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.     

一类商品销售系统的予测

本文对机理不清的动态销售系统,采用随机过程统计的方法建立 ARMA(p,q)模型,利用计算机处理,实现了对具有周期性的一类商品销售额的趋势予测,从而为实现类似问题提供了简便可行的予测方法。     

Continuing the evolution of the selling process: A multi-level perspective

This paper considers the selling process from a relational perspective, thereby developing a more comprehensive understanding of the process. Emerging from this is a multi-level framework, which delineates the multiplicity and connectedness of relationships which exist in B2B interactions. The paper provides a relationship management tool for theorists as well as practitioners. The model visualizes strategic advantage for selling firms in seeking to optimize their position in an evolving network context. The combining of IMP, sales and relationship marketing theories that underpin this approach calls for further extension and/or reconceptualization of the selling process. Our reconceptualization asserts that identifying, measuring and managing selling-related relationships at the monadic, dyadic and network levels will facilitate the strengthening of a firm's network position and thus their performance. Our framework provides an analytical tool to assist in this.     

Designing sales force satisfying selling positions: a conjoint measurement approach

To design selling positions that appeal to both new and incumbent salespersons, management needs to understand salespersons' preferences for job characteristics. The study reported here exemplifies an effort to operationalize salespersons' preferences for job and task characteristics that takes account of both career stage and gender. Findings indicate that salespeople in the sample prefer salary-based compensation and that female salespeople prefer sales jobs that are fixed in location.     

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.     

Assessing the evolution of sales knowledge: A 20-year content analysis

1012 articles appearing in 15 prominent journals over the period 1983-2002 were content analyzed in order to assess the state of published research in the domain of selling and sales management. The results provide a comprehensive, two-decade look at the key topical, theoretical, and methodological patterns prevalent at the aggregate level as well as within selected journals. Without question, the sales field has generated a considerable body of knowledge representing a range of issues, empirical approaches, and conceptual foundations. However, this review reveals several longer term trends that may challenge the sales community to consider new approaches to designing and executing sales research. Implications of these findings for researchers and industrial marketing practitioners are discussed.     

Internet integration into the industrial selling process: A step-by-step approach

The Internet has evolved into an outstanding tool for industrial salespeople. Reps use the Internet to prospect new accounts more efficiently, serve existing customers more effectively, and build more enduring business buyer relationships. This paper examines these practices and possibilities in detail while offering ways to facilitate and augment WWW usage. Each phase in the selling process is addressed by proposing specific websites, web-based tools, and techniques that industrial salespeople can use to further enhance their selling competitiveness and effectiveness. Examples of how the Internet is used by salespeople in a variety of industries are described. A series of propositions and a new conceptual model summarizes the positive effects of the increased Internet utilization on individual selling effort. The paper concludes with a discussion of managerial implications for sales management and recommendations for future research.     

Going the extra mile: Antecedents of salespeople's discretionary effort

Many sales organizations are scrambling for success in today's intensely competitive environment. An increasing number of firms are finding that tried and true traditional selling strategies are less effective, or not effective at all. Moreover, companies are discovering that what has been an acceptable level of performance no longer is adequate for maintaining or gaining competitive advantage. Consequently, managers need to focus on alternative means through which the organization can be successful. One alternative is for sales forces to engage in discretionary effort-work activities that entail going beyond the call of duty. This paper develops propositions regarding antecedents of salesperson discretionary effort, which provide managerial direction should the propositions be confirmed.     

Comments on “Selling in the new millennium: a joint agenda”

This response to “Selling in the New Millennium” extends the ideas presented by Ingram, LaForge, and Leigh, in particular, suggesting a pivotal change from the salesperson to the sales function as the unit of study. Such a change makes many traditional research and review practices obsolete. For example, the author argues a need to accept lower response rates and smaller samples along with more formal and new methods to explore generalizability. Other examples, including a review of an article by Jap [J Pers Selling Sales Manage XXI (2001) 95.] and a discussion on the role of trade and professional associations, suggest additional changes that will be needed to increase the likelihood of achieving the joint agenda.     

The impact of selling aids on new prospects

Once a firm has called a list of good prospects, it is necessary to turn those prospects into first-time customers. Through an empirical investigation in the business forms industry, lunches, plant tours, advertising specialties, and printed promotional material were evaluated as selling aids. Plant tours and lunches were found to be especially effective in turning prospects into customers.     

The social psychology of industrial buying and selling

New ways to view industrial marketing are offered in order to clarify some currently existing confusion in the area. The dyadic or two party model and the systems model are offered as reconceptualizations leading to a better understanding of industrial marketing management. Action implications for business managers and academic researchers are suggested.     

Using humor in the industrial selling process

Humor is an oft used promotional tool in advertising, and the question naturally arises as to whether humor can also be designed to accomplish specific goals in the industrial selling process. In this article, principles of humor are applied to the buyer/seller process, with particular reference to the steps of the sale. The judicious use of humor by the industrial salesperson can enhance the sales presentation and favorably influence the overall buyer/seller relationship, provided the salesperson has adequate knowledge of the capabilities and limitations of humor.     

Industrial distributor selling: The roles of outside and inside sales

This paper examines the current practice of industrial distributor selling, focusing on the roles played by the outside and inside sales forces. Based on benchmark survey results, the present composition, responsibilities, and compensation programs of outside and inside sales forces are compared and contrasted. Some predictions are given on likely changes in selling practices, drawing upon interviews with managers, and managerial implications of them, are offered.     

Corporate strategy and the buying and selling of know-how

At this time, following a protracted period of recession, many companies have need to add to or change their technological base. For a company whose basic business is founded on a mature technology and unlikely to recover to its former level of activity, there is need to consider the transition process into a new area of development. For companies, on the other hand, whose businesses are inherently sound but now find themselves lagging behind technologically because of cut-backs and economies in their R&D spend during the recession, some process of catching up may be necessary. In either case, internal development is a possibility but, it is argued, unlikely to be able to act fast enough or to be of sufficient magnitude to make even catching up possible. The acquisition of know-how is an alternative course of action but one which companies can be loath to follow. These statements are supported by evidence on international comparisons of R&D expenditure, and on the national ratios of royalty payments and receipts in respect of know-how. The circumstances under which companies should consider such acquisition, and the strategic considerations guiding which know-how to purchase, are discussed.     

Salespeople's work toward the institutionalization of social selling practices

While the use of social media has become widespread among business-to-business organizations, the diversity of the social selling practices undertaken by salespeople and the extent to which they rely on them for their sales approach remain limited. Contrary to previous studies that emphasize the benefits of top-down approaches, we adopt a salesperson-centric approach, with the belief that the salesperson's agency is a key factor in the development of new sales practices related to social media. Using the concept of practice work and building upon institutional theory, we argue that social selling practices emerge in a bottom-up way, depending on the work initiated by salespeople. Based on a qualitative study of 32 B2B sales professionals, we show that salespeople perform three kinds of practice work: promotion, reconciliation, and disruption. These efforts can diffuse but also thwart social selling practices in sales organizations. This article offers new insights into how organizations can develop salespeople's depth of social media usage, and encourages firms to support salespeople's social selling initiatives instead of controlling them.     

The impact of supervisory adaptive selling and supervisory feedback on salesperson performance

The paper investigated the moderating effects of supervisory adaptive selling behaviors on the feedback-performance relationship in industrial salespersons. A conceptual model was developed and three research hypotheses were empirically examined. The data were collected via a survey of a national random sample of industrial salespersons in US. The results indicated that adaptive selling behaviors by sales managers moderated the effects of positive behavioral feedback on salesperson performance. Positive output feedback had a significantly positive effect on salesperson performance, whereas negative feedback (output and behavior) was unrelated to salesperson performance. Thus, sales managers can improve the productivity of their salespeople by demonstrating adaptive selling techniques while providing positive feedback to them. Managerial implications were discussed.     

企业如何加强对营销渠道的控制

营销渠道是促使产品或服务顺利地被使用或消费的一整套相互依存的组织，它包括生产厂家、经销商、批发商、零售商以及消费者。生产厂家处于营销渠道的起点，是产品和服务的提供者，消费者处于营销渠道的终点，是产品或服务的使用者或消费者。生产厂家要想使自己的产品顺利地被消费者使用，就必须协调各渠道     

The evolution of cooperation in strategic alliances: Initial conditions or learning processes?

We examine how the learning, along several dimensions (environment, task, process, skills, goals), that takes place in strategic alliances between firms mediates between the initial conditions and the outcomes of these alliances. Through a longitudinal case study of two projects in one alliance, replicated and extended in another four projects in two alliances, a framework was developed to analyze the evolution of cooperation in strategic alliances. Successful alliance projects were highly evolutionary and went through a sequence of interactive cycles of learning, reevaluation and readjustment. Failing projects, conversely, were highly inertial, with little learning, or divergent learning between cognitive understanding and behavioral adjustment, or frustrated expectations. Although strategic alliances may be a special case of organizational learning, we believe analyzing the evolution of strategic alliances helps transcend too simple depictions of inertia and adaptation, in particular by suggesting that initial conditions may lead to a stable ‘imprinting’ of fixed processes that make alliances highly inertial or to generative and evolutionary processes that make them highly adaptive, depending on how they are set.     

Global sales training: In search of antecedent, mediating, and consequence variables

This study proposes a framework that identifies and explains the relationships of input, mediating, and output variables for global sales training programs. Input or antecedent variables include high-quality: determination of sales training needs, objective setting, designing/implementing the training program, and evaluating training outcomes. The mediating variable culture is measured by a latent indicator: managers' perceived importance/perceived adequacy. The output or consequence variable is the quantitative improvement a firm measures in sales force performance that results from global sales training in the form of increases in sales revenue, profitability, decreased customer complaints, and/or reduced selling expenses. This framework is an initial attempt to synthesize existing knowledge about how to conduct effective sales training programs in cross-cultural settings. The article also offers research propositions that can be tested to advance our understanding of global sales training, discusses managerial implications, identifies limitations encountered by global sales training practitioners, and suggests future study opportunities for researchers.     

The roles of political skill and intrinsic motivation in performance prediction of adaptive selling

Previous studies have long recognized and examined adaptive selling as an effective behavior. Although some studies have assumed and revealed moderating factors that impact the effectiveness of adaptive selling behavior, few studies have examined an individual's skill as a moderator on this effect. This study focuses on political skill as a type of skill that has been recently found to have positive effects on sales performance. Furthermore, this study includes intrinsic motivation as an additional moderator that enables political skill to be invested in effective selling behavior. Our analysis of 249 salespeople and 145 supervisors in a matching sample largely supports our hypotheses that the positive effects of adaptive selling behavior on sales performance are highest when both political skill and intrinsic motivation are high. As political skill represents a skill related to intraorganizational behavior, this study complements the traditional view found in the literature on selling behavior, which only focuses on customer-directed interaction.