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Issues discussed concern the management of selling alliances between businesses thriving in dynamic markets, focusing on the development of sales opportunities between organizations. A model for effective selling partner relationships that includes cooperation, mutual trust, interdependence, and relative influence is proposed.

This study outlines a method for improving the psychometric properties of the ADIOS scale for measuring adaptive selling (Spiro and Weitz 1990). As originally presented, the ADAPTS scale suffered from a lack of unidimensionality. Subsequent research has demonstrated mixed results when using ADAPTS as a predictor of salesperson performance. Results from this study suggest that ADAPTS can be improved by addressing the unidimensionality issue. To do this, a series of confirmatory factor models are presented, resulting in a two-factor adaptive selling model. The two adaptive selling constructs, beliefs and behaviors, are psychometrically evaluated, concluding with tests of the predictive validity of the two-factor model using self-reported performance as the exogenous latent variable.

In many markets personal selling is a critical component of marketing success. Yet despite an increasing amount of prescriptive marketing literature advocating a customer-oriented business approach, very little has beem written about personnel selling from a customer-oriented perspective. Based on the belief that, as part of the marketing process, personal selling should share the same customer-oriented philosophy amd methodology, this article presents a new model of the personal selling process. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

Research into the interaction of a salesperson with a buyer would seem to be relatively simple, but in fact there are a number of theoretical and methodological challenges. The author describes several of these challenges, particularly the nonindependence of observations and the existence of effects at both individual and dyadic levels. An analytical approach, the Social Relations Model, is presented which takes these phenomena into account. The model's application is illustrated with an investigation of the relationship between a salesperson's communication competence and performance. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)