Ryan Mullins

Know Your Customer: How Salesperson Perceptions of Customer Relationship Quality Form and Influence Account Profitability

Firms often utilize salesperson intelligence in marketing strategies to improve sales performance. However, this approach is problematic if the information is based on inaccurate perceptions. In light of this, the authors introduce a theoretical model to study the antecedents and profit impact of salesperson perceptions of customer relationship quality. Dyadic analyses using matched survey responses from salesperson–customer dyads and secondary performance data reveal several insightful findings. Results show that self-efficacious salespeople are upwardly biased, whereas customer-oriented salespeople are downwardly biased in their perceptions of customer relationship quality. However, managers can correct these inaccuracies using a behavior-based control system. Response surface analyses illustrate that the effects of salesperson accuracy and inaccuracy are distinct and curvilinear. During later relationship phases, salespeople profit more from salesperson accuracy in high- and low-quality relationships (i.e., a U-shaped effect). Yet the increasingly harmful impact of salesperson inaccuracy on profit is more severe during earlier relationship phases. Together, these findings highlight the benefits of measuring salesperson perceptions and how to manage them.

The Role of Team Goal Monitoring in the Curvilinear Relationship between Team Efficacy and Team Performance

In this research, we apply a team self-regulatory perspective to build and test theory focusing on the relationships between team efficacy and 2 key team performance criteria: a performance behavior (i.e., team effort) and a performance outcome (i.e., objective team sales). We theorize that rather than having a linear association, the performance benefits of team efficacy reach a point of inflection, reflective of too much of a good thing. Further, in an effort to establish a boundary condition of the inverted-U shaped relationship we predict, we also test the moderating role played by team goal monitoring in the nonmonotonic relationship between team efficacy and team performance. The results from a lagged field test, in which we collect multisource data from 153 technology sales teams, reveal a significant curvilinear association that is moderated by team goal monitoring behavior. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Technology Usage and Sales Teams: A Multilevel Analysis of the Antecedents of Usage

Extensive research has investigated the antecedents and impact of adoption of technology in the sales force. Interestingly, even though sales teams have proliferated, most research on adoption to date is at the individual level of analysis. Therefore, we conduct research of individual and team characteristics and their influence on technology adoption through a multilevel analysis of adoption. We use survey data from 673 salespeople at a pharmaceutical firm distributed among 224 sales teams who reported to 122 external managers. Our results validate the importance of investigating relationships at multiple levels. Specific effects from individual experience, which is important within the typical individual analysis, did not have an impact within our study. Instead, the average experience of the team was a stronger antecedent to adoption within a sales team. The strong effect of peer usage of technology within a team compels us to recommend that managers create teams that include users with strong computer self-efficacy in order to accelerate adoption by those less inclined to adopt. Also, team adoption was strengthened by sales teams who accepted the goals of committed management. However, both empowerment of teams by management and team potency had a significant negative effect on adoption.

Manager-Salesperson Congruence in Customer Orientation and Job Outcomes: The Bright and Dark Sides of Leadership in Aligning Values

To create customer-oriented organizations, managers are often asked to promote a values-based vision. Yet, many managers struggle with transferring their values to employees making strategic value changes difficult. Despite this challenge, research has yet to demonstrate how managers effectively align values within the sales force, or the impact alignment has on job outcomes. Therefore, we develop and empirically test a conceptual framework to examine the role of transformational leadership in aligning salesperson customer orientation (CO) values. We find that transformational leadership is a strong mechanism in creating perceived value congruence, yet may have a surprising dark side. Results suggest that transformational managers achieve congruence by raising or, contrary to conventional wisdom, lowering salesperson CO values to meet the perceived values of the manager. Response surface modelling results support the importance of perceived manager values. Customer-oriented salespeople have higher job satisfaction and sales performance when they perceive their manager to also have high CO. When values are misaligned, job satisfaction increases more for low CO salespeople as perceptions of manager CO increase. Exploratory findings show that performance was higher under situations of perfect alignment but also under severe misalignment suggesting that values generate performance under complementary or supplementary conditions.

Do sales and service compete? The impact of multiple psychological climates on frontline employee performance

This research examines how employees’ climate perceptions – or psychological climate – influence their performance of climate-related outcomes. We focus on two specific climates arguably most relevant to boundary-spanning organizations: service and sales climates. Building from the resource-allocation framework, the authors examine the way employees reconcile these multiple psychological climates. Polynomial regression and response surface modeling are used to test for the influence of these distinct climates on employee outcomes using a sample of 252 marketing employees and their 68 immediate supervisors. Specifically, the authors examine relationships between service and sales climates and the employee performance outcomes of customer satisfaction, helping behavior, effort, and sales performance. Results provide insight into the benefits and pitfalls of sales and service climates co-existing. Specifically we find that while sales effort is highest in climates that heavily favor sales, sales performance may exist in both sales-favored and service-favored climates (yet not in the presence of both). From a customer satisfaction perspective we find no significant impact of increasing sales climate in the presence of high service perceptions. These findings – both significant and non-significant – provide implications for future research in the realm of service-sales ambidexterity and interface as well as insight and direction for frontline managers.

Generating and sharing of market intelligence in sales teams: an economic social network perspective

Abstract In this research, we take a multimethod approach to shed light on the potential costs to sales teams that generate and share market intelligence (MI). First, we introduce an analytical model to propose the respective levels of effort that sales managers, experts, and team members spend generating and sharing MI. To test our propositions, we utilize social network data from 40 independent, business-to-business (B2B) sales teams, representing 287 salespeople. Interestingly, our results support the premise that team members become dependent (reduce MI efforts) when their sales manager or team expert shares MI among the team. We term this a “sharing tax” that sales managers and team experts pay when they share MI. Consequently, sales managers demonstrate greater MI-generation efforts the more they share MI. We also find that experts who share more (less) also show greater (lesser) MI-generation efforts, but only for teams where sales managers share low (high) levels of MI. In summary, our research innovatively conducts an empirical test of the Nash Equilibrium pattern of sales team effort to show that two critical team members, the sales manager and expert, are at a disadvantage when they share valuable MI.

Sales Team Resources for Market-Driven Behaviors, Norms, and Performance: An Extended Abstract

A recent survey of 1200 sales executives indicated that in order to improve sales performance, leaders must champion salesperson activities that (1) improve customer experiences and (2) support continuous improvement (Accenture CSO Insights 2013). This contemporary focus represents a shift away from a formal mapping of sales approaches and toward an emphasis on sales teams which promote a learning- and customer-centric environment (Bell and Kozlowski 2002) to attune themselves with the market. In line with this, research has shown that learning effort (Sujan et al. 1994) and commitment to customer service quality (Peccei and Rosenthal 1997) are key to developing this more market-driven capability for salesperson performance.

Managing Control Expectations in Business-To-Business Relationships

Control is a frequently discussed human characteristic that is often expressed as an individual’s need to showcase his/her competence, superiority, and mastery over an individual, a group of people, or the environment (White 1959). Control has been examined extensively in the psychology literature, yet marketing research has yet to examine the role that control plays in business-to-business relational exchanges. Although power and dependence have been carefully examined, the impact of control on relational and transactional exchanges has yet to be explored. Previous research has examined antecedents and outcomes of desire for control. This research examines desire for control in the business-to-business context, specifically the relationship between the supplier and the retailer, where traditionally the buyer (retailer) is more likely to have a higher desire for control in the relationship. This study examines the dimensions of the buyer-supplier relationship that might reduce the retailer’s desire for control.