Initiating adoption through salespeople: Stronger selling capabilities are not always better

Abstract

Customers often have a critical attitude towards a new product and resist its adoption because of the associated uncertainties. One barrier is the initial stage of the customers’ product adoption process, the customers’ adoption of knowledge about the new offering, which has hardly been studied. It is mainly the salespeople who can mitigate the uncertainties perceived by the customer. Therefore, we focus on salespeople’s selling capability, i.e., the capability of individuals to perform salespeople’s tasks, addressing the two research questions: (i) “What degree of selling capability serves customers’ knowledge adoption best?”, and (ii) “How does customers’ innovativeness and the perceived degree of innovation affect the impact of the selling capability on customers’ knowledge adoption?” For this purpose, we collected survey and objective innovation purchase data from business customers of a German professional electrical tool’s supplier. Our study provides three major contributions. First, we reveal that there is an optimum level of selling capability that should not be undercut nor exceeded. Second, we find that salespeople need to adapt the use of selling capability on two contingencies: the perceived degree of innovation and innovativeness of the customer. Third, we empirically prove that customers’ knowledge adoption mediates the relationship between salespeople’s selling capability and in-novation purchases. Sales managers, innovation managers, and marketing managers have now a more profound understanding in initiating new product adoption through salespeople.