Cross-Cultural Selling: Examining the Importance of Cultural Intelligence in Sales Education

Abstract

Cross-cultural selling has become an important factor in sales education. In the current competitive business graduate market, students who enter the workforce in frontline customer service positions are expected to perform sales at a higher level. Students that have acquired an education in sales during their undergraduate program have been found to have a more realistic perception of sales as a profession, to require minimum training, to have lower turnover, and to require less time to be more productive. This has been attributed to the success of sales education curricula and sales education techniques at the collegiate level. This study examines the importance of sales students’ cultural intelligence and how it influences their adaptive selling behaviors and sales role-play performance in a cross-cultural selling situation. The sample for the study consists of 143 sales students who were registered in an advanced personal selling course over a six-semester period. All sales role-plays are oriented toward a cross-cultural selling situation where the buyer is a first-generation immigrant. The results of the study show that sales students with cultural intelligence are able to adjust their selling behaviors well and to perform at a higher level in their role-play presentations.