Salespeople Need Research Articles

The Recipe for the Perfect Sales Call

Abstract: Sales calls are an essential part of any sales process as the beginning of the sales pipeline for any business. A sales call is an opportunity to connect with prospects, understand their needs and challenges, and offer solutions to help them achieve their goals. Salespeople need to make a good impression during the first sales call to ensure a strong start to the sale. This document offers the perfect recipe for a successful sales call. In this document, you will have detailed knowledge on how to make phone calls, how to deal with people, especially women, how people respond to your calls, and a new technique that I have created myself for making successful calls, and will help you not sound like a normal sales person call for your customer so you don't have to hold the phone. I took advantage of this and made over 50 successful calls out of 331 during my internship at a financial consulting firm. Objective: The main objective of this document is to help freshers make a successful sales call. This document contains some techniques that will help any beginner to make a sales call

Salespeople’s sales performance skills in B2B of services firms – a cross-industrial study

PurposeThis study aims to examine the role of salespeople’s skills in relative and absolute SP in business-to-business (B2B) settings of services firms. This conceptual logic reported in meta-analytical works, that salespeople’s skills relate directly to their sales performance (SP), is questioned.Design/methodology/approachhis research relies on existing theory and previous studies on SP drivers and SP measures. The literature identifies a set of common denominators on the role of salespeople’s skills regarding their SP, all of which are tested in this study. Based on a deductive approach and questionnaire survey, 732 service firms in Norway were targeted. A total of 389 questionnaires were returned, generating a response rate of 53.1%.FindingsA total of 10 out of 12 hypothesized relationships in the research model dealing with the relationship between SP drivers and SP turn out to be non-significant. The hypothesized relationship in the research model between relative and absolute SP is also supported.Research limitations/implicationsThe results reported in this study, based on a large sample of service firms, empirically confirm that the direct effect is generally overestimated. Empirical evidence is provided that sheds additional light on the role of salespeople’s skills in relative and absolute SP in B2B settings of services firms.Practical implicationsThis study offers meaningful and relevant insights into the monitoring of SP drivers to practitioners in B2B sales settings of services firms. Salespeople need to learn about gathering knowledge in training programs about each customer and their specific situation. Firms should strive to recruit salespeople who possess the appropriate skills, taking into consideration their customers and specific situations related to them, such as experiences from competitors. Salespeople may be organized around similar customers and similar customer situations, rather than geographical assignments.Originality/valueOverall, this research contributes insights into the role played by salespeople’s skills in relative and absolute SP in B2B settings of services firms. In particular, the research contributes additional insights into the non-existent role of interpersonal presentation and communication skills, adaptiveness of sales approach and sales behavior skills and product/technology-related knowledge skills in salespeople’s relative and absolute SP in B2B settings of services firms.

The Role of Salespeople in Value Co-Creation and Its Impact on Sales Performance

ABSTRACT Purpose This paper aims to examine salesperson skills, including listening, communication, and adaptive selling, that can enable value co-creation with customers and increase sales performance, while taking into consideration the contingent role of salesperson relationship-enhancing activities. Methodology Survey and objective sales performance data were collected from 201 B2B salespeople in the industrial goods industry. The hypotheses were tested using PLS-SEM. Findings The results show adaptive selling, listening, and communication of salespeople positively impact the behaviors of salespeople to co-create value with customers. The results show that when salespeople co-create value with customers, they will have a positive effect on sales performance. Results show how value co-creation mediates the effects of listening and adaptive selling on sales performance. Research Implications Salespeople need to effectively listen to their customers to provide needed solutions by jointly working with them to co-create value. Similarly, a salesperson’s communication and adaptive selling skills have collective impacts that positively contribute to the value co-creation process. Results supplement previous findings in the literature by showing value co-creation holds a positive effect on sales performance at the micro salesperson level. The results offer additional support to the ongoing dialog on the role of a salesperson as a value co-creator. Practical Implications This study has identified several variables that engender successful co-creation by salespeople in B2B sales contexts. Findings demonstrate that salespeople who can adapt their selling approach, are good listeners, and can effectively communicate with customers can engender the value co-creation process with customers. The findings serve as a base to create professional guidelines about the skills and capabilities salespeople need to successfully execute a value co-creation process. Originality/Value The study adds to the literature on value co-creation by highlighting three factors that can enhance the value co-creation process at the level of salespeople leading to better sales outcomes. This research adds the existing literature on the role of value co-creation in sales by empirically examining the relationship between value co-creation and sales performance at the salesperson level.

Initiating adoption through salespeople: Stronger selling capabilities are not always better

Customers often have a critical attitude towards a new product and resist its adoption because of the associated uncertainties. One barrier is the initial stage of the customers’ product adoption process, the customers’ adoption of knowledge about the new offering, which has hardly been studied. It is mainly the salespeople who can mitigate the uncertainties perceived by the customer. Therefore, we focus on salespeople’s selling capability, i.e., the capability of individuals to perform salespeople’s tasks, addressing the two research questions: (i) “What degree of selling capability serves customers’ knowledge adoption best?”, and (ii) “How does customers’ innovativeness and the perceived degree of innovation affect the impact of the selling capability on customers’ knowledge adoption?” For this purpose, we collected survey and objective innovation purchase data from business customers of a German professional electrical tool’s supplier. Our study provides three major contributions. First, we reveal that there is an optimum level of selling capability that should not be undercut nor exceeded. Second, we find that salespeople need to adapt the use of selling capability on two contingencies: the perceived degree of innovation and innovativeness of the customer. Third, we empirically prove that customers’ knowledge adoption mediates the relationship between salespeople’s selling capability and in-novation purchases. Sales managers, innovation managers, and marketing managers have now a more profound understanding in initiating new product adoption through salespeople.

Drivers and outcomes of salespersons’ value opportunity recognition competence in solution selling

In B2B markets, firms seek to provide customer solutions instead of merely selling goods or services. As boundary-spanners, salespeople are pivotal for implementing this strategic shift. Yet, extant literature provides limited insights into salesperson’s resources and competencies required for customer solutions, particularly in the early phases of solution selling. This research focuses on salesperson’s value opportunity recognition competence (VOR), which is a central requirement for salespeople to be able to navigate the early phases of solution selling. Analyzing large-scale, multi-level data of 799 salespeople and their respective sales managers in 29 sales organizations, the authors investigate the role of different salesperson resources and work environment characteristics for strengthening their VOR. The authors find that salespeople need both customer and technical knowledge, but customer knowledge is more important. Salespeople also can substitute individual technical knowledge with strong internal relations, but strong customer relations are no substitute for individual knowledge about customers’ business models and processes. Formalization turned out to be a double-edged sword in the context of VOR development, while transformational leadership has positive effects only. The findings bear concrete implications for improving the selection, training, and work environment of solution salespeople.

The role of self-regulatory mode on acquisition–retention ambidexterity

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model that posits locomotion-assessment ambidextrous orientation as predictor of salesperson acquisition–retention ambidexterity, which as a consequence increases sales. The authors drawing on regulatory focus theory and self-regulatory for this propose.Design/methodology/approachSalespeople involved in the study represent different firms selling a wide variety of food and household products to a wholesaler, which resells them to supermarket chains. The authors collected data from 231 industrial salespeople.FindingsFirst, salesperson assessment focus amplified locomotion’s effect on acquisition–retention ambidexterity. Second, salespeople increased their performance by implementing an acquisition–retention ambidextrous orientation that balances prospecting for new customers and growing existing customers. Third, findings revealed a mediating effect of ambidextrous orientation on the relationship between regulatory mode and sales performance. Finally, outcomes supported the conditional moderated-mediated effect of regulatory mode in explaining performance through ambidextrous orientation.Practical implicationsResults suggest that salespeople need to equalize their dual orientations in a complementary way to elaborate their selling strategies according to each customer. For example, in an unbalanced orientation, putting high levels of assessment into a sales encounter can reduce the effective and efficient use of time in interacting with customers.Originality/valueThe authors further illustrate the importance of using both locomotion and assessment in attaining sales goals (Pierro et al. 2013). This synergistic effect is known as the complementary hypothesis (Pierro et al., 2006a, 2006b). Each dimension complements the other and has a moderated-mediated effect on performance through acquisition–retention ambidexterity.

Servant Leadership, Proactive Work Behavior, and Performance Overall Rating: Testing a Multilevel Model of Moderated Mediation

ABSTRACTPurpose: The goal of this paper is to investigate whether salesperson proactive behavior mediates the relationship between sales manager servant leadership and salesperson overall performance rating by the sales manager. Moreover, it examines whether salesperson customer orientation and political skill moderate the sales manager servant leadership − salesperson proactive behavior ─ salesperson overall performance. Design/methodology/approach: Empirical analysis is based on dyadic data from 181 industrial salespeople and their sales managers in a range of different industries (including both manufacturing and service industries). To analyze the multilevel moderated mediation process, this investigation uses Multilevel Structural Equation Modeling (MSEM). Findings: Sales manager servant leadership was positively related to salespeople overall performance rating through their proactive behavior except when their customer orientation was low. Moreover, this relationship between sales manager servant leadership and overall performance rating through proactive work behavior was stronger the greater the salespeople consumer orientation and political skill. Research implications: The study suggests that sales manager servant leadership is indirectly related to salesperson overall performance rating through salesperson proactive behavior. The findings also support subsequent research on salesperson values, skills, and behaviors as moderators in the servant leadership – proactive behavior – overall performance rating relationship. Understanding how these salesperson factors interact with sales management leadership to produce organizational outcomes (e.g., stress, engagement, organizational commitment) are questions that sales researchers may wish to pursue via further study. Practical implications: Sales managers should employ servant leadership to stimulate salespeople proactive work behavior. This study clearly indicates the salespeople need to adopt customer orientation and to have political skill. Hence, sales managers need to try to improve the customer orientation and the political skill of their salespeople through selection procedures or training programs. Originality/value: The relationship between sales manager servant leadership and salesperson overall performance through proactive work behavior has not been addressed and tested in the literature to date.

Contemporary Conceptualization of Customer Orientation in Indian Banking and Financial Services

Changing approaches to marketing and selling of products and services, have brought into focus customer-oriented behaviour of sales people. Especially when the product involves demonstration of higher product knowledge, combined with the ability to help customers to meet their needs. The research empirically addresses the problem of determining the behaviour, which must be manifested in salesperson's customer orientation to support functional and relational outcomes. The objective of this research is to determine specific salesperson behaviour, from a competency perspective, in the context of a service setting of banking and financial services and present a contemporary conceptualization. By integrating existing stream of studies and perception of sales people involved in selling financial products and services, the authors outline the behaviour and present a new conceptualization of customer orientation. The practical application is to help managers understand the behaviour that salespeople need, to develop sales team, facilitating customer relationships, leading to higher sales performance.

3D PRINTING � A TOOL FOR INDUSTRIAL PRODUCTS SALES PEOPLE

ABSTRACT Business to business sales people need to be able to demonstrate a solution to their customers quickly and easily. If a “picture is worth a thousand words”, then having a sample or a prototype available overnight should be an order of magnitude more valuable than a simple brochure. However, how can the industrial products sales person quickly and easily get a sample or a prototype built? The answer is for the salesperson to either print it at night from his/her 3D printer or to purchase one from a firm that offers the printing service. Keywords B2B Sales, Buying Centers, Industrial Sales, Prototypes, Selling, 3D Printing

PELATIHAN PEMECAHAN MASALAH SECARA KREATIF UNTUK MENINGKATKAN KINERJA WIRANIAGA

Sales people often experience obstacle in marketing, it’s because they disable to face troubles that appear. Salespeople need creative problem solving ability to do their job. The main purpose of this research is to examine the effectiveness of creative problem solving training to increase job performance.This research use quasi experimental approach with the untreated control group design with pretest and posttest plan. Creative problem solving training is given to the experimental group and the control group did not receive this training. The subjects are salespeople of dealer motorcycle who face consumer directly. The subject is divided into experimental group (18 subject, middle area) and control group (18 subject, south area). Job performance form is made by researcher and company party to appraise job performance.The result of the data were analyzed by mixed anova with statistic programe SPSS 15.0 for Windows. The result showed that creative problem solving training can significant increase job performance in experimental group (F = 13,387; p < 0,01). The experimental group showed higher job performance than the control group. This research goes to show that Creative problem solving training contributes 28,3 % in increasing the level of job performance.

Consumer perceptions of salesperson gender and credibility: an evolutionary explanation

Purpose– The purpose of this study was to assess the utility of the homophily theory and the related concept of source similarity which predict that a male salesperson is more effective in serving male customers, and a female is more effective with females. For products designed to enhance female attractiveness, however, Darwinian theories of reproduction suggest that a male may be more effective than a female in dealing with female customers. This study of Hong Kong consumers examined the possibility and, in doing so, challenged the assumed utility of homophily in selling cosmetics.Design/methodology/approach– Two studies were conducted. The first was an experiment where female subjects were asked to report their responses to female and male salespersons selling cosmetics. The second study was a phenomenological study exploring the responses of female customers who had encountered male salespeople in cosmetics shops.Findings– The experiment found that a male salesperson tended to induce significantly stronger purchase intention than a female, and that salesperson credibility (specifically, trustworthiness and attractiveness) plays a significant role in mediating the impact of salesperson gender on purchase intention. The follow-up phenomenological study of female customers who had encountered male salespeople in cosmetics shops supported the experimental findings and offered additional support for their evolutionary basis.Research limitations/implications– Darwinian theories of reproduction and source credibility together offer a more complete explanation for the effectiveness of salespeople in the gender-sensitive cosmetics market. However, the experiment involved creating fictitious salespeople matched for trust, expertise and attractiveness. The artificiality of the treatments was necessary to construct a controlled scenario to uphold internal validity, but it may limit the generalizability of the results.Practical implications– To encourage a positive consumer response, retailers need to consider salesperson gender and training. In some specific contexts (such as the selling of products designed to enhance female attractiveness), male salespeople ought to be used ahead of female salespeople, and those male salespeople need to have high credibility to be effective. However, as such, salesmen may not be seen as more expert than saleswomen; expertise needs to be an area of focus in terms of salesperson training.Originality/value– The results of previous research testing homophily theory suggest that a salesperson of the same gender as the customer ought to induce stronger purchase intentions. This study has shown that for the selling of appearance-related products, gender heterophily may be more effective than homophily. Darwinian interpretations of intrasexual rivalry and courtship might help explain why males sell cosmetics more effectively.

Confidence that stops short of arrogance is the key to call-center success

Purpose – Emphasizes the importance of self-confidence in sales people and reveals how these employees can achieve confidence in their call-center roles. Design/methodology/approach – Puts forward a series of spidergrams illustrating the self-confidence of different employees and suggests how they can improve their performance. Findings – Advances the view that sales people need to: know their products and services; know their sales and customer-service processes; know how to get inside the world of prospective customers; know their competitors' products and services; know what has worked, and not worked, in the past; and have faith and belief in the product, service and brand. Practical implications – Outlines development activities for call-center employees, concentrating on knowledge of product, sales process, customer-service processes, competitors' products and performance and the customer's world. Originality/value – Provides a tool-kit for developing call-center skills.

What Influences Five-star Beijing Restaurants in Making Wine Lists?

The purpose of this paper is to examine the most important strategies for five-star Chinese restaurants when designing their wine lists and how restaurant characteristics influence their strategies. Forty five-star restaurants participated in this research based on snowball sampling. Data were collected by face-to-face interviews. The main part of survey was designed by using the Best-Worst Scaling method. ‘Competitive price fit for the price range of food’, ‘Popular wines’ and ‘Balance of varieties’ are the three most important attributes for restaurants when making wine lists. Some differences emerged between small and large restaurants. The use of Best-Worst Scaling made it easy for the Chinese sample to respond and 40 surveys were enough to find clear differences among the items tested as well as between different types of restaurants. The outcomes show that some Western platitudes, like matching wine to the food, are not relevant for five-star Chinese restaurants in Beijing, and that wine salespeople need to focus on different factors depending on the restaurant.

The embedded sales force: Connecting buying and selling organizations

Business-to-business firms are increasingly focusing on building long-term partnering relationships with key customers. Salespeople are often responsible for managing these relationships. To be effective as relationship managers, salespeople need to be embedded in both their firm’s and customers’ organizations. They need to have extensive knowledge of their customers’ business and also know and be able to leverage their firm’s resources to develop offerings tailored to their customers’ needs. Their companies and sales managers need to use different approaches to manage and support salespeople in this new role. In this paper, we examine some issues affecting the interfaces between elements of the embedded sales force and suggest some directions for future research and methods for examining these issues.

Scheduling sales force training: Theory and evidence

To have a productive sales force, firms must provide their salespeople with sales training. But from a profit-maximizing perspective, there are also reasons to limit training: training is expensive, it has diminishing returns, and trained salespeople need to be compensated at a higher level since their value in the outside labor market has increased. Due to these reasons, the following inter-related questions are not straightforward to answer: (1) How much training should be provided and how should training be scheduled over time? (2) How should compensation vary with training? (3) Should salespeople be asked to pay for some or all of their training? An analytical model is developed and analyzed using optimal control theory to provide answers to these questions. Thereafter, an empirical investigation is undertaken that broadly corroborates the analytical findings.

The Effects of Customers' Dress on Salesperson's Service in Large-Sized Clothing Specialty Stores

Our research, based on symbolic interaction, was designed to investigate customer-salesperson interactions as a function of unmanipulated customer dress within retail settings using fieldwork. Th rough structured observations in three apparel stores for large size women, we rated customers' dress and friendliness of salespeople and promptness of service. MANOVA results showed that both friendliness and promptness of service were affected by customer dress. Considering the increasing importance of service quality in the retail setting, salespeople need to be trained to be friendly to all customers regardless of customers' dress. In addition, retailers may want to educate salespeople on stereotypes commonly associated with customers' dress and advise them not to rely on such stereotypes. Sales-people need to be alert and conscious of their behaviors in service encounters.

Empowering salespeople: Personal, managerial, and organizational perspectives

The traditional seven steps of personal selling have remained virtually unchanged since the early 1900s. Meanwhile, the actual roles and duties of salespeople have pushed far into customer relationship management (CRM). Psychologically and professionally, salespeople need greater empowerment for their expanding CRM responsibilities. However, empowerment is a complex process requiring several individual, managerial, and organizational changes for successful implementation. As part of the empowerment process for its salespeople, companies need to provide supporting structures, processes, and incentives for customer-oriented behavior. At the same time, the Internet and other telecommunications advances in the macroenvironment are accelerating empowerment changes in personal selling—mainly on the customer side of the exchange. To effectively and efficiently carry out their growing yet still poorly defined CRM roles, salespeople need to be comprehensively empowered, trained, motivated, and rewarded. Companies that most effectively empower their salespeople should reap substantial rewards in profitability and loyalty from both their salespeople and customers. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Scheduling Sales Force Training: Theory and Evidence

To have a productive sales force, firms must provide their salespeople with sales training. But from a profit-maximizing perspective, there are also reasons to limit training: training is expensive, it has diminishing returns, and trained salespeople need to be compensated at a higher level since their value in the outside labor market has increased. Due to these reasons, the following inter-related questions are not straightforward to answer: (1) How much training should be provided and how should training be scheduled over time? (2) How should compensation vary with training? (3) Should salespeople be asked to pay for some or all of their training? An analytical model is developed and analyzed using optimal control theory to provide answers to these questions. Thereafter, an empirical investigation is undertaken that broadly corroborates the analytical findings.

Development of a Relationship Selling Mindset: Organizational Influencers

ABSTRACT Many business-to-business sales organizations have moved to employing relationship selling as a means of generating greater levels of customer satisfaction and long-term financial success. Relationship selling, though, is distinctly different from that utilized in traditional selling. Consequently, salespeople need to develop new skills and abilities to engage successfully in relationship selling. Doing so requires their adopting a relationship selling mindset. This paper suggests how business-to-business sales managers can create an organizational infrastructure that will facilitate salespeople's adoption of such a mindset. Managers' efforts are directed chiefly at fostering a sales organization that is ready for change.

The Partnering Role of Salespeople in a Business-to-Business Setting

ABSTRACT The salesforce plays a crucial boundary-spanning role between an organisation and its customers. Recently, Weitz and Bradford (1999) have argued that the sales function needs to take a far greater role in forming relationships with customers than it has done in the past. This will have implications for the way organisations manage their salesforce. This research seeks to examine changes in the role of sales in a business-to-business setting. Based upon in-depth interviews this research finds support for the requirement that salespeople need to form “partnerships” with customers. Organisational support for salespeople consisted of using virtual teams and a customer focused culture.