Relationships among measures of retail salesperson performance

A lack of understanding of the relationships among measures of salesperson performance exists in practice and in the retailing/sales management literature. This article examines the relationships among three commonly used measures—one outcome (sales volume) and two judgmental measures (managerial evaluations and salesperson self-evaluations). We empirically demonstrate that not all judgmental measures are related to outcome measures; that is, salesperson self-evaluations are significantly related to sales volume, but managerial evaluations are not. The study also examines the efficacy of retailers using short outcome-measuring periods for evaluation purposes. The results suggest that outcome measure variance within salespeople for short periods is high and therefore these data should be used with caution. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from The Ohio State University. His research interests are in the areas of retailing, logistics, and sales management. He has published extensively in journals such as the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and Journal of Retailing. He is co-author of Retailing Management. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His research interests are in the area of sales management and organizational behavior. His has published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, and International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management.