Joël Le Bon

The Marketing–Sales Interface at the Interface: Creating Market-Based Capabilities through Organizational Synergy

The firm’s quest to create customer value is dependent on the synergistic coordination of many parts of the organization, wherein internal resources and capabilities are effectively harnessed to create a competitive advantage. The often suboptimal relationship between marketing and sales acts as an inhibitor to success in this regard and has been the subject of much attention in both the academic literature and popular press. The authors offer new insights into this issue by examining how the marketing–sales interface affects, and is affected by, other functional areas in the development of key organizational capabilities. They introduce a holistic framework that identifies key levers that must be integrated through cross-functional coordination and cooperation to achieve superior market-based capabilities that in turn enable the firm to create lasting customer value. Propositions linking the levers to market-based capabilities are offered to shape new research opportunities in the domain of the marketing and sales interface.

The Accidental Salesperson: Can Inexperienced Sales Professionals Get Lucky Without Working Smart or Hard? An Abstract

Inexperienced sales professionals face high probability of failure, especially at an early career stage (Cron and Slocum 1986). One of the reasons for failure in sales pertains to the difficulty for salespeople to control their market environment. In fact and from an attribution theory perspective, the sales environment is unstable and difficult to control (Teas and McElroy 1986), thus also binding sales success to good or bad luck (Dixon et al. 2001, 2003).

Engaging Customer Preference Through Trade Credit: An Investigation of the Impact of Payment Terms on Brand Equity

Since organizations rarely collect immediate payment from business-to-business sales, trade credit structures financial and sales relationships between suppliers and customers (Asselbergh 1999). In this context, managing days’ sales outstanding (DSO), or the average number of days a company takes to collect revenue from business customers after a sale, represents a critical financial and marketing issue. If DSO indicates how quickly a company turns sales into cash (Bragg 2005), its extension also favors business opportunities and product quality demonstration when more generous payment terms are granted to customers (Emery and Nayar 1998; Smith 1987). Thus, trade credit can be viewed as a lubricant that facilitates sales through the attraction of customers’ business (Cheng and Pike 2003; Emery and Nayar 1998), or the signal of brand quality through additional time for the customer to test the product (Long et al. 1993). This research examines the extent to which credit terms offered by salespeople influence customers’ average payment delay and their perception of the supplier’s brand equity (i.e., brand attitude, brand trust, brand preference).

Engaging Inexperienced Salespeople to Work Hard to Be Lucky: Towards the Attribution of Sales Performance to Luck

Inexperienced sales professionals face high probability of failure, especially in the exploration stage of their career (Cron and Slocum 1986; Dixon et al. 2005). As a result, their learning and performance orientation along with their supervisors’ support is key to their motivation and success (Dixon et al. 2003; Kholi et al. 1998; Sujan et al. 1994). This research investigates an unexplored area of the attribution theory which should help young salespeople, sales managers, and sales educators understand better the relationship between believing in luck and becoming successful.

Predicting Business Customer Potential DISLOYALTY and Share of Wallet: Proposition of a New Theory and Moderating Effects

This research suggests the existence of a theoretical relationship between business customers’ dissatisfaction, late payment, and their potential disloyalty and share of wallet. We test a new proposition which states that business customer potential disloyalty may be revealed by the accounting figure of Days’ Sales Outstanding (DSO –average number of days a company takes to collect revenue after a sale), which is associated to share or wallet. We also introduce and test moderating effects pertaining to service recovery quality (i.e. distributive, procedural, interactional justice).

Investigating and Asserting the Influence of the Sales Force on the Prevention of Customers’ Late Payment

This research investigates the role of the sales force in the prevention of customers’ late payment. Specifically, an argument is made that salespeople’s behavior may impact their company’s accounting figures such as Days Sales Outstanding (DSO), i.e. the average number of days a company takes to collect revenue from customers after a sale has been made. Multiple-sources data collected from 575 business customers reveal that salespeople’s role in providing invoice information clarity is positively related to customers’ late payment shortening when financial difficulties are controlled. Indeed, salespeople’s customer orientation and self efficacy for negotiation have a positive impact on front-end customers’ (buyers/users) evaluation of invoice information clarity, which in turn has a positive impact on back-end customers’ (i.e. accountants/payers) evaluation of invoice information clarity, reducing then late payment. Salespeople’s self efficacy for negotiation is also positively related to customers’ payment acceleration as well. Theoretical and managerial implications are derived from such interesting and new findings for both the marketing/sales and finance/accounting communities.

Capital de marque et Internet : les nouveaux enjeux de l'e-communication de l'insatisfaction des clients

Cet article fait le point sur la diffusion du bouche a oreille negatif sur internet par des clients insatisfaits et son impact potentiel sur le capital de marque. Mettant en relation des millions de clients qui souhaitent partager des experiences ou des informations, internet est devenu un puissant media de communication echappant, pour partie, a la maitrise des responsables de marques. La diffusion instantanee d’informations negatives sur un produit est de nature a influencer les perceptions et attitudes d’autres clients et de degrader le capital de marque. Il convient donc d’apprehender les consequences de la diffusion sur internet des critiques des marques et de proposer des modalites de traitement de leurs effets potentiels.