Sales Environments Research Articles

THE IMPACT OF USING DIFFERENT YEAST SPECIES IN BREAD PRODUCTION ON CONSUMER PREFERENCES: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TASTE

This study aims to investigate sensory attributes that play a significant role in determining consumer preferences in the food sector. The research explores the impact of three different yeast types used in bread preparation, assessed through sensory analysis methods, on the perceived taste and overall acceptability of the products. The study employs an experimental design and conducts product testing in real sales environments. A panel of 22 participants was requested to evaluate breads prepared with three visually similar but content-wise different yeast types. Following a tasting session, participants provided data based on sensory analysis criteria, including "appearance," "flavor," "texture," "odor," and "general acceptability," using a designed survey method. The collected data were analyzed using statistical software packages, specifically through Friedman's and Wilcoxon Signed-Rank tests. The research findings indicate variations in consumer preferences regarding taste, texture, odor, and overall acceptability. Panelists expressed a higher preference for breads obtained with sourdough yeast.

Examining The Effects of Salespeople's Personality Traits And Personal Values on Sales Performance

This research delves deeply into the multifaceted aspects influencing salesperson performance, particularly exploring the interconnected roles of personality traits, personal values, customer orientation, and creativity. Personality traits, such as Extraversion and Conscientiousness, have emerged as crucial elements linked to sales success across various industries. Extraversion, characterized by sociability, self-confidence, and ambition, fosters robust interpersonal relationships and effective teamwork, especially in roles where collaboration and communication are paramount. On the other hand, Conscientiousness, marked by traits like diligence, reliability, and attention to detail, proves instrumental in handling complex tasks, maintaining high standards, and navigating intricate interpersonal dynamics within sales environments. This study recognizes the dynamic nature of personal values, influenced by cultural backgrounds, upbringing, and life experiences. These guiding principles influence decision-making, goal-setting, and behavior, significantly impacting sales performance. By acknowledging the interplay between personality traits and personal values, this research aims to uncover nuanced insights into how individuals' intrinsic motivations and beliefs contribute to their success in sales roles. A comprehensive analysis of these basic concepts aims to provide actionable recommendations for sales management strategies.

Toward an understanding of the personal traits needed in a digital selling environment

PurposeThe digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.Design/methodology/approachUsing template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.FindingsThe research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.Research limitations/implicationsThe present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.Practical implicationsThis paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.Originality/valueThis paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

Responsible Cannabis Sales: A Narrative Review Considering Interventions for Dispensary Staff to Address Cannabis Harms

An industry of cannabis sales outlets (often called dispensaries) has proliferated in response to state-sanctioned legalization. This paper focuses on the interaction of dispensary sales staff (budtenders) and consumers, which likely has a substantial impact on the consumer experience. To date, there has been little consideration on this aspect of dispensary sales environment, in which staff provide guidance regarding cannabis products. Training programs for alcohol sales are frequently mandated; in contrast, budtender trainings are not currently required or otherwise regulated by state agencies, and therefore, do not address consumer or community safety. This paper explores responsible cannabis sales training and practice. Differences between cannabis and alcohol sales environments, including product diversity, consumer education and motivations, and market maturity are described. Dispensary staff training, along with management policies may improve the quality of product education, and therefore, improve the safety to consumers and communities.

Dynamic sales prediction with auto-learning and elastic-adjustment mechanism for inventory optimization

The ability to predict product sales is invaluable for improving enterprises’ routine decisions of inventory optimization. The most effective solution of sales prediction in real applications is ensemble learning. One challenge of the solution is that it is hard to make timely and accurate predictions because of inadequate decision information and complicated and changeable sales environments. Besides, seeking optimal model combinations from the candidate set is often inaccurate and time-consuming. Another important challenge is that the predicted sales seldom consider “replenishment” of the inventory, which may lead to even higher cost. To address the challenges, we propose a novel dynamic sales prediction model with Auto-Learning and Elastic-Adjustment mechanisms (DSP-FAE): Dynamic sales prediction model can capture dynamic changing patterns of sales time series more effectively. Auto-Learning is used to automatically customize the optimal ensemble learning strategy for each warehouse-product combination in a more efficient way. Elastic-Adjustment is proposed to design a deep neural network-based adjustment factor to correct the predicted sales, which can significantly reduce inventory costs. Extensive offline and online experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the proposed model on two real-world datasets: Galanz and Cainiao. Experimental results show that the proposed DSP-FAE performs better than the selected 10 state-of-the-art baselines significantly in terms of MAE, RRSE and CORR. More importantly, it can save more than 20% inventory cost compared with traditional solutions.

A new perspective on sales outcome controls: an inside sales perspective

PurposePrevious sales control research has limited the definition of outcome controls exclusively to sales outcomes in an outside sales context. In addition to sales outcome controls, inside sales managers use phone operational outcomes to influence inside sales agent performance, supporting the need to expand the broader definition of outcome controls. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to explore the need to bifurcate outcome controls into two distinct variables: sales and phone operational controls. Researchers know little about the application of sales outcome controls beyond sales-only outcomes, which, in turn, limits the definition of outcome controls.Design/methodology/approachThrough the utilization of survey, secondary operational data and sales manager’s feedback, this paper demonstrates that the definition of outcome controls needs to be divided into two distinct areas, sales and phone operational controls for inside sales agents, which, in turn, acts collectively to impact an inside sales agent’s job performance and satisfaction.FindingsThis research demonstrates that inside sales managers depend on both sales and phone operational outcome controls to drive sales agent performance, varying in degrees by industry. Even as inside sales managers focus on creating an employee-centric autonomous motivational work culture, the overarching controlling factors associated with phone operational outcomes dampen an inside sales agent’s performance and job satisfaction.Research limitations/implicationsTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, as the first sales control research to examine an inside sales context, this study provides support to further study sales controls in an inside sales context. This research can be enhanced by examining business-to-consumer inside sales environments, behavior controls, greater sample size and additional work outcomes such as turnover and tenure.Practical implicationsThe findings have important implications because they can help practitioners understand the effect that both sales and phone operational outcomes have on sales agent performance. It also illuminates the need for inside sales managers to be less controlling in their focus on phone operational outcomes, as such a practice has a negative influence on key sales agent job outcomes.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to triangulate multiple data sources to illustrate the need to evaluate both sales and phone operational outcomes as broader components of sales outcome controls. The study of sales controls in a different sales context suggests that sales management controls may differ by sales context, opening the door to extend the vast sales control literature beyond its current context of outside sales.

An examination of salesperson bricolage during a critical sales disruption: Selling during the Covid-19 pandemic

COVID-19 has proven to be a disruptive and world-altering event often forcing professional salespeople to rapidly change the manner in which they do business. Thereby, this pandemic illuminates the importance of understanding salesperson characteristics and behaviors that enable sales success in disruptive environments. This study identifies COVID-19 as a Critical Sales Event and introduces the concept of “bricolage” to the larger body of sales literature. Bricolage is a combination of “making do” under environmental conditions of resource constraint. Bricolage characterizes a salesperson's ability to utilize available resources effectively by assessing available resources and working to reconfigure them in order to meet new challenges and create opportunities. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research from professional salespeople, this study identifies a salesperson's creativity, learning-orientation, and grit as three important antecedents to salesperson bricolage. Moreover, this study shows that salesperson bricolage relates positively to sales performance under conditions shaped by the COVID-19 disruption; with salesperson bricolage becoming more strongly related to sales performance when sales environments are more highly disrupted by the pandemic.

Investigating the Role of Product Assortment in Technology-Enabled Sales Platforms

Throughout a distribution channel, multiple sales platforms and technologies are leveraged to expand market reach and manage offering assortments. Yet, the literature is limited on how buyers who are channel intermediaries make purchase decisions across sales platforms particularly when platforms vary in their degree of technology enablement. This research investigates how B2B buyers respond to the offering, in terms of numerical assortment and quality, when the sales environments vary in their level of technology enablement. We examine the buyer's sales platform choice, purchase quantity, and tackle the seller's challenge of assortment integration. Buyers have a choice of purchasing from a low-tech platform where buyers are in-person and an auction determines sales, an Internet-enabled platform where remotely located buyers are price takers, and a hybrid platform that has a high level of technology enablement such that co-located and remotely located potential buyers simultaneously bid on the offering. A Hidden Markov Model captures the impact of different need states on buyers' decisions. Our findings: (1) uncover three distinct buyer profiles that have unique sales platform preferences and multiplatform buying tendencies that relate to their comfort with technology-enabled markets, (2) show that buyers exhibit distinct and dynamic needs that affect their sales platform choices and response to the platform offerings, (3) reveal that buyers experience diminishing returns to product assortment and condition at varying rates depending on their need state. Supporting our key findings, we find evidence of similar behaviors among consumers in a B2C multichannel context that includes an omnichannel. Additionally, we offer recommendations for B2B sellers regarding allocating and adjusting assortments to drive sales platform choice and revenues per buyer.

Evaluating data driven practices in sales environments: user engagement and sales results

Data visualization is a key tool to drive both end user adoption and change management activities within data initiatives and especially so in sales environments. Data is as much a part of the problem as the solution itself. There’s too much of it, it’s difficult to interpret and sellers hold on to tactical workload out of distrust in the data systems they are provided with.A data-driven approach to the sales engagement cycle can fundamentally improve performance. Using an analytical approach to determine client needs and sales ‘signals’, sales engagement can be tuned to be in sync with market needs. However, a range of technical, organisational and cultural issues need to be addressed before such a solution can truly start to deliver results.A prototype has been developed and implemented within IBM Digital Sales Europe to test the effectiveness of a data-driven approach to territory management. This practitioner focussed paper looks at the impact on business results that the programme used to introduce such new territory management methods had.It uses the 6 wise men approach to consider the nature of the problem and where the initiative directly impacted outcomes. Its answers questions on (1) what was the data driven initiative being implemented, (2) why it was important, (3) how it was implemented, (4) when it took place, (5) who has benefited and (6) where business value was created. This paper concludes that data initiatives require considerable transformation effort to be successful. Moreover, it identifies that there is a broad range of benefits available beyond the immediate territory management effectiveness of a data-driven client selection methodology.

Introducing data driven practices into sales environments: examining the impact of data visualisation on user engagement and sales results

Data visualisation is a key tool to drive both end user adoption and change management activities within data initiatives and especially so in sales environments. Data is as much a part of the problem as the solution itself. There’s too much of it, it’s difficult to interpret and sellers hold on to tactical workload out of distrust in the data systems they are provided with. A data-driven approach to the sales engagement cycle can fundamentally improve performance. Using an analytical approach to determine client needs and sales ‘signals’, sales engagement can be tuned to be in sync with market needs. However, a range of technical, organisational and cultural issues need to be addressed before such a solution can truly start to deliver results. A prototype has been developed and implemented within IBM Digital Sales Europe to test the effectiveness of a data-driven approach to territory management. Buy-in to the value proposition has been strong in principal but getting seller engagement and manager attention has been challenging. The pull of the standard approach with clients is strong, seller time is at a premium and users are very unforgiving of ill-considered experiments within their working day.After a series of iterations, it was discovered that improvements in the visualisation component of the data-project were transformative. It allowed sellers see meaning in the data for the first time and it helped them to build effective sales narratives for partners and clients alike. It helped managers to see patterns and take course correction action and it helped build dialogue and relationships throughout the sales ecosystem.Visualisation also became a potent agent for change itself. It ‘surfaced’ and shed light on a range of problems that had gone unnoticed, undiagnosed or simply ignored. It raised questions for the sales organisation, forced trade-offs and started to drive more informed decision-making.This paper concludes that data initiatives require considerable transformation effort to be successful. In this context, visualisation serves as the ice-breaker carving a path through hidden and complex problems in need of change, simplifying choices and highlighting the opportunity costs ahead.

“Get busy talking or get busy dying”

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to high-light the very well-known potential downside of technology found in many sales environments and to provide a fail-safe remedy to telephone Call Reluctance. Design/methodology/approach – The typical, illogical thinking that underpins the reasons that sales people offer for their Call Reluctance are discussed in detail. A time tested platform built upon sound logic and decades of successful implementation is provided. The approach appeals equally to managers and sales personal because it is simple, doable and highly motivational. Findings – The results demonstrate the powerful effect that accurate thinking and an easily implemented management approach has for sales organizations and individuals when embracing the unparalleled value of telephone communication. Originality/value – The work is based upon the authors 40 plus years of applying the thinking and platform presented in the paper. In addition, for the past 15 years, the author has enthusiastically witnessed the incredibly positive impact of his approach to over 400 companies worldwide. He does not claim absolute originality of the content, as like most successful sales people, he is indebted to many, many sales people he has had the pleasure to know and learn from.

Serving first for the benefit of others: preliminary evidence for a hierarchical conceptualization of servant leadership

In this paper, we examine servant leadership as a promising leadership style for today's dynamic sales environments. Conceptual and empirical literature points to servant leadership's strong potential in facilitating benefits to salespeople and the organization. Yet that same literature evidences a problematic lack of consensus regarding components that distinctly reflect servant leadership. Existing conceptualizations include dimensions like humility and providing direction, which clearly overlap with various other leadership styles. In this paper, we first consider unique distinctives of servant leadership. We then propose an extension of the augmentation hypothesis from the transactional and transformational leadership literature. Specifically, we posit that servant leadership distinctives are hierarchically built on transformational characteristics, which themselves are built on transactional characteristics. Using secondary data from a sample of professional salespeople, we apply Guttman scaling and show this hierarchical conceptualization to be empirically tenable. We demonstrate that sales leadership at higher levels on the hierarchy produces incremental gains in salesperson satisfaction, salesperson performance, organizational citizenship behaviors, and corporate social responsibility. We confirm our findings in a validation sample and demonstrate an additional relationship with customer-directed extra-role behaviors. Our results imply that sales organizations can reap enhanced multi-faceted benefits through higher levels of servant leadership.

Developing a New Theory of Frontline Manufacturer-Retailer Relationships for Consumer Packaged Goods

ABSTRACTPurpose: Frontline employees from consumer packaged goods (CPG) manufacturers, and the retailers’ employees who they interact with, play a crucial role in the in-store execution of product promotions and in ensuring that products are available for shoppers. This article investigates the development of interpersonal relationships between these frontline actors at the store-level of analysis and how these relationships influence in-store processes. We consider the theoretical and practical implications of our findings for sales force recruiting and sales management in the CPG retail channel.Methodology/approach: Frontline relationships and in-store execution remain relatively under researched fields in the sales management and retail literatures. Given the lack of a well-established theoretical framework, we conducted a qualitative study in the grounded theory research tradition. We interviewed frontline personnel from manufacturers and retailers, their immediate managers and headquarters personnel and other industry experts. We took a holistic approach to data collection; also gathering other types of written, photo and video data for the purpose of iterative data analysis and developing a mid-range theory of relationship development between manufacturer representatives and retailer employees, the frontline employees tasked with executing marketing and merchandising strategies in the store.Findings: We develop a model of frontline relationship development and performance consisting of 4 distinct stages: (1) working alongside, (2) building respect, (3) cooperative relationship (helping hands), and (4) collaborative partnership. We compare our findings with existing relationship marketing and relationship management theories. We find that an alternative theoretical framework may suit the particularities of the CPG retail channel better.Research implications: This article provides insight into a very specific but important type of business-to-business relationships in the CPG retail channel that have seen little scholarly attention. It calls for re-evaluating the relevance of existing relationship marketing and sales management paradigms in the CPG retail channel. Future research could investigate the extent to which our model is applicable in sales environments beyond the CPG retail channel.Practical implications: The study’s findings contribute to the practice of relationship marketing and sales management in the CPG retail channel. We present a case for a different approach of managing manufacturer-retailer relationships at the store level, a more functional tactic, which seems to deliver higher relationship performance than expected under the relationship marketing paradigm prevalent in sales and retail literatures. This different approach has direct consequences for the recruitment and management of a CPG sales force.

A dynamic rationing policy for continuous-review inventory systems

Stock rationing is an inventory policy that allows differential treatment of customer classes without using separate inventories. In this paper, we propose a dynamic rationing policy for continuous-review inventory systems, which utilizes the information on the status of the outstanding replenishment orders. For both backordering and lost sales environments, we conduct simulation studies to compare the performance of the dynamic policy with the static critical level and the common stock policies and quantify the gain obtained. We propose two new bounds on the optimum dynamic rationing policy that enables us to tell how much of the potential gain the proposed dynamic policy realizes. We discuss the conditions under which stock rationing – both dynamic and static – is beneficial and assess the value of the dynamic policy.

Sales manager and sales team determinants of salesperson ethical behaviour

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to develop and test a model of the role managers and peers play in shaping salespeople's ethical behaviour. The model specifies that sales manager personal moral philosophies, whether sales managers themselves are rewarded according to the outcomes or behaviours of their salespeople, sales team job security, intra‐team cooperation, and sales team tactical performance all influence sales team ethical standards. In turn, ethical standards influence the probability that sales team members will behave (un)ethically when faced with ethical dilemmas.Design/methodology/approachThe model is tested on a sample of 154 Finnish sales managers. Data were collected via mail survey. Analysis was undertaken using structural equation modelling.FindingsEthical standards appear to be shaped by several factors; behaviour‐based management controls increase ethical standards, relativist managers tend to manage less ethically‐minded sales teams, job insecurity impedes the development of ethical standards, and sales teams' cooperation activity increases ethical standards. Sales teams are less likely to engage in unethical behaviour when the teams have strong ethical standards.Research limitations/implicationsCross‐sectional data limits generalisability; single country data may limit the ability to generalise to different sales environments; additional measure development is needed; identification of additional antecedent factors would be beneficial.Practical implicationsSales managers should consciously develop high ethical standards in sales teams if they wish to reduce unethical behaviour. Ethical standards can be improved if sales managers change their own outward behaviour (exhibit a less relativistic ethical philosophy), foster cooperation amongst salespeople, and develop perceptions of job security. How sales managers are rewarded may shape how they approach the management of ethical behaviour in their sales teams.Originality/valueThis paper appears to be the first to simultaneously examine both sales manager‐specific and sales team‐specific antecedents to sales team ethical standards and behaviours. As such, it provides an important base for research in this critical area.

Use of persuasion knowledge by the millennial generation

PurposeThis paper seeks to empirically test the use of persuasion knowledge among the millennial generation.Design/methodology/approachCollege aged students were randomly assigned into two groups and given scenarios where one was designed for persuasion knowledge to be more likely utilized by consumers, and a second where is was less likely to use it. The respondents were exposed to a scripted sales scenario and their perceptions of the salesperson were measured. It was hypothesized that millennial consumers using persuasion knowledge were more likely to develop negative affective and cognitive attitudes toward the salesperson, and were less likely to develop purchase intentions than those not using persuasion knowledge. Factor analysis was used to confirm that three dimensions existed, and a follow‐up MANOVA/t‐test was used to measure the differences between the two treatment groups.FindingsAll three hypotheses were supported. Millennial consumers that feel compelled to cope with the salesperson's tactics were significantly more likely to develop negative perceptions of the salesperson, and were less likely to buy than other consumers.Research limitations/implicationsThis study was limited in scope, as it was designed to be a basic sales interaction with a retail salesperson. Future research is needed to identify millennial's use of persuasion knowledge in a variety of sales environments, and for different types of products.Originality/valueThis was the first study to provide empirical evidence supporting the use of persuasion knowledge by younger consumers.

Structures of learning for dynamic markets

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to understand why structures of learning underpin the creation of competencies that allow firms to compete more successfully in dynamic markets. The paper seeks to challenge the idea that, in the absence of learning, capabilities are the main source of competitive advantage.Design/methodology/approachFirst, the paper discusses the relationships between competencies, learning, and dynamic markets. Second, a preliminary analysis is conducted of the learning routines of 118 top sales managers. The results are compared with three different structures of learning, allowing conclusions to be drawn about learning in dynamic markets.FindingsThe study illustrates that a number of dynamic learning routines are not evident in the sales environments of dynamic markets. The findings suggest that firms are not well placed to renew routines from inside‐out and to respond to market dynamics. The patterns of integration among individuals and groups, however, seem to be well represented, reflecting higher‐level learning routines.Research limitations/implicationsThe empirical findings offered here are of a preliminary nature. Future researchers might usefully apply the typology of learning structures to examine in more detail the empirical links established. Studies might also examine organisational learning in a variety of industrial and consumer‐based contexts.Originality/valueThe idea that learning structures (rather than capabilities themselves) are the basis of competencies that enable a firm to better respond to dynamic markets is a useful and novel approach.

Inventory Management with Auctions and Other Sales Channels: Optimality of (s, S) Policies

We study periodic-review inventory replenishment problems with fixed ordering costs, and show the optimality of (s, S) inventory replenishment policies. Inventory replenishment is instantaneous, i.e., the lead time is zero. We consider several sales mechanisms, e.g., auction mechanisms, name-your-own-price mechanisms, and multiple heterogeneous sales channels. We prove this result by showing that these models satisfy a recently-established sufficient condition for the optimality of (s, S) policies. Thus, this paper shows that the optimality of (s, S) policies extends well beyond the traditional sales environments studied so far in the inventory literature.

Setting Individual Achievement Targets with DEA

Data Envelopment Analysis can be used to set targets for individual attainments that are demanding but realistic. The targets are based on the best attainment levels realised by other individuals, after allowing for factors beyond an individual's control. The approach will be illustrated using the example of school children but it has wider applicability in monitoring and improving the performance of individuals in any context where large numbers of individuals are engaged in a given activity but under varying conditions. For example salespersons may be set targets which reflect the varying sales environments in which they operate.

Assessment centers: A contrast of usage in diverse environments

AbstractThe assessment center technique for sales force selection, promotion, career development, and training has received substantial attention. In addition to being cited as having substantial potential for more traditional sales management applications, the approach has been identified as well‐suited for cross‐cultural and multinational sales environments. This study appraises assessment center applications in two divergent settings: the United States and Europe. Expectations of greater awareness and utilization among European marketing managers were confirmed. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.