Influence Use by Industrial Salesmen: Influence-Strategy Mixes and Situational Determinants

Abstract

Personal selling is a critically important element in the marketing mix of almost every industrial firm. The salesman is entrusted with the care and nurturance of the firm's most valuable resources: its customers and prospects. Every sales call is important. If it is not successful, or does not lead to a sale, the opportunity costs (lost revenues) may be substantial. Moreover, whether successful or not, each call represents a substantial expenditure for the sponsoring firm. Given the marketing challenge of developing an effective sales representation at a reasonable cost, it is little wonder that marketing managers and researchers alike are concerned about the problems of selecting, training, and controlling the sales staff. In spite of the importance of these personal selling activities, there is little empirical evidence concerning what actually takes place during the sales call. More specifically, there has been little effort to evaluate the influence strategies actually used by industrial salesmen in their sales calls, or to identify characteristics of the buyer-seller situation which affect the salesman's use of influence with a customer. This article reports a study designed to evaluate the influence strategies used by industrial salespersons in their sales calls and to identify characteristics of the buyer-seller situation which affect the salesperson's use of influence with a customer. The results of the study, which are based on responses from 444 salespersons from 220 different firms, suggest that negotiating obstacles encountered in a sales situation and the general level of buyer-seller involvement in the sales call are major underlying dimensions of the sales situation which discriminate among groups of salesmen who vary not only on the intensity of influence used, but also on the particular combinations or mixes of influence strategies used. *We gratefully acknowledge conversations with Robert H. Miles of Harvard University concerning this area of research, and the support of William B. Phillips, Director of Industry Relations, the Associated Equipment Distributors, in data collection.