Microcomputer Applications: Mastering Inquiries and Sales Leads

The study of personal selling and sales management shares a characteristic common to other areas of scientific inquiry. If knowledge and understanding of its phenomena are to advance, then its measurement tools must also. This article overviews the conceptual foundations of measurement in terms of how they apply to sales research. It reviews the notions of reliability and validity and the types of evidence they provide regarding the quality of measures. It also offers suggestions on how sales researchers should proceed when working with new or borrowed measures.     

Supervisory Orientations and Salesperson Work Outcomes: The Moderating Effect of Salesperson Location

Although a growing number of companies have salespeople stationed at a site other than their supervisors' (i.e., are remotely located), relatively little attention has been paid in the literature to the differences between managing co-and remote located salespeople. Accordingly, we test the moderating effect of salesperson location on the relationships between three supervisory orientations—output, activity, and capability—and salesperson satisfaction with supervisor and performance.

The results show that salesperson location moderates the relationship between supervisory activity orientation and satisfaction such that activity orientation has a positive effect on the satisfaction of remote located salespeople, but a negative effect on the satisfaction of co-located salespeople. We find that end-results orientation is positively related to the satisfaction of co-located salespeople but not of remote located salespeople. Finally, supervisory capability orientation is positively linked to the performance of co-located salespeople but not of remote located salespeople. The results provide guidance for sales managers about how to structure their interactions with remote and proximally close salespeople.     

Salesperf: The Salesperson Service Performance Scale

Delivering outstanding service quality is essential to corporate success, and salespeople play a critical role in delivering high-quality service as boundary spanners between customers and the organization they represent. Given the importance of salesperson service performance, the SALESPERF scale was adapted from the service quality literature and developed for use in a personal selling setting. A sample of 116 customers evaluated the service performance of their sales representative for a newspaper publisher. Exploratory analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to develop a unidimensional scale. Convergent, discriminant, and predictive validity for SALESPERF were supported. Finally, implications regarding how salespeople may provide superior service and future research avenues are discussed.     

Gaining Customer Trust: A Conceptual Guide for the Salesperson

Abstract

This article applies what the behavioral sciences know about trust to industrial sales situations. Trust between an industrial buyer and salesperson is defined cognitively and behaviorally. A model of this trust-building process is presented and appropriate behaviors for sales representatives who wish to build trust are discussed. The interactions between experience, general knowledge, and trust building are examined in light of possible situations a sales representative might encounter. The findings suggest that both firm and salesperson can act positively to build and maintain trust with their clients.     

腹腔镜全子宫切除术学习曲线探讨

为探讨腹腔镜下全子宫切除术学习曲线,收集我院自2011年6月至2012年6月由同一组医师连续开展最初50例腹腔镜下全子宫切除术病例,以每10例为一个手术阶段,分析记录其平均手术时间、出血量、并发症情况等.结果显示成功施行腹腔镜全子宫切除术50例,各组病例在年龄、BMI、既往有无腹部手术史等一般情况比较无明显差异.不同阶段术中出血量、手术时间比较差异有统计学意义(P＜0.05);进一步两两比较结果显示,第1阶段与第3、4、5阶段术中出血量比较差异有统计学意义,第2阶段与第3、4、5阶段术中出血量比较差异有统计学意义(P＜0.05),其余各阶段术中出血量无明显差异(P＞0.05).第1阶段与第2、3、4、5阶段手术时间比较差异有统计学意义(P＜0.05).其余各阶段手术时间比较无明显差异(P＞0.05).由此推断腹腔镜下全子宫切除术学习曲线大约为10例～20例,即可达到较熟练水平和稳定程度.     

The Image of the Salesperson: Prestige and Other Dimensions

Abstract

In this study the general public rated sales and other occupations on prestige and nine other attributes. It was found that the prestige of professional sales occupations was related to the attributes tested such as education. On some, but not all attributes, different sales jobs were found to vary. Differences were found in public perceptions of sales in comparison to other occupations and generally professional salespeople ranked below an engineer or physician. The image of salespersons did not involve a single stereotype. Steps that could be taken to advance the prestige of salespeople are discussed.     

Drawings,Diagnoses, and the Clinician's Learning Curve

In order to understand better the experience of becoming a lone parent after marital breakdown a taxonomy of positive as well as negative appraisals and possible coping strategies was constructed. Experiential structures elicited through multidimensional scaling were used to form the basis of the Lone Parenthood Scales. The Scales, with demonstrated reliabilities and construct validity, were then administered to a sample of lone parents who were found to experience concern over their children's limited family life but relief at their separation and hope of becoming closer to their children. They saw themselves as coping with problems by direct, positive action. Further uses for the Scales were discussed.     

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.     

Salesperson directive modification intention: a conceptualization and empirical validation

Salespersons represent an important and challenging set of employees for organizational management. Given frequently high autonomy levels and varied job roles, boundary spanning agents have ample opportunity and motivation to modify/ignore organizational directives. Based on a multi-theoretical perspective, this research sets forth a three-dimensional conceptualization of directive modification intentions and develops and empirically tests a scale designed to better explain this phenomenon while empirically validating its occurrence. Results indicate that boundary spanners have three distinct and relatively stable motivations for modifying/ignoring organizational directives, including customer-, organization-, and self-focused motivations, and that each motivation may potentially relate differently to important antecedent and outcome variables. Managerial and theoretical implications are discussed.     

Salesperson brand attachment: a job demands-resources theory perspective

Sales researchers have largely ignored the idea that salespeople form attachments to the brands that they sell, and that these attachments hold important consequences for sales outcomes. Drawing on job demands-resources theory, the authors suggest that salesperson brand attachment (SBA) serves as a unique psychological resource for salespeople. Using data from 154 salespeople from the beverage industry, they provide evidence that SBA increases selling effort toward the brand, and ultimately job satisfaction. In addition, they show that salesperson's brand attachment acts as a buffer against perceived job demands, including job codification and hierarchy of authority. In general, results support the job demands-resources framework and confirm that SBA is a resource that may be leveraged to offset job demands, under certain situations.     

Beyond Curve Fitting to Inferences About Learning

In this commentary, the authors elaborate on the issue of going beyond curve fitting to the drawing of inferences about motor learning. They argue that the agenda of A. Heathcote and S. Brown (2004) is largely a theory-free, curve-fitting enterprise that can be useful for certain aspects of describing behavior change, but that its gold standard of percentage of variance accounted for can also be misleading in its relevance to the theory of learning. Clearly, analysis methods are necessary and some are better than others, but the researcher can more fully exploit the relevance of methods to the construct with a priori theorizing than with a data-driven strategy of maximizing percentage of variance accounted for in curve fitting.     

教学微视频的播放速度对学习效果的影响

为探究教学微视频播放速度对学习效果和学习满意度的影响,实验1采用行为测试和眼动追踪技术测查了62名大学生在正常播放、1.5倍和2倍播放条件下的学习效果和视觉注意过程。结果表明随着播放速度加快（1）学习者的学习效果和学习满意度会降低;（2）对图片区的注视时间及图文转换次数减少。加速播放视频不利于学习,可能是因为学习时长不同。从现实情境和理论研究两方面考虑,实验2控制了相等的视频学习时长后发现：（1）与正常速度相比1.5倍播放不会抑制学习,2倍播放的学习效果高于1.5倍;（2）但不同速度的学习满意度和眼动结果无显著差异。该研究为短视频播放速度的相关研究提供了新的研究视角,并对教学微视频设计提供了参照。     

Salesperson Job Involvement: A Modern Perspective a New Scale

Job involvement is a person's psychological identification or commitment to his/her job. Job involvement is an important construct in salesforce performance research because (1) it is a relevant consequence of a salesperson's work environment and internal feelings, (2) it is a relevant antecedent of a number of important sales job outcomes, and (3) it impacts the socialization process for salespeople. Because sales jobs have changed markedly over the past decade, a salesperson's job involvement now tends to be more focused on relationships with clients and less on aspects within an organizational boundary. The most widely used measure of job involvement (Lodahl and Kejner 1965) is not occupation-specific to sales. This article outlines the development of a new scale for relationship-based salesperson job involvement utilizing rigorous assessments of reliability, validity, and dimensionality within a broad sample of practicing salespeople.     

Salesperson Burnout: A Test of the Coping-Mediational Model of Social Support

Salesperson burnout continues to be a major concern among sales organizations. In this work, the authors examine whether certain coping strategies mediate the impact of sales manager support on salesperson burnout; as suggested by Thoits’s (1986) Coping-Mediational Model. More specifcally, this work investigates if problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping mediate the impact of sales manager support on feelings of emotional exhaustion in a feld sales setting. Study fndings indicate that positive sales manager support has a signifcant negative direct effect on salespersons’ emotional exhaustion. Findings also support the assertion that sales manager support encourages salespersons’ use of problem-focused coping strategies that, in turn, further reduce emotional exhaustion. In contrast, sales manager support does not signifcantly infuence salespersons’ use of emotion-focused coping; however, emotion-focused coping does signifcantly increase emotional exhaustion.     

Comment: Starting to Solve the Method Puzzle in Salesperson Self-Report Evaluations

In a recent Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management paper, Jaramillo, Carrillat, and Locander (JCL) further extended our understanding of the errors of salesperson self-report evaluations when compared to managerial evaluations. Our paper provides contrary evidence on three major conclusions drawn in this study. First, we question the assertion by JCL that the correlation between self-report and objective measures of performance is consistently low. Second, we question JCL’s claim that the correlation between managerial evaluations and objective measures of performance is consistently high. Third, we question the key finding of JCL that self-report measures of salesperson performance are less accurate than managerial evaluations. We provide an alternative perspective to these issues by highlighting past research on performance measurement. Moreover, we reanalyze data from a previously published study to examine the issues raised by JCL. Our expectation is that this comment will serve as an impetus for further research in this area.