Organizational and individual learning in the sales force: an agenda for sales research

Abstract

In today's marketplace, change is a given, and learning is a critical component to the success of change initiatives. In recent years, marketing scholars have proposed that learning is a key to creating a sustainable competitive advantage and enhancing business performance. This article addresses the issue of learning and attempts to establish learning as a legitimate variable for study as it relates to sales force management. To that end, the authors have endeavored to provide, through the positing of propositions, a research agenda for the examination of learning in a sales force context. The authors provide a review of the pertinent literature on individual and organizational learning. Included in the presentation is a discussion of change success measures that go beyond the traditional measure of sales force success—sales volume. In the article, propositions relating various organizational and individual variables to organizational and individual salesperson learning are presented.