Characteristics Of Salespeople Research Articles

Improving Business-to-Business Relationship Quality Through Salespeople’s Grit and Political Skill

ABSTRACT Purpose Two characteristics – Grit and Political Skill – appear to offer meaningful value to industrial marketers through improving customer relationship quality. The premise of this study is to investigate the role of these characteristics of business-to-business salespeople as they influence selling approaches and ultimately long-term customer relationships. Previous research in both academic and practitioner literature has noted political skill and grit are individually linked to salespeople but remain chiefly unexplored simultaneously and in terms of their impact on customer relationships. Methodology/Approach The data used in this research are from a sample of 240 business-to-business salespeople collected electronically by using the online platform of a national data broker. Self-reports were made about their grit, political skill, and customer relationship quality. These constructs were combined in a structural equation model. SPSS/Amos software was used to conduct multivariate analysis. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the measurement properties of each construct, while structural equation modeling was applied to evaluate the hypothesized relationships. Findings Results suggest grit is directly related to political skill and both are positively related to relationship quality. The results from this study lend credence to existing customer relationship literature and serve to extend our understanding, specifically as applied to business-to-business salespeople. In particular, we learn more about the role of grit and political skill in affecting the ability of salespeople to establish and maintain customer relationships. Research Implications In terms of the theoretical contribution, this study explores a seller’s perspective of two potentially important sales characteristics and relationship quality to extend findings on customer relationships. While grit has been considered an antecedent of outcome performance, the interaction between grit and political skill, and their impact on business-to-business salespeople’s customer relationship quality had heretofore not been examined. This study extends previous research on grit and political skill by examining the association between the two as well as the impact on relationship quality. Our research strengthens the importance of grit and political skill by finding the synergy between the two indicates that when these characteristics of salespeople are possessed or developed they can enhance the relationship building conducted by business-to-business salespeople. Practical Implications Sales leaders may benefit from administering the salesperson grit and political skill scales as part of the screening process and developing these values among salespeople through training and coaching. Sales leaders should emphasize the positive impact of adopting these in focusing on customers. The study makes a practical contribution through an improved understanding of how a seller’s communication and influence characteristics impact customer relationships. The findings underscore the importance of engaging in activities shown to improve connections with buyers and striving for levels of grit that assist the salesperson in overcoming any challenges faced in the normal set of activities required to build customer relationships. Encountering daily or short-term impediments that if not managed through perseverance may result in a salesperson being frustrated and abandoning more challenging accounts, despite the future potential payoffs by continuing to work with the account to obtain long-term outcomes. Additionally, political skill by itself and in conjunction with grit enables the business-to-business salesperson to utilize communication to persuade others, especially customers to act in ways that benefit both business-to-business buyers and sellers. Grit and political skill may combine to establish relationships and maintain them despite any short-term obstacles that require grit. An improved understanding of business-to-business salespeople’s perspectives of the variables under study can potentially improve the hiring and training of salespeople to adopt beneficial characteristics that will enable them to build customer relationships and ultimately improve sales performance. Originality/Value/Contribution of the Paper The originality and value of this study rest with proposed connections between three prevalent issues in business-to-business sales organizations. Grit, political skill, and relationship quality provide valuable and unique insights into business-to-business selling behaviors and seller consequences.

The effect of social media use on customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors of export salespeople in China

PurposeThis study aims to draw on the categorization theory to explore the mediating role of customer qualification skills in explaining how social media use in sales contributes to salespeople’s adaptive selling behaviors to achieve high sales performance in export selling. The study also integrates network effect theory and social linguistics theory to identify the specific social media platform (Facebook versus non-Facebook) and the characteristics of salespeople in terms of English language proficiency, which play a facilitating role in promoting the effectiveness of social media use in export sales.Design/methodology/approachThe sampling frame of the research is a list of Chinese export salespersons obtained on the FOB Business Forum website. Survey data were obtained from 873 Chinese export salespeople. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data.FindingsSocial media use in sales is associated positively with customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors. Moreover, the results revealed a partial mediating effect of customer qualification skills on the positive impact of social media use in sales on adaptive selling behaviors. The moderating effect analysis found that the positive association between social media use in sales and customer qualification skills was stronger in export salespeople who used Facebook and had mastered a high level of English language proficiency.Originality/valueThis study provides new findings, based on data collected from salespeople in Mainland China, that support the effectiveness of social media use in an export sales context. Moreover, the study advances prior research by showing that the effectiveness of social media use still depends on the type of social media used and the English language proficiency of the salespeople.

Realigning Fixed and Variable Pay in Sales Organizations

The attractiveness of the pay policies of sales organizations can be increased by higher levels of match between individual characteristics of sales people and those of the compensation structure. Sales organizations should consider the career life cycle stages of sales people when devising compensation strategies. One type of sales compensation plan does not match all stages of career life cycle for a sales employee. Sales organizations can tailor expectations, motivations, reward strategies, as well as compensation structure according to career life cycle stages. To maximize sales force productivity and hence profitability of the sales organization, sales organizations should strive to find an optimal set of pay mix to motivate sales employees at each stage of career life cycle. This article provides various frameworks for analyzing impact of career stages on salesforce performance. This research identifies diverse variables impacting pay mix of sales employees and suggests a practical approach for enhancing productivity of sales employees across career life cycle stages.

Channel Training Strategies in High-Technology Industries

We investigate how optimal sales training strategies depend on firm, industry, and channel structure factors, such as sales training productivity, market growth rates, the organizational structure of the intermediary's salesforce, the learning and retraining characteristics of salespeople, and competitive externalities of training. We build and analyze two new models that account for the dynamics of market growth and thus provide insight into the optimal amount, timing and organizational level of training. The analysis first evaluates a duopoly model in which firms sell their products through a two-level intermediary to end-users, assuming that training expenditures exhibit decreasing returns to scale within each training period. Next the analysis considers the same duopoly model, but examines the impact of assuming diminishing marginal returns to training over the product's whole life cycle. The results show that if training exhibits decreasing returns in each period, then: (a) a company should focus on training in the initial stages of the product life cycle, unless the memorability of sales training or the discount factor is small; (b) training in the early stages of the product life cycle is worthwhile for sales managers, while training in the maturity and declining stages is worthwhile for field salespeople; (c) for selling organizations with a small span of control per sales manager, and/or for organizations where retraining is not very effective, optimal training focuses more heavily on the field salesforce and less on sales managers; and (d) in contrast to the popular view that the value of training increases as salespeople's retention of training knowledge decreases, we find that as organizational memory increases, it is worthwhile to train more. On the other hand, if training exhibits global decreasing returns over time, then the optimal training strategies share some commonalities with the previous results, but also show some important differences: (a) it is optimal to start training field salespeople only when the product is ready to be sold, while sales managers may be trained in advance; (b) the effect of sales training retention and the discount factor differs from those in the first model (for low retention of training knowledge or low discount factor, optimal training tracks contemporaneous demand in each period, while optimal training is concentrated in the initial phases of the product life cycle otherwise); (c) an increase in the market potential of some period t implies an increase in optimal training of field salespeople in period t and an increase of optimal training of sales managers and salespeople in previous periods, as well as a decrease in optimal training of sales managers in period t and a decrease of optimal training of sales managers and field salespeople in future periods; and (d) the decision between training sales managers or field salespeople is very sensitive to sales training retention, the discount factor, the breadth of the organization, and the ability of sales managers to pass on training to the field salesforce. This sensitivity is so extreme that optimal training in a given period is 'mutually exclusive' between organizational levels.

Do More Extraverted People Make Better Sales Representatives?

Indroduction The impetus for conducting this study dealt with references to inferred characteristics of sales people. For example, Leavitt says:

The use of tests in the selection of salesmen

Discusses four occupational characteristics of salespeople that should be measured: ego drive; empathy; appearance; and manner and speech, suggesting that technical knowledge of a product is also important. Uses a case history to demonstrate the correct use of tests in selecting salespersonnel, showing some limitations of the tests in question and revealing their effectiveness.