The sales manager as a Role model: Effects on trust, job satisfaction, and performance of salespeople

This study develops a conceptual framework that relates role-modeling behavior of sales managers to a set of key outcome variables and assesses the validity of the framework using a cross-sectional sample of salespeople and sales managers drawn from a variety of business-to-business sales organizations. Findings indicate that salespeople’s perceptions of their managers’ role-modeling behavior relate positively to trust in the sales manager and relate indirectly, through trust, to both job satisfaction and overall performance of salespeople. The study provides empirical validity for practitioner suggestions that sales managers should lead by example, and thus should provide a model of the behavior managers desire their salespeople to enact. His primary research interest is in the application of leadership theory to sales management. His work has been published inPersonnel Psychology andJournal of Business-to-Business Marketing.     

Performance congruence and value congruence impact on sales force annual sales

The separate and joint impact of performance congruence (similarity between salespeople and their sales managers) and value congruence on annual sales are investigated in a field study. Two hundred thirty-nine salespeople and their sales managers from several industries participated in the study. A significant association was found for separate and joint associations between performance congruence and value congruence and annual sales. More specifically, the more similar salespeople and their sales managers are regarding performance congruence measures, “identifying new prospects” and “setting up an initial appointment” and personal values, “warm relationships with others,” and “sense of belonging,” the higher annual sales.     

The strategic role of the sales force: perceptions of senior sales executives

Current models of sales force strategy imply formidable information processing demands, which leads us to take a cognitive approach to studying the issue of sales force strategy. We focus on how top-level executives use mental models of sales force performance to simplify the issue of sales force strategy. We interviewed 74 senior executives responsible for their firms’ selling function using the repertory grid approach, as this methodology has been shown to be particularly effective at uncovering the collective cognitive maps on which executives’ decisions and behaviors are based. Executives identified a broad set of 37 strategic concepts that they felt distinguish the sales force efforts of directly competing companies. A second set of sales executives classified the 37 concepts into capabilities, resources, and organizational context concepts. Based on the classification results and feedback from both sets of executives, we developed research propositions for examining sales force strategy and provide directions for future research.     

When salespeople develop negative headquarters stereotypes: performance effects and managerial remedies

This study examines the performance implications that organizations may suffer when their salespeople develop negative stereotypes of their corporate headquarters. How such stereotypes can be remedied through managerial action is also examined. The study draws on matched data from four different sources: sales managers, salespeople, customers, and company reports. Findings indicate that negative headquarters stereotypes among salespeople are associated with poor marketing-related performance across a range of outcomes, including salespeople’s adherence to corporate strategy, their customer orientation, and their sales performance. Findings also show that negative headquarters stereotypes can be remedied through managerial action, but more so at the corporate management level than at the sales unit level.     

Salespeople’s use of upward influence tactics (UITs) in coping with role stress

Researchers’ attentions have recently focused on how salespeople cope with role stress. This study focuses on salespersons’ use of six upward influence tactics (UITs) with the immediate sales manager, and how salespeople use UITs to lessen the impact of two role stressors (perceived role conflict and role ambiguity) associated with the sales job. The study also evaluates the potential moderating role of UITs on relationships between role stress and manager satisfaction and propensity to leave. Analysis of data gathered from a heterogeneous sample revealed differences in use of UITs between salespeople classified as either high or low in role stress. Salespeople who perceive high role conflict employ assertiveness and upward appeal UITs more frequently. Salespeople who perceive high role ambiguity use exchange and coalition-building UITs more frequently. Results also suggest that salespersons’ use of assertiveness and ingratiation UITs exacerbate relationships between perceived role ambiguity and two outcomes: satisfaction with supervisor and propensity to leave. Implications of the study findings for sales managers are reviewed, as are implications for further research. His research interests are in the areas of personal selling and sales management. His work has appeared inJournal of Education for Business, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, and various national and international conference proceedings. Jeffrey K. Sager, Ph. D., conducts research in the areas of salesperson turnover and job stress. His work has appeared in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, andJournal of Business Research. His research interests are in the fields of strategic management and organizational behavior. His research has been published in theAcademy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and several other journals.     

How does sharing a sales force between multiple divisions affect salespeople?

An increasing number of firms are sharing a sales force between multiple divisions of their companies. Although this practice may increase organizational efficiency by reducing unit selling costs, it is not clear how it affects outcomes at the level of the individual salesperson. This study examines the effects of sharing a sales force between multiple divisions on salespeople’s role perceptions, satisfaction, and performance. The results indicate that sharing is associated with higher levels of role stress and lower levels of work satisfaction and nonfinancial performance. The association between sharing and financial performance is not significant. Formalization and centralization of the sales organization moderate the relationships between sharing and the outcome variables. Higher levels of formalization lessen the effects of sharing on salespeople’s role conflict, role ambiguity, and work satisfaction. Conversely, higher levels of centralization exacerbate the effects of sharing on role ambiguity and work satisfaction. His research interests include issues in personal selling, sales management, and channels of distribution. He has published in theJournal of Retailing, European Journal of Marketing, Journal of Macromarketing, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, and various conference proceedings. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include management of brand equity and competitive analysis. He has published in theJournal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Advertising Research, Industrial Marketing Management, andPlanning Review. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. His research interests are in the areas of personal selling and sales management. His articles have appeared in numerous journals, and one of them received the William O’Dell Award for the most outstanding article published in theJournal of Marketing Research. He has coauthored several books includingSales Force Management: Planning Implementation and Control (Irwin, 1992). He received his Ph.D. from the University of Illinois-Urbana.     

The impact of sales management changes on new product success

Although the role of the sales force and sales management mix can be significant in influencing successful new product launch, the impact of specific sales management programs and tactics has not been examined in detail. This study explores whether firms that introduce new products were more successful in achieving their objectives when the new product introduction was accompanied by associated changes in sales management mix variables. Firms that were more successful in achieving their new product objectives accompanied their new product launches with significantly more changes in sales force quotas than did firms whose achievement of new product objectives was less successful. However, no significant differences in the number of changes in sales force structure, training, or sales support were found between firms with more successful versus less successful new products. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She began her career as a chemist and has held research, sales, product management, and marketing management positions prior to entering academia. The major focus of her research is on the process of developing and marketing new products. Her articles have appeared in theJournal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, andIndustrial Marketing Management. He has written numerous books and articles in professional journals and is the former editor ofJournal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. He serves on the editorial review boards of theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, andJournal of Business & Industrial Marketing and has been a consultant to many business and government organizations.     

Heterogeneity in sales districts: Beyond individual-level predictors of satisfaction and performance

This article examines the influence of heterogeneity within a sales unit on the unit’s satisfaction and performance.Sales unit refers to a set of salespersons working out of the same office and for the same supervisor, andheterogenity refers to salespersons’ dispersion or variance on key dimensions. Specifically, drawing on theories in social psychology, the authors study the influence of sales unit heterogeneity in terms of (1) demographic characteristics (e.g., gender dispersion), (2) skills and rewards (e.g., reward dispersion), and (3) goal orientations (e.g., learning orientation dispersion) on a sales unit’s performance and job satisfaction levels. The hypotheses developed are tested using data from a study involving 476 salespeople belonging to 105 sales units in a large organization. The authors find that the focal heterogeneity variables account for nearly 25 percent of the total variance explained by the full set of independent variables included in the model. R. Venkatesh is an assistant professor of business administration at the University of Pittsburgh’s Katz Graduate School of Business. His articles on product bundling, cobranding and sales force management have appeared or are forthcoming in theInternational Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Business, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, andMarketing Science. Goutam Challagalla is an associate marketing professor at Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Texas at Austin, where he won the Outstanding Dissertation Award. He has published articles on sales management and marketing theory in marketing and psychology journals. Ajay K. Kohli is Isaac Stiles Hopkins professor of marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. During 2000–2001, he is on leave from Emory and working at the Monitor Company. He has published in several journals on market orientation, sales management, and organizational buying behavior.     

Understanding the adoption of new brands through salespeople: a multilevel framework

So far there has been scant empirical attention paid to the role of the sales force in the adoption of new brands in the early implementation stages. We test a framework of internal (sales manager and salespeople) brand adoption using an empirical multilevel study. Our findings suggest that the construct of expected customer demand (ECD) plays an important role in sales force brand adoption. First, ECD directly influences salespeople’s and sales managers’ brand adoption. Second, ECD serves as a cross-level moderator of new brand adoption transmission. We find the influence of sales managers’ brand adoption on salespeople’s brand adoption to be stronger when salespeople’s ECD is lower.     

A model of sales supervisor leadership behavior and retail salespeople’s job-related outcomes

Retail salespeople play an important role in a retailer’s marketing mix, yet little empirical research has examined how retail managers might assist sales personnel in the performance of their jobs. This paper reports the results of a study that explored a causal model of sales supervisor “leadership behavior” and seven job-related outcomes of retail salespeople. Implications for retailers and researchers are provided.     

Managerial decision making in customer management: adaptive, fast and frugal?

While customer management has become a top priority for practitioners and academics, little is known about how managers actually make customer management decisions. Our study addresses this gap and uses the adaptive decision maker as well as the fast and frugal heuristics frameworks to gain a better understanding of managerial decision making. Using the process-tracing tool MouselabWEB, we presented sales managers in retail banking with three typical customer management prediction tasks. The results show that a majority of managers in this study are adaptive in their decision making and that some managers use fast and frugal heuristics. Usage of adaptive decision making seems to be mainly driven by low objective task difficulty, the use of fast and frugal heuristics by experience. While adaptive decision making does not impact predictive accuracy, usage of fast and frugal heuristics is associated with proportionally greater use of high predictive quality cues and a significant increase in accuracy. Hence, the existing skepticism concerning heuristics should be questioned.     

Perceived marketing–sales relationship effectiveness: a matter of justice

There is a compelling need to improve the relationship between managers in marketing and sales departments. This paper argues that one critical way of enhancing individual managers’ perceptions of relationship effectiveness between these departments is to view the issue as a matter of justice and suggests that perceived marketing–sales relationship effectiveness is positively influenced by managers’ perceptions of organizational justice. Furthermore, it proposes that interfunctional communication has the potential to enhance the proposed positive effects of justice and hence needs to be considered and effectively managed when looking at marketing–sales relationship effectiveness. Data drawn from a survey of 203 marketing and sales managers in 38 consumer packaged goods companies are used to empirically test these predictions. The authors find that perceived sales–marketing relationship effectiveness is influenced by perceptions of distributive, procedural and interactional justice. Greater interfunctional communication is found to further enhance the positive effects of distributive and procedural justice on perceived relationship effectiveness, but it does not contribute to the already strong positive effects of interactional justice. Furthermore, results reveal important differences in the effects of justice on perceived relationship effectiveness across the marketing and sales departments.     

Who are your successful salespeople?

Utilizing a systematic sample of 200 sales managers selected from manufacturing and wholesaling firms listed in the Dun and BradstreetMillion-Dollar Directory, a survey was conducted to determine whether or not a general profile of “successful” salespersons and another profile of “unsuccessful” salespersons could be constructed. A seven-point semantic differential scale was used to obtain ratings by sales managers of salespeople on each of twenty-four personal attributes. Profiles of “successful” and “unsuccessful” salespersons were found which showed large differences in ratings on the twenty-four personal attributes. Using factor analysis, a reduced set of personal characteristics was determined to predict “successful” and “unsuccessful” salespersons.     

It’s a matter of congruence: How interpersonal identification between sales managers and salespersons shapes sales success

In recent years, marketing research and practice have recognized the importance of managing frontline employees’ identification. However, investigations so far have focused on identification at the collective level of the self, such as organizational identification, thereby largely neglecting important interpersonal identification processes at the relational level. Using a large-scale dataset comprising information from sales managers and salespeople as well as company data on customer satisfaction and sales performance, the authors make a first attempt to address this neglect by exploring important phenomena of interpersonal identification in the sales manager–salesperson dyad. Results show that initial increases in the level of identification congruence between sales managers and their respective salespeople yield positive incremental effects on sales performance and customer satisfaction. Findings also show that interpersonal over-identification and identification incongruence are negatively related to both outcomes. Results demonstrate how sales managers could mitigate these negative effects.     

Personal characteristics and salesperson’s justifications as moderators of supervisory discipline in cases involving unethical salesforce behavior

Role-playing sales managers were asked to evaluate the personnel records of a salesperson who has been found to be using an unethical selling practice. Overall, saleswomen and salespeople who were described as extremely overweight were evaluated more harshly. Using excuses as justification did not neutralize the sales managers’ supervisory responses and, in the case of blaming one’s unethical behavior on the unethical behavior of customers, harsher disciplinary treatment resulted. Attribution theory is used to explain the findings.     

Social values and salesperson performance: An empirical examination

Although social values have been used increasingly in consumer research, their utility in sales management research has received little attention. Using a national sample of industrial salespeople, the authors evaluate several hypotheses, developed from social adaptation theory and a theoretical framework of values domain, regarding the incremental ability of the List of Values (LOV) to predict salesperson performance beyond adaptive selling (ADAPTS) and customer orientation (SOCO). The LOV shows promise as a tool by which salesperson performance can be predicted. Managerial implications are discussed, and suggestions for future research are presented. He received his Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Oregon. His experience includes five years in sales and sales management with Xerox and Digital Equipment Corporation. His research interests include sales force management and marketing strategy. He has published in theReview of Marketing, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Business Forecasting, Journal of Marketing Education, and other journals. He received his Ph.D. in 1989 from the University of Oregon. His current research interests include issues in cross-cultural marketing strategy, global and domestic sales force management, and research methodology. His research has been published in theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Marketing Education, and other journals.     

Digitization of selling activity and sales force performance: An empirical investigation

Firms are creating a digitized selling capability by developing Web sites designed to provide information and conduct transactions with customers, replacing many routine sales force activities. The authors use the motivationability framework to shape a conceptual model that examines the effects of the digitization of selling activity on two salesperson outcomes: salesperson effectiveness and salesperson job-insecurity. Using data from salespeople in 168 firms, they assess the moderating effects of environmental-level motivational factors and firm-level ability factors on the impact of digitization of selling activity on salesperson effectiveness and job insecurity. The results reveal that digitization has the paradoxical effect of improving salesperson effectiveness and heightening job insecurity concerns, and also that managers can improve the technology-enabled multichannel capabilities of the firm by giving priority attention to human capital improvement, sales force control systems, and communication of the digitization strategy. Devon S. Johnson (Ph.D., London Business School, dj@devonjohnson.com) is currently an assistant professor of marketing at Northeastern University, Boston. Previously, he was an assistant rofessor of marketing in the Giozueta Business School at Emory University. His research interests are the role of social capital in relational exchange and technology consumption and implementation. Sundar Bharadwaj (Sundar_Bharadwaj@bus.Emory.edu) is an associate professor of marketing in the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. His general research interests focus on marketing strategy and performance and risk. His research has been published in theJournla of Marketing, Management Science, and theJournal of the Academy of Marketing Science, among others.     

Salesforce decisions: A Markovian approach

This paper reports on the development, application, and evaluation of a Markov model used for macro sales force planning and control. The model portrays the succession of levels of sales force members from application to join the sales force, through all possible states, including possibilities of termination due to promotion, firing, and voluntary departures. The impact of several decision states such as recruiting, promotion, and training are then assessed, and the implications are evaluated through the use of the data from two large pharmaceutical firms. Several uses of the model are illustrated and the impact of managerial decisions on costs and profits are shown. The uses of the model for sales force design are also discussed.     

高新技术产业项目的绩效管理——基于软件项目管理的实证研究

针对高新技术产业广泛采用项目驱动的管理模式,在理论分析和实地调查的基础上,实证研究了客户、项目经理和激励制度对项目业绩的影响。结果发现客户对定制化需求大,但对标准化软件却有更高的边际利润;政府机构是大客户,但其垄断地位,所带来的销售利润率和项目交付率并不高;地域商务环境影响交易成本,进而显著地影响了项目的业绩水平;项目业绩受项目经理激励程度和方式的影响,但与项目经理认知特征无显著关系。这些结论说明软件企业在制定战略时,需以定制产品和定制服务为起点,但最终必须研发成为具有行业特点的标准化应用软件;在资源分配时,应重点关注地域商务环境好的客户,适当提高非政府机构行业客户的资源分配比例;应健全项目经理激励制度,促使项目提前完工,从而降低开发成本,增加项目业绩。     

Is purchasing management to buying as marketing is to selling?

This article examines the hypothesis that marketing concepts and techniques can be as useful to purchasing managers performing the buying function in the 1970s and 1980s as they were to advertisers and sales managers engaged in marketing in the 1950s and 1960s. Relevant concepts are briefly reviewed, and results of a survey of purchasing managers are reported. The data suggest the potential—but not actual—value of marketing-oriented thinking for purchasing managers.