Jessica Ogilvie

Salespeople as knowledge brokers: a review and critique of the challenger sales model

Over the last several years, there has been increasing interest in a new sales training approach – referred to as the Challenger Sales model – to engage customers. This approach, focusing on purposefully generating tension with customers to spark new ways of thinking, has gained traction among leading sales organizations. Although generating tension with customers has received a great deal of interest, researchers have yet to complete a systematic, in-depth examination of the Challenger model. The purpose of this article is to provide a much needed comprehensive review and critique of the approach. By conducting both an empirical and conceptual review of the framework, we offer insight into its novelty, merits and weaknesses.

Salesperson Solution Involvement and Sales Performance: The Contingent Role of Supplier Firm and Customer–Supplier Relationship Characteristics

Salespeople play a crucial role in their firms’ efforts to provide customer solutions. However, little research has examined how salesperson involvement in customer solutions can be conceptualized, whether it pays off, and what boundary conditions might heighten its performance effects. This study addresses these gaps and offers a conceptualization of salesperson solution involvement by focusing on the set of salesperson-related activities that enact the four relational processes inherent in customer solutions. The authors collect a unique data set that includes a wide range of firms, industries, and countries, as well as the perspectives of both salespeople and customers, across five studies. Results validate the stability of the conceptualization across contexts. They also reveal that salesperson solution involvement is systematically related to increases in both subjective and objective, time-lagged measures of sales performance. Finally, results show that the performance effects of salesperson solution involvement are amplified under higher levels of firms product portfolio scope, sales unit cross-functional cooperation, and customer–supplier relationship tie strength. Surprisingly, customer adaptiveness is not found to moderate the performance effects of salesperson solution involvement.

Is There a Dark Side of Ambidexterity? Implications of Dueling Sales and Service Orientations

This study examines how employee customer and selling orientations, and their interaction, impact frontline employees’ (FLEs) pursuit of service and sales-related performance outcomes. Applying a job demands-resources lens, we advance a model that explores service-sales ambidexterity at the individual level. Polynomial regression and response surface analysis are used to assess how varying levels of customer and selling orientation relate to FLE outcomes. Our findings indicate that commitment to service quality and sales performance are highest when employees are singularly focused on one or the other. However, when required to be ambidextrous—that is, when employees must maintain a dual focus—these outcomes begin to suffer as employees are unclear of their role in the organization. While ambidextrous employees experience role conflict, they are also more likely to use creativity in their selling activities. These positive and negative consequences of ambidexterity underscore both the potential risks and rewards of a dual orientation on the front line.

Price Matching: To Match or Not to Match?

Regardless of the product category, market segment, geographic location, or target customer base, pricing and decisions about pricing tactics are among the most critical areas of a firm’s marketing strategy. Consumers have always been price conscious and focused on getting the lowest possible price. What we refer to today as “comparison shopping” is really only a modern term for a practice that is as old as commerce itself. Before the web, consumers purchased product guidebooks, read magazine reviews, scanned circulars, perused the newspaper, and visited many stores before making any big purchase. This practice is not new, but its form has changed. The changes are substantial and coincide with the advent of the newest widely available mobile technologies. We now comparison shop with smartphones, tablets, and laptop computers that make our searches for competing products and services more efficient and inclusive than was possible without these mobile technologies and their infrastructure that we now take for granted.

A Qualitative Exploration of Student Perspectives on Social Media use, Abuse and Content

We review relevant literature from the social media domain, identifying common research foci, as well as a gap and justification for this study which seeks to bring about a better understanding of, and contribute to, the nascent literature stream in the field of social media marketing research. We investigate just exactly how this powerful new force, social media, is being adopted, utilized and leveraged by students, the one group of individuals most likely to walk a delicate balance between personal and (budding) professional lives. We then share four major themes (ease of use, self-censoring and privacy, community and collectivism, and relationships with brands and businesses) and eighteen sub-themes which capture the essence of the impact this phenomenon is having on our target population. We conclude with a discussion of the findings and their associated implications, as well as insight into the limitations of our study and ideas for future research.

Introduction: What Is Showrooming?

We have all seen it. A customer walks in, not looking casually or really browsing, but focused, with smartphone ready. Not seeking help on the floor, but moving directly toward a particular section in the store. He or she may respond to a salesperson’s attempt to engage—the friendly “Can I help you?” or “Can I show you something?” or “Can I help you find something today?”—with an assured, calm, even careless response, “I’m fine, thanks!” or “I’ve got it covered, thanks!” or “I’m good, thanks!”

Salesperson-Manager Role-Relationship and Its Impact on Salesperson Performance: A Relational Identity Approach

This research focuses on the salesperson-manager relational identification and the proposed framework permits a more clear understanding of what the relationship with the manager means to individual salespeople. A hypothesized model is developed on the foundation provided by recent research on relational identity (Sluss and Ashforth 2007), along with relational identification, predicated on the role-relationship between two individuals in a workplace. Hypotheses are tested using a sample of 107 salespeople and their respective sales managers within a business-to-business context. A hierarchical regression method was used to analyze the data. Findings demonstrate that strong relational identification with managers can enhance the potential of salespeople and stimulate their motivation to work hard. The negative interactive effect of psychological identification on the relationship between salesperson-manager relational identification and salesperson effort also offers a new learning opportunity for managers.

Today’s Customers

The retail industry today is more dynamic than it has ever been. Fundamental shifts in consumer behavior over the past 15 years have led some industry experts to predict that retail will change more over the next 5 years than it has in the past century.1 In the wake of what many have referred to as the Great Recession, consumers have developed new attitudes that are having a fundamental influence on their purchase patterns and their purchasing behaviors.

Reward Programs: Loyalty at the Store Level

The nature of retail and the retailing process has been changed in fundamental ways. These changes have been in large part a result of accessible, inexpensive, powerful, and easy-to-use mobile technology combined with an almost entirely transparent flow of information to retail consumers. Attempting to fight showrooming behaviors can alienate valuable and potentially very loyal customers. Showroomers aren’t the enemy. In fact, they may actually be retailers’ most undervalued customer segment.

Employees as Knowledge Brokers: Understanding How Expertise Is Your Ally

The most evolutionary shift in what it means to be a sales professional in the twenty-first century is a fundamental transition from the conventional role of a salesperson to the role of a knowledge broker. When customers are showrooming, they offer sales professionals a clear signal that they are interested in gathering product knowledge and in considering potentially available alternative options to what is being offered in the store. This signal creates an opportunity for an impactful, transformative sales interaction between a well-prepared sales representative and a potential customer.