Does information and communication technology improve job satisfaction? The moderating role of sales technology orientation

Empirical research concerning the role of information and communication technology (ICT) in shaping business-to-business salesforce job satisfaction remains relatively scarce. The authors propose and empirically test a causal model that theoretically represents structural relationships among factors comprising ICT and eventual salesperson job satisfaction. Study results indicate that ICT indirectly influences job satisfaction through salesforce administrative performance. While ICT infrastructure, training, and support positively relate to administrative performance, none of them influence outcome performance significantly. In addition, salesperson technology orientation moderates the effect of both ICT infrastructure and support on job satisfaction. Managerial insights and implications from the research are discussed.     

Sales force evaluation with expectancy theory

The salespeople and their sales managers of two national firms were surveyed to examine the relationships between the salespeople's effort, performance, satisfaction, and propensity to leave their job. The 399 salespeople participating in the study were evaluated by their sales managers. Research results provide insights into the problems associated with correctly measuring performance and testing expectancy theory when salespeople are not evaluated on objective performance measures.     

Industrial salesforce satisfaction and performance with Herzberg's theory

Sales managers are seeking answers to facilitate the salesforce motivational process. This study empirically tested one of the most prominant motivational theories, which, some authorities consider the leading work formulated on the idea that satisfaction leads to performance. This study found no support for Herzberg's dichotomy or the correlation between satisfaction and performance.     

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.     

A diagnostic study of sales managers' efficiency

The importance of the sales manager to industrial marketing organizations has long been recognized. Consequently, much attention has been directed to alternative approaches for evaluating his performance. Yet, effective evaluation requires being able to suggest approaches to improve one's performance. In order to recommend corrective actions and diagnose performance problems, an understanding of the operating environment is necessary. Little understanding exists, however, on how variables in the sales manager's environment are interrelated. The focus of this study is an empirical identification of the interrelationships of variables in the sales manager's environment. This approach leads to diagnostic models of the sales manager's role along three dimensions: (1) Over-all performance; (2) administrative responsibilities; and (3) personal selling. Data from one division of a large industrial chemical company are utilized in this investigation. Information was gathered from internal records and questionnaires to the sales managers. Significant empirical results are found along the three dimensions of the sales manager's job. The managerial implications of the findings are reviewed in depth.     

Product vs. customer focused industrial selling

Successfully introducing sophisticated new product innovation in industrial marketing requires a high degree of customer empathy on the part of the salesforce. This article describes a group-oriented exercise designed to improve the performance of the salesforce by their analyzing a specific new product's relative advantages, compatability, divisibility, complexity, and risk as perceived by its customers. A follow-up survey of the salesforce indicated that, as a result of this exercise, greater effectiveness and efficiency in achieving marketing objectives were realized.     

Sales management control and job performance

A national firm's salespeoples' perceptions of their management control system were related to their performance and satisfaction. Salespeople who perceived job goal clarity, control over their work, and job rewards as being based upon performance were found to be relatively higher performers and better satisfied with their job.     

Do Retailers Really Profit from Ambidextrous Managers? The Impact of Frontline Mechanisms on New and Existing Product Selling Performance

When manufacturers introduce a new product to the market, downstream retail partners are faced with inherent trade‐offs. Retail sales personnel have to support the new product's introduction with substantial sales efforts but also sell the existing products in stock, before storage and devaluation costs spin out of control. This study shows how retail sales managers can guide sales personnel's performance of new and existing product selling, respectively. The authors argue that a manager may prioritize selling new products, existing products, or both (i.e., have an ambidextrous selling orientation). Based on data gathered from sales representatives and company databases of a large European consumer electronics retailer, the authors perform a time‐lagged partial least squares analysis to test empirically their conceptual model. The authors find that ambidextrous sales managers outperform their singular‐oriented counterparts if they properly align their orientation with a frontline management mechanism consisting of task autonomy, performance feedback, and employee age. More specifically, ambidextrous managers promote net profit obtainment if they grant their sales employees task autonomy and give little performance feedback. In addition, a remarkable finding is that older sales agents tend to outperform their younger counterparts when working under an ambidextrous manager. The authors discuss the implications of these findings.     

Marketing executives' perceptions of equitable salary increases

Employees' perceptions of fair and equitable salary increases is the subject of this article. Factors hypothesized to be the major determinants of the “perceived amount of pay that should be received” in Lawler's model of pay satisfaction are employed as predictor variables in a multiple regression equation context to explain the observed variation in executives' perceptions of fair and equitable salary increases. A national sample of industrial marketing executives were surveyed. A significant relationship was observed between employees perceptions of fair and equitable salary increases and a number of perceived personal job input and job demands related variables, current salary and wage history, and perceived non-monetary outcomes which are theorized in Lawler's model to be among the major determinants of the perceived amount of pay that should be received.     

Person–organization fit, OCB and performance appraisal: Evidence from matched supervisor–salesperson data set in a Spanish context

Despite the extensive work carried out by sales researchers regarding the influence of organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) on significant individual and organizational outcomes, it is still of interest to address new research questions and support previous results with samples from different organizational settings and other countries. Researchers have also identified the need to thoroughly investigate relationships between different antecedents of extra-role behaviors.In this study, we intend to test a two-part model. The first part of the model assumes that a salesperson's OCB is determined by Person–Organization fit and that this relationship is mediated by the salesperson's job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The second part examines the impact that such behavior may have on the supervisor's rating of the salesperson's performance.Data collected from 122 salesperson–supervisor dyads from 35 firms confirmed that Person–Organization fit has a positive effect on OCB due to the effect it has on the salesperson's job satisfaction. The results also verified the positive effect of OCB on the supervisor's evaluation of the sales agent's performance, both directly and indirectly, through the impact OCB had on the supervisor's fondness of the salesperson. Certain implications of this study, as well as directions for future research, are also addressed.     

Matching salesmen to the selling job

To develop and maintain a successful salesforce, it is essential for sales managers to “match” a salesperson's characteristics with the selling job he/she has to perform and with the overall selling environment. Such a match is established in this paper as we have identified three main selling styles based on the criteria used by manufacturing companies to select salespersons. These are “missionary selling,” “trade selling,” and “technical selling.” The association between selection policies and other aspects of sales management behavior is also investigated. Results are based principally upon a mail survey of 113 U.K. manufacturing companies and a profile is presented showing the sales management practices that were found to be associated with each of the selling styles identified.     

Why helping coworkers does not always make you poor: The contingent role of common and unique position within the sales team

In recent years, many companies have implemented sales teams as a way of streamlining accountability and promoting the development of sales expertise. The success of such work groups largely depends on experienced members' willingness to help coworkers. Previous studies indicate that group structure and individual position along individual attributes (e.g., experience) are important to understand interactions between coworkers. However, sales research on this topic is lacking. Drawing on a motivation-opportunity-ability framework, this study addresses this void by examining the impact of individual salesperson's job experience position within work groups on the motivation to help coworkers and his or her own sales performance. The findings of a multisource, multilevel empirical study reveal interesting effects. The results highlight the important role of job experience position: if a salesperson's level of job experience is common within the sales team, it activates identification as a driver of helping behaviors, which in turn negatively influences own performance. Conversely, if a salesperson's level of job experience is unique, it does not activate identification as a driver of helping, but does positively influence the effect of helping on own performance. The authors discuss implications for theory and practice.     

The role of sales team intragroup conflict on critical job outcomes

Sales teams are often structured into groups by territories, product categories, or hierarchical levels of salespeople which provide support to one another while counter-intuitively competing for individual resources, rewards, and promotions. We posit that the impact of conflict within the sales team (sales team intragroup conflict) on critical individual-level job outcomes (job satisfaction and intent to turnover) is contingent upon two loci of influences: individually-influenced goal orientations (learning and performance) and managerially-influenced justice perceptions (procedural and distributive). We empirically examine sales team intragroup conflict through a primary data collection of 195 distributor salespeople organized into 20 geographically dispersed teams. Our results largely support our hypotheses that there are nuanced effects across the loci of influences, such that in conflict-laden environments, having a performance orientation or perception of organizational distributive justice enhance job satisfaction, while a perception of organizational procedural justice decreases job satisfaction. Thus, we answer the call to better understand the role of conflict in marketing exchanges.     

Evaluating and comparing salesmen's performance

The measurement and evaluation of the performance of salesmen is complicated in most firms by the situational, environmental, and personal variables involved. This complexity is further increased when management attempts performance comparisons among several salesmen or among an entire sales force. Territorial differences, multiplicity of products, and differences in backgrounds among salesmen are just a few of the factors of variability that compound management's performance measurement and evaluation tasks.In spite of these difficulties, the management process requires that the performance of salesmen be measured and compared to predetermined standards. Subjective judgements have frequently taken the place of objective analysis, particularly as to the overall or composite performance of salesmen, because of the difficulties sales managers encounter in the determination of composite measures of performance. Many have discussed the determination and use of objectives or quotas for salesmen, and some have been concerned with the development of composite measures of salesmen performance. However, most have suggested methods that require quantitative skills not possessed by many sales managers and salesmen. The application of computers to the quantitative methods that have been suggested does alleviate the computational problem but not the equally important understanding requirement. Sales personnel, particularly field managers and their salesmen, should thoroughly understand and accept the methods by which standards of sales performance are determined, in addition to the standards or quotas themselves if they are to accept evaluation against these standards [1].The purpose of this article is to discuss the various determinants of salesmen's performance and to present a practical analytical method for calculating and evaluating the overall performance of salesmen that will permit cross-comparison among all members of the sales force irrespective of differences in assignments and objectives. A hypothetical example is then presented utilizing a tabular analysis format equally appropriate for use by home office analysts or by field sales managers and their salesmen.     

Increasing resilience by creating an adaptive salesforce

During disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of any commercial organization becomes a critical characteristic. This paper examines the flexibility of the sales process—that is, adaptive selling—as an analog to resiliency, and recommends that firms create an adaptive salesforce to increase resilience. By examining the extant research and conducting interviews with sales leaders, the findings of this paper suggest that an adaptive salesforce should focus on three areas of change within team structures. The first is an increase in flexibility and adaptiveness for the functions that the salesforce performs. The second area is an improvement of the adaptiveness of scale in which sales functions can be rapidly insourced or outsourced. The final area is technology adaptiveness, in which the salesforce adopts the use of technologies that are most relevant to customers. Implications for the firm, sales function, and individual salespeople are also derived.     

Salesperson's innovation resistance and job satisfaction in intra-organizational diffusion of sales force automation technologies: The case of South Korea

One of the rapidly growing areas in industrial marketing is the application of sales force automation (SFA) technologies to help improve the efficiency of the sales force task. What is often overlooked is that there are some potential negative effects related to SFA technologies that arise when these innovations are forcefully adopted on the individual salesperson. This study empirically examines the psychological and social antecedents of salespeople's resistance toward SFA technologies in South Korea. Unlike previous studies that only looked at adoption, this studies adds to the literature on SFA technologies by looking at resistance toward innovation in the post-adoption or intra-organizational diffusion stage. This study looks at the direct and indirect relationships between innovation resistance and some key constructs such as job satisfaction, job performance, self-efficacy, group-efficacy, innovativeness, and peer usage. This study represents also one of the very few empirical studies conducted on sales force behavior in South Korea and as such may offer some insights on sales force management in collectivist cultures.     

An analysis of buying center decisions through the salesforce

In this paper we examine whether classical customer surveys that are used to predict group buying decisions can be replaced by the method of interviewing the salesforce. We set up a two-step research approach. In the first step, we examined the predictive performance of different measurement processes in a salesforce survey (self-explicated approach and limit conjoint analysis for the preferences and constant sum scale and for the influence measurement limit conjoint analysis). In the second step, we conducted a classical customer survey using limit conjoint analysis and compared it with the predictions derived from the salesforce survey. Our results show that when surveying the salesforce (1) limit conjoint analysis is superior to the self-explicated approach in measuring preferences. With regard to the measurement of influence, we did not find any significant differences between the two procedures. (2) Our major findings are that the predictions derived from the salesforce survey are not only more practical because of the relatively low costs but that they also outperform those from the customer survey.     

Do you really need help? A study of employee supplication and job performance in China

This study examines a relatively unexplored impression management tactic—supplication. Compared to other more popular impression management tactics such as ingratiation and self-promotion, we know relatively little regarding how employee supplication affects job performance. Using social role theory, we argued that when the images of Chinese employees were consistent with their social roles of receiving help, supplication would be viewed as acceptable. We tested our hypotheses among 158 supervisor–subordinate dyads in China and found that female and junior employees did not receive negative job performance ratings due to supplication. Age, on the other hand, did not moderate the supplication–performance relationship. We believe our findings are consistent with the social norms in the five cardinal relations of Confucianism regarding the modest role of certain social classes in enhancing social harmony. We discuss how our research contributes to the literature of impression management and impacts management practices in China.     

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.     

The Impact of Innovative Culture on Individual Employees: The Moderating Role of Market Information Sharing

Current innovation literature provides a very limited understanding of the potential impacts of innovative culture on employees. Building on resource‐based view theory, the authors investigate theoretically and empirically how a perceived innovative culture can be a building block for a firm's competitive resource and advantage by creating superior employee‐level outcomes and how a market information‐sharing process may moderate these effects. The authors identify three distinct types of individual‐level outcomes stemming from an innovative culture. The three outcome variables—job satisfaction, organizational dynamism perception, and firm performance perception—reflect employees’ psychological and cognitive reactions to the process of creating organizational innovation and innovative culture. The authors collect survey data from 3960 individual employees in China. Their findings first show that a perceived innovative culture significantly and positively affects employees’ job satisfaction and perceptions of organizational dynamism and firm performance. Moreover, organizational dynamism perception plays an important mediating role among three employee‐level outcomes by converting job satisfaction into firm performance perception. The authors also find support for the direct, positive effect of a perceived market information‐sharing process on job satisfaction but not on perceptions of organizational dynamism and firm performance. Most importantly, their findings on the significant moderating role of a market information‐sharing system contribute to innovation theory by emphasizing the importance of the innovation/marketing interface: bundling market information sharing and innovative culture together enhances employees’ positive attitudes and perceptions. This result also suggests that examining only the direct effects of innovative culture and market information sharing may lead to incorrect conclusions as to how to manage the cultural infusion process: the market information‐sharing process shows only a weak effect on job satisfaction and no effect on perceptions of organizational dynamism or firm performance. Organizational designs should ensure simultaneous consideration of both variables in the cultural transformation process to enhance employees’ derived benefits in the process of creating an innovative culture. We offer a new insight: a perceived market information‐sharing process may strengthen the effect of an innovative culture on employees’ job satisfaction and organizational dynamism perception, while it may weaken the effect of an innovative culture on firm performance perception. This more nuanced view of market information sharing in the cultural infusion process presents new wisdom and calls for further studies in entrepreneurial innovation.