Adaptive selling: The role of gender, age, sales experience, and education

Abstract

There is increasing evidence that the degree to which salespeople practice adaptive selling positively affects their performance. Adaptive selling is the altering of sales presentations across and during customer interactions in response to the perceived nature of the sales situation. This study examines several antecedents to adaptive selling: gender, age, sales experience, and education. The results suggest that gender and education interact with age to affect the degree to which salespeople practice adaptive selling. Additionally, with increased age and tenure salespeople demonstrate plateauing and thus have an s-shaped relationship with the practice of adaptive selling. These results may explain the inconsistent results of past research that have examined demographic antecedents. Implications for managers are also discussed.