Abstract
Drawing on the motivation, opportunity and ability (MOA) framework, we investigate the influence of charismatic leadership on salespeople’s service and sales activities—termed service-sales ambidextrous (SSA) behavior, which subsequently turn into service recovery performance outcomes. The primary aim of this research is to strengthen salespeople’s service quality in parallel to their selling activities while recovering a service failure. We validate the model using a sample of 344 business-to-business salespeople using partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) technique. Study results show that charismatic leadership is positively and significantly related to service-sales ambidexterity. Likewise, service-sales ambidexterity has a positive and significant relationship with service recovery performance and adaptive selling behavior. Moreover, we found a significant relationship between adaptive selling behavior and service recovery performance. The results further specify that salesperson motivation, opportunity and ability to engage in SSA significantly moderate the relationship between charismatic leadership and service-sales ambidexterity. The results suggest the need for training programs that provide the salesperson with opportunities to understand the simultaneous implementation of selling strategies while also providing customer services.
Highlights
IntroductionService–sales ambidexterity has been presented as a novel sort of ambidexterity capable of explaining and forecasting salesperson performance
In business-to-business (B2B) marketing literature, salesforce performance has been a significant research subject due to the prominence of direct selling in B2B marketing [1].Effective salespeople contribute significantly to a company’s development and long-term sustainability by enhancing sales growth and establishing deep customer relationships [2].Recently, service–sales ambidexterity has been presented as a novel sort of ambidexterity capable of explaining and forecasting salesperson performance
Using the criteria provided in the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-structural equation modeling (SEM)) literature, we evaluate hypotheses and estimate the significance of path coefficients [79,80]
Summary
Service–sales ambidexterity has been presented as a novel sort of ambidexterity capable of explaining and forecasting salesperson performance. This line of research divides the activities of salespeople into service and sales activities. Service activities refer to the actions that a salesperson engages in to increase consumer’ satisfaction, i.e., listening to their comments and resolving complaints. Sales activities refer to a salesperson’s behaviors to push items and services to a client, such as contacting consumers to initiate new transactions or renew current ones. The research on service–sales ambidexterity builds on the contextual ambidexterity literature to propose that salespeople
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