase above the baseline during and after the contest. They posit that sales district potential and salesperson ability moderate the pre-contest sales dip, contest sales boost, and post-contest sales. Results from a model based on individual-level data on 1180 salespeople in 78 sales districts are largely supportive of the hypotheses. They highlight the need for researchers to integrate the role of strategic timing, salesperson, and sales district characteristics to assess sales contest outcomes. For practitioners, the findings show that in consultative selling situations, contests can generate a net sales increase despite the occurrence of timing games, and the sales gain is higher in districts with lower sales potential and among salespeople with higher sales ability.     

Sales contests versus quotas with imbalanced territories

This paper studies the consequences of sales contests versus quota systems when territories have imbalanced sales potential. How do the optimal sales, efforts of salespeople, and profits vary with territory imbalance in a sales contest and how do these change if compensation is based upon quotas? Our major result is that territory imbalance has a differential effect: it hurts a contest more than a quota. In a sales contest, the salesperson in the stronger territory only need to mimic the effort of the salesperson in the other territory to maximize compensation, but this implies that the salesperson in the weaker territory will shirk relative to a quota system. Handicapping the contest to correct for territory imbalance overcomes its disadvantage vis-à-vis the quota plan, but this is seldom incorporated into sales contests.     

How business-to-business salespeople deal with buying center dissenters

Salespeople routinely sell to multiple members with influence over the purchasing decision in the customer organization. Given these buying center members’ varying needs, wants, perspectives, and motivations, dispositions toward a sales discussion can be heterogeneous. Salespeople may encounter situations in which members of the buying center react positively to the sales discussion, with the exception of a dissenter who exerts a negative impact on the salesperson in the interaction. Through a qualitative research design, this article provides insight into salespeople’s approaches in dealing with a dissenter in the buying center. The findings provide an integrated understanding of salespeople’s experiences of dissent encounters in business-to-business selling. In-meeting mitigation and post-meeting remediation strategies are advanced along with influencing situational factors. In illustrating how salespeople handle dissenters, the article contributes to scholarship, provides managerial guidance, and advances avenues for future research.     

Why sales reps should welcome information technology: Measuring the impact of CRM-based IT on sales effectiveness

This study seeks to answer the following question: Can sales representatives enhance their performance through their acceptance of information technology (IT) tools? Using data collected from two companies, we show that despite uncertain results and the frequent resistance among salespeople to IT interventions, IT acceptance indeed has a positive effect on sales performance. This occurs because salespeople using IT expand their knowledge and, in turn, gain improved targeting abilities, enhanced presentation skills, and increased call productivity. Thus, sales representatives have a strong incentive to accept IT because doing so is likely to sharpen their own job performance.     

Predictive Power of Personal Factors in Studying Students' Perception of Sales Profession in Poland

Since Poland has become a member of the European Union, free market activities have increased dramatically. The purpose of this study is to explore university students' perceptions of personal selling as a career in Poland. Using logistic regression and Z-test methodologies, we analyzed the perceptions of 114 students. The results confirm the findings of previous studies that personal factors play a significant role in predicting students' perception of sales profession as a career. The findings presented in this study show that Polish students have a biased perception about sales as a career; however, interestingly, few dimensions show a significant effect. Understanding students' perceptions of the sales profession will help corporate recruiters achieve their goals by selecting those students most likely to excel in sales careers.     

Servant Leadership,Proactive Work Behavior,and Performance Overall Rating: Testing a Multilevel Model of Moderated Mediation

ABSTRACT

Purpose: The goal of this paper is to investigate whether salesperson proactive behavior mediates the relationship between sales manager servant leadership and salesperson overall performance rating by the sales manager. Moreover, it examines whether salesperson customer orientation and political skill moderate the sales manager servant leadership ? salesperson proactive behavior ─ salesperson overall performance. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical analysis is based on dyadic data from 181 industrial salespeople and their sales managers in a range of different industries (including both manufacturing and service industries). To analyze the multilevel moderated mediation process, this investigation uses Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM). Findings: Sales manager servant leadership was positively related to salespeople overall performance rating through their proactive behavior except when their customer orientation was low. Moreover, this relationship between sales manager servant leadership and overall performance rating through proactive work behavior was stronger the greater the salespeople consumer orientation and political skill. Research implications: The study suggests that sales manager servant leadership is indirectly related to salesperson overall performance rating through salesperson proactive behavior. The findings also support subsequent research on salesperson values, skills, and behaviors as moderators in the servant leadership – proactive behavior – overall performance rating relationship. Understanding how these salesperson factors interact with sales management leadership to produce organizational outcomes (e.g., stress, engagement, organizational commitment) are questions that sales researchers may wish to pursue via further study. Practical implications: Sales managers should employ servant leadership to stimulate salespeople proactive work behavior. This study clearly indicates the salespeople need to adopt customer orientation and to have political skill. Hence, sales managers need to try to improve the customer orientation and the political skill of their salespeople through selection procedures or training programs. Originality/value: The relationship between sales manager servant leadership and salesperson overall performance through proactive work behavior has not been addressed and tested in the literature to date.     

Corporate entrepreneurship,customer-oriented selling,absorptive capacity,and international sales performance in the international B2B setting: Conceptual framework and research propositions

In the international business-to-business (B2B) setting, a firm's salespeople often have more direct, prolonged, and intimate contact with the customer and market environments than any other employees of the firm. In fact, for customers in many B2B markets, the salesperson is the face of the firm. The sales function can be characterized as an inherently entrepreneurial activity. Entrepreneurship is founded on knowing or seeing something others do not see, and the sales force has long been recognized as an important source of knowledge about a firm's customers and environment. However, there has been relatively little work linking entrepreneurship to international sales performance, especially in the B2B context.This paper focuses on the intelligence-gathering role of salespeople to firms practicing corporate entrepreneurship in the international B2B setting. More specifically, drawing on the theories of corporate entrepreneurship and the knowledge-based view of the firm, the authors develop a conceptual model that proposes international sales performance for firms practicing corporate entrepreneurship will be enhanced when salespeople practice customer-oriented selling and the firm's absorptive capacity is stronger. Recommended methodology for testing the proposed model is a single-informant survey of sales managers with firms in the domain of interest, using structural equation modeling with moderator tests. The paper concludes with implications and directions for future research.