Toward a guanxi-bases view of structural holes in sales gatekeeping: A qualitative study of sales practices in China

Abstract

Sales managers often engage relational gatekeepers who connect personally with key managers or decision-makers in the client organization to broker the structural holes (‘absence of direct connections’) in sales relations in closely-knit networked markets. Based on interviews with fourteen local sales managers working for foreign companies and seven local gatekeepers in China, we aim to understand how different types of guanxi (‘particularistic personal ties’) bases and related social ties interact with one another, and together bridge structural holes in the sales management. We develop propositions to capture the essence of approaches, bases, rules, and rewards in sales gatekeeping (which refer to a process that involves the facilitation provided by relational gatekeepers in social and business interactions between a sales manager and a client manager in sales). We further develop a framework for understanding the differences in terms of guanxi bases and gatekeeper ties between homogeneous and heterogeneous structural holes in sales gatekeeping. This new framework has important theoretical and practical implications, as it allows researchers and practitioners to evaluate the guanxi-base characteristics of structural holes in business networking in China, and to determine the appropriate gatekeeper tie for the different purposes of gatekeeping (symbolic vs. reciprocal) in sales management.