Nikolaos G. Panagopoulos

A Review of Social Media and Implications for the Sales Process

Technology-based research has a long, storied history in the sales discipline. Beginning with the role of computers to laptops, moving to the influence of the Internet, onward to customer relationship management and sales force automation applications, and now to the role of social media, sales research is being shuttled into a new technological paradigm. The purpose of this paper is to review the role of social media in the sales force and the sales process. We begin the paper by providing definitions of social media and reviewing the role and importance of social media in business. An analogy between the rise of Internet usage in the sales force and the advent of social media is presented and discussed. Next, we discuss the challenges of social media in the sales and marketing interface and review four different business strategies to determine who “owns” social media within an organization. We continue with a discussion of the different stages in the sales process and offer ways in which social media influences each individual step, thereby outlining future research opportunities.

The Role of the Sales Force in Value Creation and Appropriation: New Directions for Research

Recent research in marketing strategy emphasizes the dual processes of creating and appropriating value in exchange relationships. In business to-business markets, salespeople have unique opportunities to translate customers’ desired value back into their firms as well as understand and influence how the value that has been cocreated can be fairly appropriated in the form of revenue and other strategic benefits. Yet surprisingly little research examines the role of the sales force, compared to overall firm strategies, for shaping these key processes. Against this background, this paper offers an integrative framework that delineates how the sales force creates, sustains, and appropriates value in buyer -seller relationships. The framework integrates relevant theories and paradigms from a variety of disciplines and elaborates on a set of boundary conditions (e.g., relationship life cycle and globalization) that influence the role of the sales force in value creation and appropriation. The paper concludes with a discussion of opportunities that provide fertile areas for future research in the area.

Role Stress, Attitudes, and Job Outcomes in Business-To-Business Selling: Does the Type of Selling Situation Matter?

Previous research examining the interrelationships among role stress, attitudes, and outcomes in business-to-business selling has not given much consideration to the possible moderating influence of the type of selling situation. Using the seminal model of business-to-business selling introduced by Brown and Peterson (1993), the authors reexamine these interrelationships by controlling for the type of selling situation. The results reveal an intricate pattern of relationships and complex trade-offs of positive and negative consequences across the various selling positions. Overall, the findings suggest that mixing heterogeneous sales populations into an aggregate sample may lead to erroneous conclusions.

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.

Internationalizing Sales Research: Current Status, Opportunities, and Challenges

With economic activity in emerging markets growing at 40 percent, and with 10 percent and more of the firms in the Global Fortune 500 now headquartered in emerging economies, intense interest lies in the globalization of business activities, including the sales function. This systematic review of the international sales literature in a selection of the most influential journals explains, consolidates, and analyzes current knowledge. This paper also explores the challenges inherent in conducting international sales research, including conceptualization, research management, and data collection issues. Finally, we suggest ways to move forward for researchers in this field, including pertinent topics and how methodological and practical constraints might be addressed.

Transformational leadership as a mediator of the relationship between behavior‐based control and salespeople's key outcomes

Purpose – Two rather distinct lines of theory/research have emerged in the study of sales managers effectiveness. The first focuses on the notion of sales force control systems (SFCS) while the second focuses on transformational leadership (TL) behaviors. To date, however, no theoretical or empirical attempt has been made to integrate these two mostly unconnected streams of research in a sales management context. The present study aims to attempt such integration by conceptualizing TL as a mediator of the relationship between behavior‐based control (BBC) and key salesperson outcomes.Design/methodology/approach – Responses were gathered via a mail survey from a sample of 128 salespeople working in various industries. Structural equation modeling was employed.Findings – The results provide evidence for the mediating effect of TL on the relationships between BBC and key salesperson outcomes. Moreover, it was found that BBC positively affects TL behaviors, which, in turn, enhance salesperson performance, sat...

Sales Force Control Systems: A Review of Measurement Practices and Proposed Scale Refinements

In spite of the intense interest in the area of sales force control (SFC), the literature is characterized by an absence of consensus on what constitutes good measurement of SFC. Among the various measurement scales, the scale developed by Babakus and his colleagues (Babakus et al. 1996) has gained wide acceptance. However, the BCCS (Babakus and colleagues control system) scale’s measurement and operationalization has not been consistent across studies. Based on three different samples, the present study seeks to critically evaluate and cross-validate the measurement properties of the BCCS. The results show that a shortened 13-item version of the original BCCS scale performs better than the full version against several evaluation criteria.

Perspectives on Personal Selling and Social Media: Introduction to the Special Issue

When the Stereo MCs released their hit song Connected 20 years ago, one would have been hard-pressed to understand how applicable the lyrics would be in today’s society. However, two short decades later, it would be difficult to find someone who does not understand the importance and see some value in being “connected.” Let’s consider, for example, the rate at which technology has evolved and been adopted over the past century. To reach 50 million users, it took the telephone 38 years, the television 13 years, the Internet 4 years, the iPod 3 years, and Facebook 2 years. Adding to these statistics, the number of Internet devices in 1984 was 1,000; in 1992 there were 1 million, and in 2008 there were 1 billion (Richardson 2010). What is noteworthy is the fact that these adoption rates represent the fastest spread of any “technology” that the world has ever seen, and there are consequences associated with that. One of these consequences is that companies marketing global products and services must address a whole new “sector” of business and do this very quickly because with over 800 million users on applications such as Facebook (Haak 2011), as the Rolling Stones sang, “time waits for no one.”

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.

Does choice of sales control conceptualization matter? An empirical comparison of existing conceptualizations and directions for future research

Sales controls represent an important area of sales research. Unfortunately, knowledge to date tends to be fragmented in that prior work has followed one of the two notable conceptualizations which, however, take a different route to studying sales controls: the Oliver and Anderson (O&A) index and the Jaworski and Colleagues (J&C) measures. Consequently, important questions remain unaddressed: Does choice of sales control conceptualization matter to sales research? What is the degree of similarity between the two conceptualizations and how do they compare against measurement qualities and effects on performance? Drawing on a unique dataset that matches survey data to objective, time-lagged, firm financial performance data, we reveal that choice of sales control conceptualization matters. Surprisingly, unlike current assumptions, the O&A index, is equally related to J&Cs output and process controls whereas it reflects both formal and informal types of control. Analyses show that at least some components of the O&A index are not identical to J&Cs process or output controls and thus measures from each conceptualization cannot be substituted. Moreover, the size and nature of sales controls’ effects on sales force performance differ depending on the conceptualization employed, thus strengthening the view that the two conceptualizations should not be used interchangeably. Finally, results reveal an intriguing pattern of nonlinear effects such as that – beyond a certain point – process (but not behavioral) control may be detrimental to customer relationship performance. We conclude by contributing ideas on how to move forward with the development of a new, modern measure of sales control.