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Tom Hopkins is having another unbelievable day. Just ask him. 'I tell people in sales that you can be having the worst day of your life, but no one has [...]

Understanding what contributes to salesperson turnover helps reduce turnover and its deleterious consequences. This study examines the interactive effects of salespersons' personal characteristics and coping strategies on turnover intentions. Findings suggest that self-efficacy combined with problem-focused coping significantly reduces salespersons' turnover intentions--more so than self-efficacy alone. In contrast, while an external locus of control orientation combined with emotion-focused coping significantly increases turnover intentions, the increase is not as great as from external locus of control alone. Neither the combined effect of self-efficacy and emotion-focused coping nor external locus of control and problem-focused coping are found to significantly influence turnover intentions. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134300405

As matches go, this one was near perfect: a chance meeting of a freelance writer always on the lookout a commission-only salesman constantly looking for a lead. We met over [...]

The linkages between and effects of work--family conflict and salesperson deviance behaviors have not received adequate attention in the marketing literature. This is surprising given the profound academic and practical implications that could be derived from further research in the area. Research suggests that an alarming 40 percent of sales reps admit to engaging in workplace deviance and 66 percent did not feel that deviant conduct would result in significant punishment. This study examines work--family conflict as a primary antecedent of salesperson deviance. Salespeople experiencing increased divergence between work and family roles will likely react by violating organizational norms that will inevitably affect key organizational outcomes. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134300304

Interactive digital media are revolutionizing the marketing landscape. The virtual world is a dominant player in this new panorama, with exchanges in the virtual marketplace approaching $2 billion annually. While virtual, like real world, exchanges require buyers and sellers, there is little or no understanding of this disembodied sales process. The current study seeks to address this gap in knowledge by employing an ethnographic methodology in which researchers incarnate in Second Life to explore the personal selling process. Specifically, the various notions of the 'self' that constitute the avatar salesperson are explored. Findings from this exploratory study suggest a relationship between the nature of the self and the type of exchange. From this, a conceptual model for the study of the virtual selling self is presented, propositions developed, and managerial implications for the virtual sales force suggested. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134300301

Organizations increasingly use Internet channels to enhance performance, consolidate existing markets, and reach new markets. The overarching benefits realized through the Internet oftentimes come at the expense of perceived job insecurity among individuals in the organization. This study explores perceptions of job insecurity among sales agents when the Internet seems to cannibalize their business, customer relationships, and jobs. Results suggest that sales agents' perceptions of cannibalization negatively influence their effort, job satisfaction, and job performance, whereas relational capital moderates the influence of these perceptions. In a post hoc analysis, the impact of perceived cannibalization is found to be more severe for less experienced sales agents than for more experienced sales agents. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134300302

Research examining technology and the sales force has a long, developed history that spans several decades. From initial research reviewing sales force laptop usage to more recent studies investigating the effects of advanced customer relationship management applications, much insight has been garnered regarding technology and sales. However, much of this investigation has occurred in business-to-business environments, leaving what we believe to be a considerable gap in knowledge on technology in business-to-consumer settings. In this paper, we briefly review some areas of research that we believe have seen abundant investigation and offer other fruitful avenues for research. We conclude that in business-to-consumer sales interactions, technology takes on a varying role and often enables a salesperson to complete a sale successfully, but seldom replaces the human interaction necessary to further develop the relationship. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134300202

Although experts agree on the importance of strong customer relationships, sales force management practices often result in behaviors that weaken relationships. The current use of sales contests with quantitative objectives in relation to revenue or profit margins testifies to this divergence. Sharma (1997) emphasizes the need for a better understanding of the impact of sales contests on customer satisfaction and salespeople's customer orientation because of the importance of strong customer relationships. Tournament theory, a mid-range theory developed in economics, provides a framework for understanding why and how contests may influence customer orientation. In an experiment examining four characteristics of sales contests, we explore which types of sales contests best preserve customer-oriented behaviors. The findings provide insight regarding contest design factors that support a strong customer orientation. DOI 10.2753/PSS0885-3134300103

This study examines the influence of sales management control (outcome based, behavior based, and knowledge based) on the innovativeness of sales departments. Using data from Japanese sales departments, the results indicate that sales departments tend to be innovative when salespeople are evaluated based on their behavior and knowledge rather than on outcome. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed. 10.2753/PSS0885-3134290402

A growing scholarly interest in key account management highlights the need for a framework to use in the study of these accounts. This study combines theory from relationship marketing, personal selling, and organizational-level resource allocation studies to build an integrative theoretical framework explaining both relational and performance aspects of key accounts. In building this integrative model, a qualitative study of key account managers revealed that 'fit' between the buying and selling company is of great importance. This concept of fit, which has largely been ignored in key account studies, is added as both an antecedent and a moderator in the integrative model. 10.2753/PSS0885-3134290401

This study examines the effects of goal setting on salesperson effort and new product sales. Employing the motivation hub's theoretical framework, company-assigned goals (i.e., quotas), self-set goals, and self-efficacy are modeled as antecedents to selling effort and new product sales. To investigate the model, longitudinal data were collected from 143 industrial salespeople and combined with objective data from company records. The strength of this multisource, longitudinal data set allowed several important time-dependent relationships to be tested in the model. Seemingly unrelated regressions were employed to address the unique challenges the data provided. Results from the analysis reveal evidence of a nonlinear relationship between self-set goals and effort. Specifically, salespeople expend more effort as goal levels increase up to a certain point. Beyond this threshold, selling effort decreases as goal levels increase. The study also indicates that self-set goals fully mediate the relationship between assigned goals and selling effort. Finally, the longitudinal data indicate that company-assigned goals, self-set goals, and selling effort all positively influence future new product sales. Interestingly, the results of the study fail to confirm an inverted, U-shaped relationship between assigned goals and effort which opens up further questions for future research. Both theoretical and managerial implications are discussed based on this new evidence.

Much has been written about the importance of focusing on customers to drive organizational success. In this paper, aspects of manager-salesperson relationships are examined as drivers of deeper customer focus in salesperson-customer interactions. In particular, managers' servant leadership, a leadership style emphasizing genuine concern for subordinate welfare, is examined as a catalyst of parallel concern by salespeople for their customers. Salesperson perceptions of managers' servant leadership empirically relate to salesperson customer orientation, in turn driving adaptive selling behaviors, customer-directed extra-role behaviors, and sales performance outcomes. Other results and implications for management and sales leadership research are presented.

Career stage theory suggests that salespeople vary in their motivation systematically across career stages. However, empirical evidence using valence, expectancy, and instrumentality components of motivation have failed to find consistent support. Drawing on social psychology and recent sales literature, we decompose global intrinsic and extrinsic (I/E) motivation into distinct cognitive and affective dimensions to empirically test a more current conceptualization of salesperson motivation. Empirical results using a cross section of salespeople indicate that salespeople's I/E motivation differs along the cognitive, but not affective, dimensions across career stages. Specifically, salespeople in the establishment stage were found to have higher levels of challenge seeking than those in the disengagement stage, and compensation seeking was higher among exploration- and establishment-stage salespeople than those in the maintenance stage. The research findings highlight the need to distinguish between cognitive and affective dimensions of I/E motivation in understanding career stage-based expectations of salesperson motivation.

Internet-based developments are generating opportunities for enhancing business-to-business operations. One approach involves the adoption of e-collaborative networks, which have the potential to strengthen communications between the members of a value-chain network. An effective communication interface within the value chain is central to the client's productivity, and the sales force plays an important role in facilitating this process. Here, we examine an e-collaborative network built and sustained by one global, U.S.-based technology firm. Using an extended case study method, we identify/software capabilities that influence e-collaboration and discuss the mediating role of the sales team: (1) monitoring communal involvement, (2) identifying prospective e-collaborative firms, (3) inspiring a cooperative environment, and (4) fostering a sense of trust. We offer performance metrics and suggest implications for the sales force.

This paper adopts a configuration theory perspective to investigate how inconsistencies among the perceived elements of a sales force control system influence salesperson performance. Analysis based on a sample of 1,290 salespeople suggests that these inconsistencies hurt salesperson performance. Furthermore, this relationship is moderated by professional maturity, a combined index of age, selling experience, and organizational tenure. Implications for management and future research are offered.

This research addresses significant gaps in the application of distributive fairness to sales management. A study of sales professionals from across several industries details how the equitable distribution of rewards affects important job outcomes such as satisfaction, voice (constructive suggestions for improvement of the firm), and exit (quitting the firm). The study also demonstrates that equity judgments are derived, and differently affected, by referent comparisons including other salespeople within the firm, other employees within the firm, and salespeople from outside the firm. Several conditions that describe the sales environment are shown to moderate these effects and, consequently, what is perceived as 'fair' and 'unfair.' Together, these insights reveal the underlying mechanics in judgments of fairness (yielding a richer theory) and contribute to better managerial practice.

Given differing organizational needs and goals, underlying conflicts and tensions are an inherent part of buyer-seller relationships. This research presents and tests a conceptual framework examining the effect of the type of conflict (affective and task) in the relationship, the conflict management approaches used by the salesperson, and the subsequent quality of the buyer-seller relationship. The framework is tested using surveys completed by 235 salespeople in three industries. The survey results provide new insights on how salespeople can use conflict management behaviors to cope better with task and affective conflict and improve relationship quality with buyers.

The issue of trust is an important one in the marketing literature. To assess the nomological validity of trust-related measures, this research uses an item-level measurement meta-analysis based on correlations from 32 studies that measure trust-related constructs in the context of a buyer's assessments of sellers. Analysis reveals that 16-item measures converge into three constructs that are indicative of the seller's credibility, expertise, and compatibility and three items each that are indicative of trust and trustworthiness. In a structural equation model based on the meta-analysis, a seller's characteristics are predictive of trust and trustworthiness.

Salespeople play an important role in applying customer-driven strategies, and enhancing their performance becomes a top piority for many organizations. An approach to help executives determinine the control levels suitable to to the company's selling situation and creating comparisons with manager competencies in carrying out these control activities is presented.

A study is conducted to examine various ethical and social issues that show significant impact on sales force on an organization.

Drawing largely on organizational socialization theory and its derivations, such as uncertainty reduction and sense-making theory, the authors propose and test empirically a process model of newcomer salesperson socialization in the South Korean context. The results indicate that both organization-initiated and newcomers' proactive socialization tactics (i.e., seeking performance feedback and information seeking, building relationships and networks) significantly influence newcomers' perceived level of accommodation (i.e., role clarity and social integration) and thus their adjustment to the new work environment (i.e., level of organizational commitment, job performance, and job satisfaction). The authors discuss the theoretical and managerial implications and present future research directions.

The last major study of sales performance variance explained by salespeople attributes was by Churchill et al. (1985). They examined the effect of role, skills, motivation, personal factors, aptitude, and organizational/environmental factors on sales performance--factors that have dominated the sales performance area. About the same time, Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan (1986) introduced the concepts of salespeople's knowledge structures. Considerable work on the relationship of the dements of knowledge structures and performance can be found in the literature. In this research note, we determine the degree to which sales performance can be explained by knowledge structure variables, a heretofore unexplored area. If knowledge structure variables explain more variance than traditional variables, then this paper would be a call to further research in this area. In examining this research question in a retail context, we find that knowledge structure variables explain 50.2 percent of the variance in sales performance. We also find that variance explained by knowledge structures is significantly different based on gender. The impact of knowledge structures on performance was higher for men than for women. The models using education demonstrated smaller differences.

The study compares the role of self-reported causal attributions of past performance on self-generated expectations of future performance among salespeople from independent and interdependent national cultures. The results suggest that salespeople from independent cultures attribute successful past performance to internal factors (i.e., effort or ability), but not external factors (i.e., luck or organizational support). Salespeople from interdependent cultures, however, attribute successful performances to both internal and external factors. Furthermore, the relationship between past performance and future performance expectation is mediated by internal or external causal attributions depending upon whether the salespeople operate in independent or interdependent cultures, respectively.

This research focuses on the salesperson's ability to perceive emotions in the buyer-seller interaction. Drawing on the emotional ability literature, the authors develop hypotheses within a conceptual framework of salespeople's ability to perceive the emotions of customers, and examine how this ability influences the relationships between selling behaviors and performance. Findings indicated that the ability to accurately appraise the emotions of others moderated the practice of adaptive selling and customer-oriented selling on performance. Further analyses revealed that while high perceiving ability has beneficial effects on selling, low perceiving ability not only limits the use of customer-oriented selling but also has a negative impact on sales performance. Both self-reported and supervisor-reported measures of selling performance were used, along with a performance-based measure of emotional perceiving ability. Implications are discussed along with directions for future research.

Compensation plans, including salary, commissions, incentives, promotion, recognition, and rewards, are critical in motivating and influencing salespeople. While commissions are often considered a key component of companies' compensation and reward structures, past studies have overlooked commissions when studying salespeople's relative preferences for rewards. The present study extends Chonko, Tanner, and Weeks's (1992) research by examining salespeople's preferences for commissions versus other rewards. The findings of this study support the importance of increases in commissions as a reward for salespeople across different industries and different demographic profiles. Higher commission rates were the most preferred reward, followed by pay raises. Promotion and recognition were the least preferred rewards. Managers can utilize the results of this study as they design compensation plans within their companies.

Trust in the salesperson is one of the primary antecedents of customer satisfaction. However, trust is a function of time and is virtually nonexistent during the exploration phase of the buyer--seller relationship. The link between trust and conflict within the sales context has a long history. During the exploration phase of the relationship, buying objections are obvious sources of conflict between sales representatives and prospective customers. Success in managing rapport during such conflict means the sales representative moves the relationship forward. Failure undermines the future relationship. Our goal in this paper is to focus specifically on the critical role of sociolinguistic behaviors described by the theory of rapport management for allowing sales representatives to move beyond the exploration phase in relationships while overcoming customer objections. The result is a simple yet powerful basis for sales training and a theoretically motivated basis for future personal selling research.

Hobfoll's conservation of resource (COR) theory is used to predict how net resource loss (defined in this study as 'sales failure impact') influences the type of attributions used by salespeople to account for a sales setback. Partial support for the theory was found where salespeople employed external attributions to conserve resources following a loss perceived as having high sales failure impact. The role of self-efficacy and internal locus of control are also used to explain when salespeople choose internal attributions or to 'spend' resources as predicted from COR. Implications for both sales research and sales management are discussed.

The relationship between buyer satisfaction and the propensity of a buyer to stay in a relationship may be more complex than earlier research suggests. Building on prior research, two facets of satisfaction are examined. Our findings suggest that satisfaction with the firm and satisfaction with the salesperson each play an essential role in a firm's decision to stay in a business-to-business relationship. In addition, our results indicate that both the number of suppliers and a buyer's perception of available alternatives moderate the relationship between satisfaction with the salesperson and a buyer's propensity to stay in the relationship.

Until now, sales researchers have not done any empirical work in the area of deviant workplace behavior. This is surprising, given that recent survey data suggest deviant salesperson behavior is running rampant out in the field: 60 percent of sales managers have caught their reps cheating on expense reports, 47 percent suspect their reps have lied on sales calls, and 36 percent believe salesperson behavior has gotten worse in recent years. In an effort to understand workplace deviance in a professional selling context, this paper empirically examines the effect of various organizational/management factors on three types of deviance--organizational, interpersonal, and frontline. Using survey data collected from 160 business-to-business salespeople from multiple companies and multiple industries, we demonstrate that bureaucracy, future orientation, two forms of organizational justice, management role modeling, and intrafirm competition impact the various forms of salesperson deviance as well as citizenship and salesperson service behavior. The research concludes with a consideration of managerial implications and areas for future research.

Significance given to salespeople in terms of allocating operational budgets by organizations to build customer relations in global sales is discussed.

This study builds on previous research to investigate the effects of ethical climate on salesperson's role stress, job attitudes, turnover intention, and job performance. Responses from 138 salespeople who work for a large retailer selling high-end consumer durables at 68 stores in 16 states were used to examine the process through which ethical climate affects organizational variables. This is the first study offering empirical evidence that both job stress and job attitudes are the mechanisms through which a high ethical climate leads to lower turnover intention and higher job performance. Results indicate that ethical climate results in lower role conflict and role ambiguity and higher satisfaction, which, in turn, leads to lower turnover intention and organizational commitment. Also, findings indicate that organizational commitment is a significant predictor of job performance.

Although a strong culture has been widely acknowledged as a defining characteristic of successful firms, past research has failed to examine the influence it exerts on the attitudes and behavior of salespeople. In a two-sample study, we measure culture strength and explore its relationship to value congruity and to three sales force outcomes that define the sales management research tradition: role stress, organizational commitment, and job satisfaction. Within the contexts of the sales subculture of a Fortune 500 firm (Study 1) and specialized sales organizations (Study 2), the results reveal a compelling portrait of the forces that shape salesperson-culture fit. Specifically, the results of both studies indicate that a strong culture leads to higher levels of value congruity, job satisfaction, and organizational commitment, and lower levels of role stress. Key implications are highlighted for sales managers and for researchers.

Despite widespread recognition that relationship selling should focus on long-term, mutually satisfying buyer-seller relationships, current conceptualizations overlook two important components: salesperson failure analysis and recovery efforts. This paper proposes that salespeople should be trained in five intertwined skill set areas of failure analysis and recovery efforts: failure identification; failure attribution; recovery strategy selection; recovery implementation; and tracking, monitoring, and evaluating effectiveness. This paper is intended to (1) stimulate empirical investigations regarding these two important areas of study and (2) provide a framework to facilitate sales training in failure analysis and recovery efforts., The past decade has brought growing acceptance to relationship selling, which stresses the development of long-term, mutually satisfying buyer--seller relationships (Frankwick, Porter, and Crosby 2001 ; Ingram 1996; Jolson 1997). [...]