Selling and Sales Management in Action: The Sales Force's Role in International Marketing Research and Marketing Information Systems

Many companies resist global markets because of seemingly insurmountable problems with these markets. Salespeople are often used successfully to gather market information. There is a wealth of market data that can be collected by a company's international sales force and distributors' sales force which can prove to be valuable in surmounting cultural and marketing barriers associated with global markets. The current paper discusses how and with what success U.S. multinational companies are using their international sales forces in gathering international marketing research data.     

Marketing Control and Sales Force Customer Orientation

This study is predicated on the premise that internal sales force control mechanisms are strategic and operational forces that directly affect the behaviors of the sales force and their accompanying orientation toward customers. Sales managers represent a very different component of the sales force than salespeople. Their motivations, interests, role, and methods of operations all represent different approaches than those embraced by their coworkers: salespeople. Yet, although sales managers operate under an outcome-based control system and can be expected, to some degree, to be motivated by selfinterest (Oliver and Anderson 1994), upper management expects managers to be directed by organizational needs. However, in a results-oriented environment, the foundation of many compensation systems, sales quotas can focus sellers and managers in a direction inconsistent with customer-oriented selling (particularly if this behavior is deemed necessary to achieve quota). Based on this premise, this study examines the influence of sales managers’ quotas on their response to salespeople’s unethical behavior and its resulting effect on the customer orientation of the sales force. To fully explore this condition, this study also examines the role of an important formal process control, the ethical climate (e.g., rules and regulations), in influencing customer orientation. Providing important implications to sales organizations, results indicat that sales quotas can negatively affect sales force customer orientation via their effect on sales managers’ responses to salespeople’s selling behaviors. Interestingly, however, the company’s ethical climate was found to positively influence sales force customer orientation.     

The Mediating Role of Sales Behaviors: An Alternative Perspective of Sales Performance and Effectiveness

Business decisions about hiring, promoting, an purchasing should be made in an unbiassed way When sex stereotyping influences the decisio process. Such decisions are not only unfair bi can lead to large economic and social costs. A experiment involving more than 200 MBAs measured the impact of general attitudes toward women in business and various personal characteristics on the extent to which there was se stereotyping with regard to men and women in sales positions. Results suggest that sex stereotyping still exists, but its extent depends on the attitude being measured and on characteristics of the stereotyping the solution is to provide exposure to competent females in selling and sales manage ment positions.     

The Role of Culture Strength in Shaping Sales Force Outcomes

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.     

The Role of Top Management in Developing a Customer-Oriented Sales Force

A national random sample of industrial salespeople was surveyed to examine the effects of salespeople’s perceptions of top management long-term orientation, top management emphasis, and top management risk aversion on customer-oriented selling behaviors. The results indicated that perceived top management long-term orientation had a significantly positive effect on perceived top management emphasis and a significantly negative effect on perceived top management risk aversion. In turn, perceived top management emphasis positively affected customer-oriented selling, whereas perceived top management risk aversion did not affect customer-oriented selling. The study underscores the importance of salespeople’s perceptions of top management factors for implementing the marketing concept. The managerial implications of these findings are discussed and several directions for future research are proposed.     

Exploring the Relationship between Market Orientation and Sales and Marketing Collaboration

The relationship between sales and marketing has generated considerable academic interest in recent years, with studies focusing on how the interface can be improved. However, prior research has neglected an important aspect of this interface: the relationship between market orientation and collaboration between sales and marketing. This study considers this relationship and was carried out through a survey of managing directors/chief executives. The results indicate that collaboration between sales and marketing has a positive relationship with market orientation and that collaboration between sales and marketing as well as market orientation have a combined positive effect on business performance.     

Perceived Organizational Ethics and the Ethical Decisions of Sales and Marketing Personnel

Using a scenario-based approach, this study analyzed data collected from marketers with sales backgrounds and investigated the impact of perceived organizational ethics on their ethical issue recognition, ethical judgments, and ethical behavioral intentions. The results indicated that perceived organizational ethics, which was operationalized with two separate measures, was positively related to both the ethical judgments and expressed behavioral intentions of respondents. Further, ethical issue recognition was positively associated with ethical judgments and expressed behavioral intentions, and ethical judgments were positively related to ethical behavioral intentions. The findings suggest that, in order to enhance sales professionals’ ethical reasoning, organizations should focus on developing an ethical context that is relevant to the issues confronted by sales professionals in their work and that is as specific as possible with regard to these ethical dilemmas.     

Developing Sales Force Relationalism: The Role of Distributive and Procedural Justice

Sales force justice perceptions can play an important role in the development of relational norms or relationalism; however, little research has explored the linkages between justice and the development of sales force relationalism. The relational justice model—that is, neutrality, trust, and respect—was tested with regard to direct effects on sales force perceptions of distributive and procedural justice, and in, subsequently, manager–sales force relationalism. The findings, from a sample of business-to-business salespeople, support the hypothesized relationships between the constructs in the relational model and distributive and procedural justice. Neutrality, trust, and respect significantly and positively affect both distributive and procedural justice, which directly affects the development of sales force relationalism. The results have implications for sales force management and future research endeavors.     

Sales Force Activities and Marketing Strategies in Industrial Firms: Relationships and Implications

This study explores the role of the sales force in formulating and executing marketing strategies. Specifically, the relationships between sales force activities such as providing information about customer needs, hiring and training salespeople, and assessing new market segments and four marketing strategies (market penetration, product development, market development, diversification) are examined. Results indicate that the use of sales force activities is related to a firm's strategic choices, and that the relationships vary by firm size and type of offering.     

Attracting Graduates to Sales Positions: The Role of Recruiter Knowledge

Corporate recruiting on college campuses has been an important vehicle for selecting and hiring new employees. Previous research has focused on identifying, locating, and selecting new employees, but the recruiting function of attracting good prospects to the interview and job has received less research attention. Increased importance of the attraction function of recruiting may be indicated for the future, particularly given projections of a decline in business college enrollments. The purpose of this article is to examine recruitment of college graduates for sales positions, using the perspective of attracting employees by communicating aspects of the job and company which are important to them. A survey of students and recruiters was used to reveal the attributes of importance to students, differences among students, and the extent to which recruiters are aware of student importance ratings. Differences between students and recruiters perceptions are identified for half of the 50 attributes examined, revealing an opportunity for recruiters to obtain better knowledge of students' perceptions and, thus, to improve their ability to attract graduates to sales positions.     

Consumer Response to a Prosocial Marketing Initiative: The Case of Discount Stores and Gun Sales

This research examined factors that influence how consumers respond to prosocial marketing initiatives. Specifically, consumers' attitudes toward the societal role of corporations were examined within the context of a prosocial (an activity perceived by the consumer to benefit society) marketing action being undertaken by a corporation. The results indicate that whether a consumer believed a firm should be managed primarily for the benefit of the common good (e.g., the greater community, consumers, employees) or managed primarily for the benefit of investors significantly influenced the likelihood of store patronage. Perceived ethicality of the retailer's action also mediated the relationship between consumers' attitudes toward the societal role of corporations and the likelihood of store patronage. The marketing and societal implications of these results are discussed.     

Personal Selling and Sales Management in the Marketing Curriculum: A Status Report

This article reviews the offering of sales and sales management courses over the last few decades. More schools currently offer the sales management course than the sales course, but sales is more frequently required as a part of the marketing major. Larger, public, AACSB accredited schools tend to offer both courses more than smaller, private, nonaccredited schools. Many schools were reportedly dropping these courses in the 1960s and early 1970s, and this study found that the trend has continued overall when considering only the separate courses. An important growing trend is a combined sales/sales management course, and when it is also considered a slight overall increase in courses in the sales and sales management area seems to be the pattern emerging in the 1980s.     

Socialization Communication,Organizational Citizenship Behaviors,and Sales in a Multilevel Marketing Organization

Multilevel marketing organizations (MLMs) are a rapidly growing but often controversial marketing organizational type boasting nearly 10 million members and over $20 billion in annual sales. The success of the MLM business model rests largely on forming cooperative social networks of member distributors. Socialization of new members to the norms and values of the MLM plays a key role in eliciting that cooperative behavior. However, the member cooperation that produces successful networks may inhibit the financial performance of individual distributors. Drawing upon social identity theory, this study investigates whether communication of the MLM’s behavioral norms during the socialization of members affects the degree to which members cooperate with each other and how that cooperation affects the sales performance of individual distributorships. The results of a survey of MLM members suggest that both effects occur. Socialization communication positively affects member cooperation, which produces direct and indirect effects on sales. Cooperation, measured by several organizational citizenship behaviors, exerts a positive direct effect on sales, but a negative indirect effect when the relationship is mediated by group cohesion.     

Leaders in Selling and Sales Management: An Analysis of the Impact of Sales and Marketing Principles on the Career of Stanley C. Gault

Certainly one of the most successful contemporary CEOs is Stanley C. Gault of The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company. This success is evidenced by his recently being named CEO of the Year by Financial World magazine. In addition, he also has received SME-I's Marketing Statesman of the Year award. Although Mr. Gault has had successful careers with three different companies, General Electric, Rubbermaid, and Goodyear, the one constant in each of these positions has been his understanding of the importance of selling.     

The Sales Manager As a Boundary Spanner: A Role Theory Analysis

Abstract

The authors consider the distasteful possibility that parallelism exists between tactics of warfare and sales management operations. The functions of a salesperson are equated to those of a soldier, and the theories of guerrilla warfare as espoused by people such as Mao Tse-Tung are applied to sales management decision areas.     

Selling and Sales Management in Action: The Role of Strategic Selling in the Company Turnaround Process

Despite the importance of marketing orientation to company profile and performance as presented in the literature, there has been little attention paid to the role of strategic selling in the company turnaround process in published studies. This article explores selling's contribution to company turnaround through a study of ailing and rejuvenated companies in the mature engineering industry. The development and implementation of sales strategies in successfully turned around and failed companies are compared. The role of strategic selling is broadened as new concepts are developed and explored.     

产品销量和推荐数对网络消费决策的影响:价格的调节效应

基于目标感染理论,探究了产品销量和产品推荐数对大学生网络消费决策的影响,并进一步探究了产品价格在大学生网络消费决策中的调节作用。两项研究均表明,产品销量和推荐数均会促进大学生做出消费决策。其中,产品价格调节了两者对网络消费决策的影响,具体表现为在选购低价格产品时,大学生更加看重产品销量,倾向选购高销量产品;而在选购中高价格产品时,大学生更加看重产品推荐数,选购高推荐数的产品。本研究为网络电商平台如何针对不同价位产品制定产品展示方案提供了理论支持和实践指导。