Self-managing selling teams and team performance: The complementary roles of empowerment and control

This work is the first to examine systematically the influence of empowerment and control on the degree to which selling teams engage in desired self-managing behaviors. Further, this work is the first to propose the construct of desired self-managing behaviors in a selling team context, and empirically examine its influence on selling team performance. Our investigation indicates that control of team self-management provides a complementary positive influence to that of empowerment on the degree to which selling teams exhibit desired self-managing behaviors. In addition, we find a positive relationship between the degree to which teams exhibit desired self-managing behaviors and selling team performance; moreover, this relationship explains, to a large degree, selling team performance. These findings are consistent with our thesis that control of teamwork facilitates performance on the selling team level, just as control of selling skills facilitates performance on the individual sales rep level.     

Service leadership for adaptive selling and effective customer service teams

Companies are increasingly relying on customer service teams to deliver quality service critical for repeat business and profitability. But these teams need leadership to be effective. This study proposes that service leaders promote quality customer service by encouraging teams to develop adaptive selling capabilities. Data were collected from 113 customer service team leaders and 285 team members from a sample of consumer electronics retailing firms in Beijing, China. Data support the reasoning that by espousing service values, listening to customers, and encouraging improvements, service leaders help their teams become capable adaptive sellers. Results further suggest the contribution of team adaptive selling on customer team task performance, orientation to customers, and ability to recover from shortcomings in service. Findings extend recent research that leaders can have substantial impact by strengthening teamwork among followers by finding that service leaders develop customer service teams to be effective adaptive sellers.     

Toward a framework for mixed-gender selling teams and the impact of increased female presence on team performance: Thought development and propositions

Team selling and the increasing representation of women in the sales force are two current trends contributing to the complexity of managing the sales environment, yet little work exists investigating the impact of women on selling team performance. This paper anchors on cognitive resource diversity theory and integrates relevant prior research to propose a new proposition-driven framework that explains why gender diversity of team members improves team performance. Specifically, we provide evidence to suggest that the addition of females to all-male selling teams should positively impact team performance by reducing the average turnover rate of high performers within the team; by enhancing relational skills, organizational citizenship behaviors, and shared leadership within the team; and by building on the favorable effects associated with team heterogeneity. We also consider the moderating effects that potentially deeply ingrained connections among members of all-male teams may have on changes in team gender composition, as well as the importance of a culture of organizational inclusion on the favorable effects of team heterogeneity overall. Managerial implications of increased female presence on teams are proffered, along with suggested next steps in research and limitations of the present conceptualization.     

The Role of Sales in NPD: An Investigation of the U.S. Health‐Care Industry

The new product development (NPD) literature emphasizes that the success of new products strongly depends on a firm's capability to understand customer needs and translate them into new products. Because of their close relationships with customers, salespeople are in the ideal position to connect the firm's NPD efforts to its customers. The extant literature on the role of sales in NPD focuses on either sales’ contribution to generating new product ideas or the adoption of new products by salespeople, while a systematic study of sales’ contribution during all NPD stages is lacking. In addition, the role of sales is typically studied in isolation, while in practice, the role of sales depends on the relationship between sales and marketing. This article addresses these gaps in the literature by reporting on an empirical investigation of the role of sales during the entire NPD process in the U.S. health‐care industry, taking into account the complexities of the sales‐marketing dynamic. The article is based on interviews with 21 sales and 15 marketing informants from the U.S. health‐care industry, both pharmaceutical firms (selling drugs to physicians) and device manufacturing firms. Our findings highlight how salespeople are distant from NPD process during the discovery stage. Salespeople are focused on selling to customers, and marketing keeps sales distant from the NPD process. During the development stage, sales is still only indirectly involved in NPD through its relationship with marketing. During commercialization, however, marketing takes the driver's seat and strongly involves sales in the various (pre)launch activities. But while salespeople are mostly indirectly involved in NPD, sales managers have a closer relationship with sales and are more directly involved. The findings also show how the involvement of sales is influenced by characteristics of the health‐care industry. Thus, this article contributes to our understanding of the role of sales in NPD by integrating theoretical perspectives from the sales‐marketing interface literature into the NPD literature.     

Advancing social media driven sales research: Establishing conceptual foundations for B-to-B social selling

Business markets are facing major changes due to an increasing digitalization trend and consequent changes in buying behaviors. Practitioners and academics alike have started to emphasize social selling as a novel way to tackle these emerging opportunities and challenges at the sales force level. Since research in this area remains embryonic and fragmented, we adopt a discovery-oriented research approach and conceptualize social selling and its key facets based on a systematic literature review and a field study involving thought leading social selling professionals. The findings indicate a need to extend the research focus from social media usage into a concept which comprehends social selling as a broader application of digital marketing principles at the individual salesperson level. Social selling leverages social and digital channels for understanding, connecting with, and engaging influencers, prospects and existing customers at relevant customer purchasing journey touchpoints for building valuable business relationships. We relate the construct to other close selling approaches and explicate its organizational strategy components as well as performance outcomes. The findings advance current understanding of the role of sales in contemporary business markets and have implications for sales and marketing theory and practice.     

The impact of the product to service shift in industrial markets and the evolution of the sales organization

Marketing is undergoing a paradigmatic shift that involves a change in focus from the exchange of goods, which are usually manufactured output, to providing a service, which is fundamental to economic exchange (Vargo & Lusch 2004).Evidenced by three decades of marketing transformation in B2B (business-to-business) sales organizations, this paper examines the evolution of sales organizations as a result of the shift from product- to service-focused commerce. This paper also identifies areas of future research and practice in marketing. Findings suggest that the traditional product-focused sales organization will evolve in two directions. First, enhanced use of technology will reduce some traditional sales functions and even face-to-face contact. Second, customers who are important to marketers will experience improvements in the level of customer contact—leading to growth in customer-focused sales organizations and an increase in global account management teams. Changes in sales organizations will also lead to changes in the selection, training, and recruitment of salespeople as well as their roles.Direction for future research and managerial implications are highlighted throughout the paper as are changes likely to occur in sales organizations.     

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

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

Understanding the theory and practice of team selling: An introduction to the special section and recommendations on advancing sales team research

Effectively managing sales teams is a prerequisite for success in modern business markets. Thus, practitioners are increasingly interested in improving the performance of their sales teams. However, academic research in the area is very scarce. Against this backdrop, this IMM special section on “Team Selling” aims at stimulating the level of discourse regarding how research in our field can be advanced. The present article introduces the special section; next, it summarizes the articles comprising the special section; and, finally, it concludes with our thoughts on fruitful research opportunities in the area of team selling.     

Role of absorptive capabilities in outsourcing the headquarters selling task in the United States

Manufacturers often outsource headquarters selling task to sales and marketing agencies. Headquarters selling task is one of the most outsourced sales and marketing functions and it entails all the activities that a manufacturer conducts in order to sell its product line to the headquarters of a retailer. Thus, effective management of headquarters selling task has a strategic importance for the manufacturer. This study examines the role of absorptive capabilities in outsourcing headquarters selling task. Using resource-advantage theory, this study proposes a theoretical model to link the resources and absorptive capabilities of the outsourcer (manufacturer) and the outsourcee (sales and marketing agency) to performance outcomes. Using data from field interviews of managers an empirical model was tested. The results showed that resources of both the outsourcer and the outsourcee are important in turning potential complementarities into higher outsourcing performance. Contrary to the common belief that outsourcing is a one-sided transaction where only the outsourcee is responsible from the performance outcomes, this study suggests that both parties involved need to combine their resource assortments in the accomplishment of the task.     

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.     

The Effect of Sales Force Adoption on New Product Selling Performance

Although several studies have suggested that the sales force is a major contributing factor to new product success, few studies have focused on new product adoption by the sales force, particularly with respect to its relationship with selling performance. The present article presents empirical evidence on the impact of sales force adoption on selling performance. We defined sales force adoption as the combination of the degree to which salespeople accept and internalize the goals of the new product (i.e., commitment) and the extent to which they work hard to achieve those goals (i.e., effort). It was hypothesized that the impact of sales force adoption on selling performance will be contingent on supervisory factors (sales controls, internal marketing of the new product, training, trust, and supervisor's field attention), and market volatility. Therefore, this article also provides evidence of the conditions under which sales force adoption of a new product is more or less effective in engendering successful selling performance. The hypothesized relationships were tested with data provided by 97 high technology firms from The Netherlands. The results show that sales force adoption is positively related to selling performance. This finding suggests that salespeople who simultaneously exhibit commitment and effort will achieve higher levels of new product selling performance. Outcome based control, internal marketing and market volatility are also positively related to new product selling performance. The effect of sales force adoption on selling performance is stronger where outcome based control is used and where the firm provides information on the background of the new product to salespeople through internal marketing. Training and field attention weaken the adoption‐performance linkage. These findings may indicate that salespeople in The Netherlands interpret training as “micromanaging” and field attention as “looking over their shoulder.” We conclude with implications of our study for research and managerial practice.     

Intangible sales team resources: Investing in team social capital and transactive memory for market-driven behaviors,norms and performance

Complex offerings and evolving customer needs increase the demand for market-driven salespeople. Yet many of today's managers struggle to effectively deploy this selling approach. In light of this reality, we develop and test a multi-level market capabilities framework to examine team-level drivers and boundary conditions of market-driven salesperson behaviors, norms, and performance. Data collected in a lagged, multi-source, cross-level field study of 246 salespeople nested within 54 sales teams provide evidence that investments in team social capital (ITSC) support the self-correcting, customer-centric, learning behaviors needed for performance. Results show that managers' ITSC are positively associated with team goal monitoring, commitment to service quality, and learning effort. Further, goal monitoring and learning effort increase commitment to service quality, which helps drive sales performance. We also find that transactive memory systems (TMS) can be an efficient team knowledge resource that strengthens the learning effort-to-performance and service quality-to-performance relationships.     

SOCO's impact on individual sales performance: The integration of selling skills as a missing link

Conventional wisdom suggests that a customer orientation is a vital cornerstone upon which the success of salespeople is predicated in terms of serving their customers and prospects. However, at a pragmatic level, not all salespeople practice a customer-oriented philosophy in their day-to-day selling. In fact, decades of sales research provide largely inconclusive results with respect to individual salespersons' customer orientation and performance outcomes. We argue that for customer orientation to be a predictor of sales performance, specific selling skills must be present. Furthermore, we empirically demonstrate that without these requisite selling skills, salespeople are better off utilizing a sales orientation approach, as opposed to a customer orientation approach. More provocatively, this research shows that a “missing link” in the long standing body of research on the SOCO (sales orientation/customer orientation) perspective is that specific selling skills can impact sales performance directly as well as moderate the impact that both a “sales orientation” and a “customer orientation” ultimately have on sales performance.     

A sales mix model for effective industrial selling

The purpose of this article is to focus on one aspect of the marketing mix for industrial firms. Specifically, the control of promotion centers on the promotional mix, which includes personal selling, advertising, and sales promotion. The personal sales mix model (Figure 1) highlights those factors that are controllable by the industrial sales representative. Also, the uncontrollables involved in industrial selling are discussed. An understanding of the personal sales mix model should aid industrial marketers in satisfying buyer's needs through effective selling.     

Outward-looking and future-oriented customer value potential management: The sales force value appropriation role

The management of customer relationships based on customers’ value to the selling firm has been a central topic in marketing research for decades. Yet, extant research has devoted only scant attention to the management of customer future value potential, focusing mostly on advanced statistical modeling based on firm-internal and historical data, which often lacks relevance in B-to-B settings. We employ a longitudinal intervention study, rooted in a constructive research approach, to assess the relevance of a novel customer value potential management model in business markets. The results, based on realized sales and customer portfolio dynamics, demonstrate that a firm can effectively manage customer value potential by adopting a non-statistical, sales force-driven analysis perspective. Further, the study presents evidence for the effectiveness of combinative outward-looking and future-oriented value potential criteria in value potential analysis. Finally, the findings demonstrate how a supplier can proactively manage customer portfolio dynamics in the long run by systematically enhancing its competitive position and capitalizing on customers’ organic growth at individual customer account level, through the interplay of organizational value management and sales force value appropriation efforts.     

Salesperson navigation: The intraorganizational dimension of the sales role

Salespeople require the ability to navigate within their own organization to get what they need to be successful given today's demanding customers. The literature on personal selling provides little guidance on this dimension of the sales role and how it might impact selling performance. We develop the notion of Salesperson Navigation (SpN), embed SpN within a conceptual framework, and show how SpN works to impact individual sales performance. We develop both managerial and research perspectives around this phenomenon.     

Complexity of sales situation and sales lead performance: An empirical study in business-to-business company

Close collaboration in business-to-business relationships has been an interest of both researchers and managers; however, companies are often struggling to obtain the benefits of close collaboration with their customers. Our study examines the complexity of the sales situation from three perspectives 1) relational complexity, 2) complexity of internal sales tasks, and 3) vendor's cross-business unit collaboration, and its effect on the sales lead performance in a business-to-business context. We adopted a mixed methods approach; our data consists of interviews with sales personnel and a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system data of 4000 sales leads from a large IT company that sells integrated solutions. Sales leads are classified into three categories: win, lost, and canceled. Based on multinomial logistic regression analysis, the results show that close collaboration with customers increases the probability of sales leads to be canceled. Our findings suggest that the selling approach focusing on close collaboration with the customers may not be a method to increase hit rates, due to possible high amount of canceled sales leads. This should be considered when salespeople's performance is measured in highly collaborative business-to-business environment. We conclude our paper with managerial and theoretical implications, and avenues for the further research.     

The adoption of national account marketing by industrial firms

National account marketing has been a common industrial marketing practice since after World War II. National account marketing means that special marketing procedures are followed in selling, servicing, and monitoring certain key customers considered important to the goal attainment selling company. The importance of the account may lie in the volume of goods purchased, the dollar value of the purchases, share of market controlled, prestige of the account, or any number of other factors thought to be critical to goal attainment of the selling firm.     

Opportunities for value-based selling in an economic crisis: Managerial insights from a firm boundary theory

When economic crises disrupt markets and stifle sales, business-to-business (B2B) vendors are often tempted to respond by offering temporary price reductions to maintain sales and empathize with the customers' plight. This, however, may be a suboptimal strategy in plain sight. In this article, we propose an alternative approach, and suggest that value-based selling is a particularly suitable and mutually beneficial, yet often counter-intuitive strategy to selling in an economic crisis. We draw on the well-established organizational boundary theory to explain why economic crises should make customers more receptive to boundary changes that support value-based selling. Subsequently, we develop managerial insights on how vendors can capitalize on these opportunities by demonstrating how boundary changes can help customers reduce immediate costs, while retaining their competitiveness to grow when the economy recovers.     

Creating or destroying value through mergers and acquisitions: A marketing perspective

A majority of mergers and acquisitions are horizontal, combining companies within the same industry. They are most frequently motivated by a desire to achieve revenue and profit growth through market expansion or by adding new product lines, with cost efficiencies being a secondary agenda. However, the modest body of literature on post-merger performance using marketing metrics indicates that marketing objectives such as sales revenue and market share growth are rarely achieved. This paper reports on a detailed study of 45 M&A deals undertaken to develop a deeper understanding of how marketing performance is affected by mergers and acquisitions. Our results show that marketing performance improved along two dimensions — sales revenue growth, and a reduction in selling, marketing and administrative costs as a percentage of sales revenue, suggesting the realisation of synergies in these areas — economies of scale and scope. However, these benefits did not follow through into better returns on sales suggesting that the marketing cost economies are not sufficient to outweigh cost diseconomies in other parts of the business.