William C. Moncrief

The Role of Emotional Exhaustion in Sales Force Attitude and Behavior Relationships

Emotional exhaustion is a potentially important construct in examining sales force behavior and attitude relationships. A conceptual model and hypotheses are developed to study the antecedents and consequences of the emotional exhaustion construct. The hypotheses are tested using LISREL 7 to analyze data from a sample of field salespeople from a large international services organization. The empirical results offer strong support for relationships involving role ambiguity and conflict antecedents and organizational commitment, job satisfaction, performance, and intention-to-leave consequences of emotional exhaustion.

Antecedents and consequences of salesperson burnout

Investigates the antecedents and outcomes of salesperson burnout. Prior research on burnout in personal selling is extended by including a more complete set of predictors of burnout, and by testing the conceptual model of burnout using a multi‐company sample of field salespeople in an international setting. Relationships among burnout, attitudes, and behavior are predicted based on relevant literature, and are tested using survey results from 148 field salespeople in Australia. Path analysis results show that the proposed conceptual model fits the data well. Intrinsic motivation, role ambiguity, and role conflict are all significant antecedents of burnout. Job satisfaction and salesperson performance are direct outcomes of burnout, and also mediate the indirect influence of burnout on organizational commitment and intention to leave. Implications for salesforce management and future research are discussed.

Marketing's role in product and service quality

Abstract Improving product and service quality are among the most critical competitive challenges facing U.S. and Canadian companies. The marketing profession has a vital responsibility for understanding the concepts of quality improvement and applying them to marketing processes. The definition and measurement of product and service quality are examined and marketings quality improvement responsibilities are outlined. A step-by-step process for developing a marketing quality improvement program is presented and illustrated.

The Current State of Sales Force Activities

Abstract Despite major changes in sales organizations and the sales environment over the last decade, no systematic updating of sales force activities has been undertaken since 1986. This article reports the process and results of a sales activities update, including 49 new activities not previously reported in the 1986 study. The resulting list of new sales activities is presented and discussed, and the importance of the findings to sales organizations and sales researches is addressed.

Formal and informal management control combinations in sales organizations: The impact on salesperson consequences

Abstract Selecting an effective form of management control in sales organizations is important in achieving favorable salesperson consequences. We examine an alternative perspective to behavior-based management control in sales organizations. The conceptualization consisting of high, bureaucratic, clan, and low management control combinations is examined as a framework for management control research in sales organizations. In this study, hypotheses are developed concerning various salesperson consequences of the control combinations. The hypotheses are tested using a sample of 1042 salespeople from a broad range of industries and companies. The findings suggest that salespeople who work under a more visible control system (high control) perform better, are more satisfied, and display lower burnout and role stress, compared to salespeople working under bureaucratic, clan, and low control combinations. The managerial implications are discussed and several future research directions are proposed.

Integrating Skills and Content Knowledge in the Marketing Curriculum

Business schools are frequently criticized for focusing too much attention on theories and concepts and not enough attention on communication, decision making, and other skills that are at least as important to career success as content knowledge. This article presents a six-step approach that has been used successfully to integrate skills training into an undergraduate marketing curriculum. The process is general and appropriate for other faculty groups considering systematic integration of skills training into their curricula.

Revolution in Sales: The Impact of Social Media and Related Technology on the Selling Environment

Over the years several articles have tracked the impact of technology on various aspects of the sales domain. However, the advent of social media and technologies related to social media has gone largely unnoticed in the literature. This article first provides brief attention to changing aspects of technology within the sales environment, leading to the identification of social media as a dominant new selling tool. A qualitative approach (focus groups) is employed to explore the breadth of current technology usage by sales managers and salespeople. Analysis of the data, collected in the United States and the United Kingdom, reveals six major themes: connectivity, relationships, selling tools, generational, global, and sales/ marketing interface. Results provide evidence of a revolution in the buyer–seller relationship that includes some unanticipated consequences both for sales organization performance and needed future research contributions.

CRM in Sales-Intensive Organizations: A Review and Future Directions

With the advent of technology enabling greater customer tracking, more robust knowledge management, and direct customer communication, the implementation of customer relationship management (CRM) strategies has grown in importance with many implications for sales-intensive organizations. Implications of CRM strategy, analytical CRM, and operational CRM are discussed, particularly in terms of research opportunities. Although there are, no doubt, many other interesting and worthwhile research opportunities available, the nexus of technology, CRM, and sales-intensive go-tomarket strategies provide myriad opportunities for exciting research.

The Role of Satisfaction with Territory Design on the Motivation, Attitudes, and Work Outcomes of Salespeople

The primary emphasis of previous research concerning salespeople has been focused on their attitudes and behavior. The relationship between organizational variables and salesperson attitudes and behavior has received very limited attention. Sales territory design is largely uncontrollable by the salesperson, yet is acknowledged by managers and researchers as an important factor enabling salespeople to perform well. The objective is to examine satisfaction with territory design from the perspective of the salesperson. A conceptual model and hypotheses are developed linking the satisfaction with territory design with role ambiguity, intrinsic motivation, job satisfaction, and performance. Role conflict, met expectations, organizational commitment, and intention to leave are also included in the model. Survey results provide strong support for 19 of the 21 hypotheses examined. The findings offer significant insights concerning the role of territory design satisfaction in face-to-face selling and its consequences. Several managerial implications and avenues for future research are discussed.

A Contemporary Taxonomy of Sales Positions

The sales job of the early twenty-first century has evolved due to myriad rapidly changing environmental factors. Customer relationship focus, technology, global competition, shifting customer preferences and demands, forced downsizing, increased competitive pressure, and other factors have contributed to altering the salesperson role—what salespeople do. Yet outdated taxonomies are referenced when researching and writing about sales jobs. This paper develops an empirically generated sales position taxonomy based on changing selling activities and strategies. First, a set of 105 activities are factor analyzed to create 12 dimensions of selling. Second, the factor scores are entered into a cluster analysis. The resulting factor score centroids allow for interpretation of a taxonomy of six categories of contemporary sales jobs.