Are sales as we know it dying … or merely transforming?

The world of sales research continues to transform as we move more into the world of social media. This article briefly examines a historical examination of sales research by decade and then presents a model of sales research needs going forward based on how social media is being implemented by selling and buying organizations. The model assumes that the selling process is incorporated within a social media world and elements within the model include the salesperson and sales center, the buyer and buying center, the use of artificial intelligence, the teleselling unit, the interaction between marketing and sales departments, and the methods of selling. Discussion follows the model, focusing on how social media is being used among and between units in the selling process. The discussion unfolds on three key parts of the sales equation: (1) the sales organization, (2) the buying organization, and (3) the interaction between marketing and selling departments. Research questions follow each of the three discussion sections.     

Bringing “Social” Into Sales: The Impact of Salespeople’S Social Media Use on Service Behaviors and Value Creation

The explosive growth in the use of social media has evoked a “gold rush”–like response from organizations. However, firms in general, and salespeople in particular, are uncertain about the fit between social media tools and their overall sales strategy. To address this issue, we advance a theoretical framework to explain the mechanisms through which salespeople’s use of social media operates to create value, and propose a strategic approach to social media use to achieve competitive goals. We draw on the existing literature on relationship marketing, task–technology fit theory, and sales service behavior to sketch a social media strategy for business-to-business sales organizations with relational selling objectives. The proposed framework describes how social media tools can help salespeople perform service behaviors leading to value creation.     

The Future of Sales Training: Challenges and Related Research Questions

This paper discusses four key challenges and related research questions that will be critical to the future success of sales training in three major areas: content development, delivery, and evaluation. The four challenges are the changing roles of salespeople, the intensified emphasis on accountability, the enhancement of technological capabilities, and the importance of cultural diversity. To examine these issues and develop future research questions, the paper draws from reports of industry practices and academic literature in sales training, the sales/service interface, customer-oriented selling, social media, self-directed learning, and multicultural communications competency.     

Sales scholarship: honoring the past and defining the future (Key takeaways from the 2018 American Marketing Association Faculty Consortium: New Horizons in Selling and Sales Management)

The American Marketing Association (AMA) Faculty Consortium: New Horizons in Selling and Sales Management (“New Horizons”) emphasized the historical foundation and evolution of the field and fulfilled the event’s traditional role of defining a future research agenda. Selling and sales management has witnessed dramatic changes since the last New Horizons event at Texas Christian University (TCU) in 2013. Going forward, the sales academic community aspires to better understand and explain the impact of changing technologies, machine learning, artificial intelligence, social media, big data, and 24/7 connectivity broadly on selling and sales management. This article provides the key takeaways from New Horizons 2018, briefly highlighting the history of the sales academy and identifying directions for future research that address the technological and other key changes and challenges impacting the field. Dating back to 1984, faculty consortia in selling and sales management have a long tradition of stimulating new insights leading to a cutting-edge research agenda and strong collaboration in executing that research. The New Horizons event in Boston in conjunction with the 2018 AMA Summer Academic Conference continued that tradition.     

An Assessment of the Use of Technology in the Direct Selling Industry

Although research exists on the use of technology in sales, very little addresses the adoption, use, and success of technology in the direct selling industry. In response to this dearth of knowledge, we conducted an exploratory study to examine how direct sellers use technology to link the firm to its customers and its sales force, as well as how technology is used to facilitate interactions between the sales force and customers. In an industry that has historically differentiated itself by face to-face, personal relationships, we explore the possibly new direct selling environment brought on by the technology revolution. Through in-depth, open-ended interviews, we provide the groundwork for understanding how direct selling firms use technology to develop a competitive advantage while still maintaining strong personal relationships with consumers.     

A Framework of Technology Mediation in Consumer Selling: Implications for Firms and Sales Management

Firms regard technology as a strategic tool to enhance sales effectiveness, improve customer service, and reduce costs. Within the context of sales technology, the focus of the paper is on the effect of technology mediation in consumer selling environments. Extant research has typically been at a micro-level and concentrated in two distinct areas: (1) salesperson adoption of sales technology and its effect on salespeople’s performance and (2) consumer adoption of technology and the use of technology in decision making. The paper examines the simultaneous effect of technology-mediated selling on both salespeople and consumers, at both micro- and macro-levels.     

Social Media’s Influence on Business-to-Business Sales Performance

The implementation of social media technology in a firm’s marketing strategy has been adopted by some forward-thinking sales forces. Sharing content and building a network of contacts are the principles behind social media. The utilization of social media (e.g., LinkedIn and Twitter) for reaching business-to-business clients is a relatively new phenomenon with performance outcomes essentially unknown. Data were collected from 1,699 business-to-business salespeople from over 25 different industries. Using structural equation modeling, the findings support that social media has a positive relationship with sales processes (creating opportunities and relationship management) and relationship sales performance.     

Special Abstract Section: National Conference in Sales Management

Sales managers need a practical means for evaluating returns from investments in sales technology implementations (including sales automation and sales-based customer relationship management systems). This research proposes a behavioral process model approach that can be applied to evaluate sales technology implementations. We develop and test the model with data collected from the sales force of a major consumer packaged goods company. The results indicate that a salesperson’s technology orientation has a direct impact on internal role performance, and it affects performance with customers through a double-mediated mechanism involving the effective use of information and smart selling behaviors (planning and adaptive selling). Sales managers can influence sales technology orientation by providing better internal technology support, considering technology orientation along with customer’s approval of technology in account assignments, and understanding the probability of negative effects through a salesperson’s experience. In our sample, salesperson experience correlates with age, suggesting a “generation gap” effect on sales technology orientation.     

Selling & Sales Management in Action: Using the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management As A Teaching Aid

Abstract

Although much marketing literature exists pertaining to whether products should be marketed differently from services, little attention has focused on whether product selling differs from service selling. This article reports the results of an empirical investigation that examined whether salespeople selling industrial products use different selling techniques than those selling services. The results suggest that product sales personnel prefer techniques that can use tangible aspects of the product to advantage, while service sales personnel prefer techniques that stress the personal assistance of customers. The implications of the results are also presented.     

The Sales Force Technology–Performance Chain: The Role of Adaptive Selling and Effort

Firms continue to struggle with the implementation of sales force technology tools and the role they play in sales representative performance. This research expands previous literature in the area of sales force automation (SFA) and customer relationship management (CRM) by looking at the consequences after technology adoption by a sales force. Data were gathered from three sources to include 662 sales representatives, 60 sales managers, and fi rm archival data. Using structural equation modeling, our fi ndings indicate that SFA usage has a direct impact on effort, thereby reducing number of hours worked, and CRM usage has a direct positive impact on adaptive selling behaviors. Moreover, experience moderates the relationship between CRM usage and adaptive selling. Discussion, limitations, and directions for future research are also discussed.     

Selling & Sales Management in Action: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF INCENTIVES IN A SALES FORCE CONTEST

The sales job of the early twenty-first century has evolved due to myriad rapidly changing environmental factors. Customer relationship focus, technology, global competition, shifting customer preferences and demands, forced downsizing, increased competitive pressure, and other factors have contributed to altering the salesperson role—what salespeople do. Yet outdated taxonomies are referenced when researching and writing about sales jobs. This paper develops an empirically generated sales position taxonomy based on changing selling activities and strategies. First, a set of 105 activities are factor analyzed to create 12 dimensions of selling. Second, the factor scores are entered into a cluster analysis. The resulting factor score centroids allow for interpretation of a taxonomy of six categories of contemporary sales jobs.     

Key Accounts and Team Selling: A Review,Framework, and Research Agenda

As sales organizations increase their reliance on sales teams, they must learn how organizational and interpersonal relationships influence sales teams, how sales teams play a learning role for organizations, and what makes sales teams effective. Presenting a model of interrelationships among members of the selling firm and between the selling and buying firms, we identify five key team selling relationships between (1) members of the same team, (2) members of different teams within the firm, (3) the selling team and the buying center, (4) the selling team and other groups in the selling firm, and (5) the selling team and the firm’s strategy. This model leads to a conceptual framework highlighting relationship drivers, factors, and outcomes instrumental to team selling success. After presenting propositions for future research, theoretical and methodological suggestions are included to facilitate research in this area. We conclude with perspectives on the future of research and practice in key accounts and team selling.     

Leaders in Selling and Sales Management: Peter Fischer

Commission compensation plans often lead to disagreements between salespeople and sales managers, particularly when salespeople are terminated or leave the job. This paper explores the legal aspects of the relationship between the salesperson and the selling firm with regard to the payment of commissions. In addition, the aspects of agency law, contract law and state statutory law which impact the payment of sales commissions are reviewed. The paper concludes with managerial implications and research suggestions.     

Sales Training and Education: Tracking Academic Research in Selling and Sales Management: Authors,Authorships, Academic Institutions,and Journals

This study examines and tracks the extent of selling and sales management research from 1993–1997. Two hundred and sixty- six published journal articles representing sixteen journals are examined to identify where and when selling and sales management researchers received their doctoral training, their employment location at time of publication, regional trends in the location of these researchers, and a count by-journal of selling and sales management articles that have appeared during the time period. A total of 280 individual authors from 175 different colleges and universities are included in the study. Overall, the general trends for scholarly activity in selling and sales management appear to be robust when compared to prior studies of sales research productivity.     

Sales-as-practice: an introduction and methodological outline

There are strong indications that sales practices are currently being redefined from the ground up and that many of the inherited conceptual models of selling will not hold into a future that is defined by new selling techniques and technologies. This paper introduces a research perspective that can provide an important source of insight into how sales work and salespeople are currently being reconstituted: the sales-as-practice approach. In common with ‘practice turns’ evident in other business literature, such as the recent marketing-as-practice or the by now well-established strategy-as-practice approach, sales-as-practice requires of researchers to develop a sensitivity towards salespeople's ways of doing and being in social and material contexts. While acknowledging potential limitations, we identify some significant benefits of adopting this approach for our conceptual understanding of the sales domain, particularly in understanding persistence and transformation in sales practices, in paying attention to the role of material objects in configuring these practices and in appreciating the role of such practices in producing salespeople's ways of being. Moreover, we argue that becoming more closely acquainted with sales professionals' lifeworlds can aid in bridging the perceived divide between academic and practitioner knowledge in our domain.     

Advocating Avatars: The Salesperson in Second Life

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.     

Distinguishing Between the Roles of Customer-Oriented Selling and Adaptive Selling in Managing Dysfunctional Conflict in Buyer–Seller Relationships

A national random sample of industrial salespeople was surveyed to examine the relationships among selling behaviors, trust, conflict, and sales outcomes, such as performance and anticipation of future interaction. Results indicate that trust mediates the effects of selling behaviors on sales outcomes, and conflict moderates this mediating effect. While salespeople could use customer-oriented selling as an antidote for the ill effects of dysfunctional conflict on trust, adaptive selling only serves to enhance salesperson trust in customers. Thus, the results of the study distinguish between the roles of customeroriented selling and adaptive selling in relationship marketing. Furthermore, when salespeople perceive that their sales managers are highly customer oriented and highly adaptive, they themselves become more customer oriented and more adaptive. Thus, as role models, supervisory selling behaviors contribute to salespeople’s ability to leverage their trust in customers. Based on these results, the managerial implications for selling organizations are discussed.     

Personal selling and the purchasing function: where do we go from here?

The business-to-business selling function has changed over the years, with more informed and demanding buyers, prompting firms to move toward a more consultative, solution-selling approach. While these changes have been the focus of extensive research in the personal selling and sales management domain, the customer side of the interaction dyad requires more examination. Even within the context of the customer side, insufficient attention has been paid to the purchasing function in business-to-business (B2B) selling research. Given the increased importance in customer organizations of the purchasing function, this article presents a literature review that highlights the purchasing function's personal selling and sales management needs and argues that, as the purchasing function becomes more important and its needs evolve, personal selling and sales strategies also need to evolve. The article highlights areas for future research in this domain.     

Toward Understanding New Sales Employees’ Participation in Marketing-Related Technology: Motivation,Voluntariness, and Past Performance

Firms want sales representatives to use social media technologies to connect with relational partners, including customers, suppliers, and other employees. As a result, firms attempt to recruit business students who are experienced with different forms of social media. The focus of this research is on high self-disclosure, low media-richness social media, such as blogging, that works well for central route persuasion. To better understand sales employee participation in blogging, we consider motivation to use sales- and marketing-related technology. This study extends the research on motivation by (1) distinguishing between three forms of motivation—intrinsic, extrinsic, and apathetic—and (2) exploring the potential moderating effects of (a) voluntariness on intention-to-use to actual use and (b) past performance on use to objective outcome. We collected data at two time periods for voluntary and involuntary respondents, and analyzed the data using PLS regression. We find that apathetic motivation appears independent of extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. Including apathetic motivation improves the explanatory power of motivation and extends the understanding of the moderating influence of voluntariness and individuals’ past performance in the model.