Abstract
The present study investigates the effect of salespeople’s individual sales capabilities on selling behaviors and sales performance in door-to-door personal selling channels. The data are gathered from 219 South Korean salespeople. The hypotheses are tested using the structural equation modeling technique. The study finds that salespeople's individual sales capabilities have a greater impact on customer-oriented selling behavior than sales-oriented selling behavior. Similarly, both sales-oriented and customer-oriented selling behaviors have significant positive effects on sales performance. The study also discovers that competitive intensity moderates the relationship between customer-oriented selling behavior and sales performance, but has no significant effect on the relationship between sales-oriented selling behavior and sales performance. The current research only looks at door-to-door personal selling channels in South Korea. The implication is that the impacts of individual selling capabilities may differ in other contexts. The current study demonstrates that competitive intensity can reduce the impact that a “customer orientation” has on sales performance, and thus a blend of the two orientations (SOCO) is recommended for desired performance outcomes in the face of competition. Additionally, firms should focus on creating a culture that builds and enriches the sales capabilities of salespeople.
Highlights
While the influence of customer-oriented selling behavior on sales performance may be reduced in a competitive market, our findings show that competitive intensity has no significant moderating effect on the effect of sales-oriented selling behavior on sales performance
We argue that competitive intensity can weaken the relationship between SOCO and sales performance, and we propose the following hypotheses: H5a
Salespeople completed a questionnaire about their individual sales capability, customeroriented selling behavior, sales-oriented selling behavior, and competitive intensity, and we evaluated sales performance using real sales data from the previous three months from the respondents
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Most businesses have long prioritized long-term, mutually beneficial, and sustainable customer relationships. These ties improve customer loyalty, business sustainability [1–3], and satisfaction [4]. Increased customer loyalty and satisfaction may result in increased sales and profits [5,6]. Few people would deny that firms pursuing long-term relationships have advantages. The relationship between relational selling and customer orientation by boundary-spanning salespeople is well-documented [7,8], with boundary spanning defined as the activity, behavior, and navigation the salesperson engages in with various customers both inside and outside his or her own company [9,10]
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