Karen E. Flaherty

The moderating role of individual‐difference variables in compensation research

Purpose – To examine the influence of company‐imposed reward systems on the motivation levels of salespeople.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 214 business‐to‐business salespeople. In order to assure the adequacy of the survey instrument, several salespeople were recruited to “pretest” the questionnaire. To test the potential moderating influence of career stage on pay mix and valence, expectancy, and instrumentality estimates, a split‐group analysis was performed. To test the moderating hypotheses for risk, we used two‐step regression models in which the dependent measures (i.e. valence, expectancy, and instrumentality) were first regressed on the predictor variables as main effects, and then regressed on the multiplicative interaction term along with the main effects.Findings – Support was found for many of the hypotheses. In particular, individual‐level variables such as career stage and risk preferences moderate the relationship between pay mix and valence for the reward, expectan...

Using Career Stage Theory to Predict Turnover Intentions among Salespeople

An important body of past research in sales management has evoked career stage theory in an attempt to better understand the attitudes and behaviors of the sales force. In doing so, the career stage construct has been defined and operationalized in numerous, and sometimes conflicting, ways. In this study, data collected from 123 automobile salespeople suggests that traditional psychometric measures of career stage have more explanatory power than demographic measures such as age or tenure when predicting turnover intentions.

Social Network Theory and the Sales Manager Role: Engineering the Right Relationship Flows

Sales leadership research has typically taken a leader-focused approach, investigating key questions from a top-down perspective. Yet considerable research outside sales has advocated a view of leadership that takes into account the fact that employees look beyond a single designated individual for leadership. In particular, the social networks of leaders have been a popular topic of investigation in the management literature, although coverage in the sales literature remains rare. The present paper conceptualizes the sales leadership role as one in which the leader must manage a network of simultaneous relationships; several types of sales manager relationships, such as the sales-manager-to-top manager and the sales-manager-to-sales manager relationships, have received limited attention in the sales literature to date. Taking an approach based on social network theory, we develop a conceptualization of the sales manager as a “network engineer,” who must manage multiple relationships, and the flows between them. Drawing from this model, we propose a detailed agenda for future sales research.

Enhancing Salesperson Trust: An Examination of Managerial Values, Empowerment, and the Moderating Influence of SBU Strategy

Within a sales environment, the development and conveyance of managerial values play a critical role in enhancing salesperson trust and performance. This study identifies specific managerial values (i.e., integration, flexibility, control, spontaneity, etc.) that support particular business strategies (i.e., prospector, defender, or analyzer). The proposed model investigates the impact of aligning managerial value systems to SBU type on building trusting relationships within a manager–salesperson context. Study results suggest various implications for managers.

The Role of the Sales-Service Interface and Ambidexterity in the Evolving Organization: A Multilevel Research Agenda

Despite a long history of independent sales and service functions within organizations, customers are pressuring organizations to rethink their sales and service operations. Specifically, customers expect organizations to offer a “single face” of the firm rather than being forced to interact with multiple agents across both sales and service throughout their relationships. As firms attempt to meet these customer demands, they have countless options to integrate sales and service operations, but little is known about which strategies are most effective. This article attempts to shed new light into the challenges and potential benefits of sales-service integration, in an effort to spur research in this area and better inform this managerial challenge. Specifically, we formalize the concept of the sales-service interface, discuss how it relates to sales-service ambidexterity, and identify several opportunities for future research. Given the complexity of the sales-service interface, we contend that future researchers must view these issues through a multilevel lens and, as a result, we focus on identifying opportunities ideally suited for testing in a multilevel environment. The goal of this article is to provide a platform for researchers to tackle this challenging problem and generate new insights into how best to meet customer’s evolving demands.

Job selection among salespeople: A bounded rationality perspective

Abstract Recent research has documented how complex interactions between individual, SBU, and corporate characteristics come together to influence salespeoples evaluations of their current jobs. An unresolved question, however, is if these characteristics influence job choice among salespeople. We develop a conceptual framework of how specific individual and SBU level factors impact choice of sales job and test the framework empirically in a business-to-business service context. Results support a bounded rationality perspective in that salespeople elicit simple criteria when selecting jobs.

Salesperson brand attachment: a job demands-resources theory perspective

Sales researchers have largely ignored the idea that salespeople form attachments to the brands that they sell, and that these attachments hold important consequences for sales outcomes. Drawing on job demands-resources theory, the authors suggest that salesperson brand attachment (SBA) serves as a unique psychological resource for salespeople. Using data from 154 salespeople from the beverage industry, they provide evidence that SBA increases selling effort toward the brand, and ultimately job satisfaction. In addition, they show that salespersons brand attachment acts as a buffer against perceived job demands, including job codification and hierarchy of authority. In general, results support the job demands-resources framework and confirm that SBA is a resource that may be leveraged to offset job demands, under certain situations.

From the Special Issue Guest Editors

Changes in the marketplace, such as enhanced connectedness, new technologies and increased competition, have led to a more challenging and complex role for the salesforce. In the digital era, organizations continue to sharpen their focus on reaching, understanding, and cultivating relationships with customers. Information and knowledge are critical in this effort. As the key collector and user of essential customer information, salespeople play an essential role in the success of the organization. The sales role has changed dramatically in this new environment. While selling has always been ultimately about the customer, salespeople now must not only interact seamlessly with different types of customers, but also fellow employees, managers, suppliers, and others to deliver information that can rapidly and easily be transformed and transferred as vital knowledge throughout the organization. This requires salespeople to master new tools to help gather, receive, interpret and manage large quantities of information essential for building customer relationships within an increasingly digital environment. These challenges and new responsibilities come with intense psychological pressures. As a result sales managers cannot afford to ignore the psychological well-being of the salesforce nor the potential consequences. The articles selected for this special issue of the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice in many respects reflect the reality of a more complex, challenging sales role and its ramifications for sales management. Topics covered are indicative of recent shifts in the sales environment. The articles address issues related to salespeople, sales managers, and customers. Some of the articles draw attention to the reality that the customer remains the responsibility of the salesforce. Other articles consider the potential downsides of the complexity of the sales role, including increased stress, insecurity and burnout. Importantly, the special issue takes a broad view to bridge research silos (e.g., organizational behavior, services, and retail) that tend to fragment the body of sales knowledge. In light of the dynamic nature and recent shifts in the sales environment, we argue that there is a greater need to share insights from different perspectives to effectively advance the sales and sales management field. Through cross-disciplinary examinations of relevant, yet diverse, sales topics, the articles included in the special issue provide insights that should prove valuable to both sales academics and practitioners alike. In the lead article, Matthews, Zablah, Hair and Marshall emphasize the stressful nature of sales jobs today. Based on responses from 235 business-to-business salespeople, the authors provide an empirical examination of salesperson engagement and exhaustion. Previous research suggests that reducing salesperson exhaustion is critical to improving important sales outcomes. This empirical study reveals that enhancing salesperson engagement is perhaps more important than previously thought. Findings indicate that engagement mediates the effects of customer orientation, training, and supervisor support on performance. In the second article, Tao, Karande and Arndt consider the influence that customer complaints have on retail salespeople. Using an experimental design, the authors test the impact that angry customer complaints have on salesperson outcomes. The authors found that customers’ display of anger due to service failure, along with the refusal of the salesperson to take responsibility resulted in the salesperson reporting greater anger, more emotional labor, stronger revenge intentions, and less commitment to service. This study emphasizes that management must consider the dynamics between the customer and salesperson in order to better understand salesperson emotional reactions and consequences. In the third article, the coauthor team of Shannahan, Shannahan, Bush and Moncrief stress the importance of understanding and leveraging customer relationships. Using the theory of organizing framework, the authors demonstrate that customer organizational citizenship behavior (COCB) is a meaningful and useful customer segmentation criterion. The empirical study demonstrates that the effects of COCB on salespeople’s evaluations

Inter-firm Knowledge Sharing Effectiveness: An Empirical Examination of Adaptation Ambidexterity

As more firms outsource non-core operational functions and as they create alliances to develop new products, inter-firm knowledge sharing (IKS) based on relationship-specific adaptation (RSA) becomes more and more important. Employing ambidexterity and learning theory, this study surveyed 108 managers of high-tech firms to determine if ambidexterity helps RSA improve IKS. Moderated regression results show positive effects of adaptation balance, negative effects of adaption integration, and positive moderation of relational norms on balance and positive effects of loose coupling of the system.