Transformational leadership effects on salespeople’s attitudes, striving, and performance

Abstract

Sales managers face challenges in leading their salespeople. Viewing transformational leadership (TL) as pivotal to gain attitudes necessary for good performance, we present, justify and test a leader behavior (TL) - salesperson's attitudes - salesperson's behavior - performance model. No previous research has done this, with our presented model, investigation, and results providing important contributions to the salesforce leadership literature and managers. An online survey with 313 salespeople in sales positions for 3+ years provided data analyzed using SEM. Results indicate: (1) TL has a direct positive effect on both salespeople's sense of empowerment and self-efficacy and an indirect effect through the mediation of employee vigor; (2) sense of being empowered and self-efficacy positively affect salespeople’s accomplishment striving (AS); and (3) AS, in turn, positively affect performance. The results provide strong support for the importance of how sales managers lead salespeople due to TL's profound effects on salespeople's attitudes.