The Second Edition of The New Sales Manager is an enormously useful book that provides practical advice and a sound foundation in sales management to young managers. Sales Managers occupy an ...important position in an organization; they are not merely outstanding salesmen. Most companies, however, tend to overlook this important distinction. This book covers the entire range of functions of a sales manager. This Second Edition has been thoroughly revised and includes plenty of illustrations, real-life anecdotes and case studies, which give an insight into the changes in the current business environment.
Firms are exploiting artificial intelligence (AI) coaches to provide training to sales agents and improve their job skills. The authors present several caveats associated with such practices based on ...a series of randomized field experiments. Experiment 1 shows that the incremental benefit of the AI coach over human managers is heterogeneous across agents in an inverted-U shape: whereas middle-ranked agents improve their performance by the largest amount, both bottom- and top-ranked agents show limited incremental gains. This pattern is driven by a learning-based mechanism in which bottom-ranked agents encounter the most severe information overload problem with the AI versus human coach, while top-ranked agents hold the strongest aversion to the AI relative to a human coach. To alleviate the challenge faced by bottom-ranked agents, Experiment 2 redesigns the AI coach by restricting the training feedback level and shows a significant improvement in agent performance. Experiment 3 reveals that the AI–human coach assemblage outperforms either the AI or human coach alone. This assemblage can harness the hard data skills of the AI coach and soft interpersonal skills of human managers, solving both problems faced by bottom- and top-ranked agents. These findings offer novel insights into AI coaches for researchers and managers alike.
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6.
NEWTON LITTLE
Arkansas business,
04/2024, Volume:
41, Issue:
14
Journal Article
This article demonstrates that the sales literature is converging on a systemic and institutional perspective that recognizes that selling and value creation unfold over time and are embedded in ...broader social systems. This convergence illustrates that selling needs a more robust theoretical foundation. To contribute to this foundation, the authors draw on institutional theory and service-dominant logic to advance a service ecosystems perspective. This perspective leads them to redefine selling in terms of the interaction between actors aimed at creating and maintaining thin crossing points—the locations at which service can be efficiently exchanged for service—through the ongoing alignment of institutional arrangements and the optimization of relationships. This definition underscores how broad sets of human actors engage in selling processes, regardless of the roles that characterize them (e.g., firm, customer, stakeholder). A service ecosystems perspective reveals (1) that selling continues to be an essential activity, (2) how broader sets of actors participate in selling processes, and (3) how this participation may be changing. It leads to novel insights and questions regarding gaining and maintaining business, managing intrafirm and broad external selling actors, and sales performance.
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Sales management control systems (SMCSs) are designed to align salespeople's activities and actions with organizational objectives. This article reviews and synthesizes over 50 SMCS articles ...published in sales, marketing, and management journals over the past 30 years. We begin by building a comprehensive framework that enables us to classify prior research into digestible categories (e.g., SMCSs as antecedents, SMCSs as consequences). Next, we present an analysis of gaps in the literature. Among other findings, our analysis reveals that there is an overwhelming focus on the use of formal (specifically behavior- and outcome-based) controls as compared to their informal control counterparts. Finally, we suggest avenues for future research: (1) mapping and understanding the full spectrum of control mechanisms, (2) developing a fuller understanding of the often-overlooked forms of control (e.g., input and cultural controls), and (3) more thoroughly analyzing how controls operate (or do not operate) as an integrated system.
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As companies expand their international footprint, insight regarding how to effectively organize international selling and sales management (ISSM) efforts is becoming increasingly important. ...Unfortunately, most prior research on personal selling and sales management is grounded in a domestic market perspective, which limits the relevance of its findings to situations in which sales activities occur between stakeholders located in different national markets. This special issue responds to the need for dedicated research on ISSM through six articles that explore phenomena arising from the interaction between international salespeople and international customers and their domestic counterparts. Moreover, this editorial builds on these six articles to advance a research agenda rooted in an interaction-based conceptualization of the ISSM field that identifies areas of inquiry related to international salespeople, international customers, and international managers, and subsequently prioritizes these research opportunities using input provided by sales practitioners. This special issue and editorial thus identify critical, underexplored research topics in the ISSM domain that are accompanied by a series of illustrative examples of how best to contribute to this emerging but important literature stream.
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This article examines whether and how a company's division of segment- and task-related responsibilities among multiple sales channels affects the relationships in the multichannel (MC) system and, ...ultimately, the company's sales success. Building on open systems theory, the authors develop an overarching framework of organizational MC differentiation that distinguishes between two generic approaches: segment differentiation and task differentiation. They predict that these two approaches affect key relationship and performance outcomes of an MC system, but do so differently and contingent on key characteristics of the company's customers. Drawing on a multi-informant survey in a business-to-business context as well as on objective performance data, the authors find that segment differentiation tends to mitigate horizontal conflict and inhibit cooperation, while task differentiation reduces primarily vertical conflict and promotes cooperation. Moreover, depending on customer characteristics, segment differentiation may damage channel relationships overall and, in turn, limit company sales success, whereas task differentiation unambiguously promotes channel relationships and thus drives company sales success. These findings offer novel insights into the relationship and performance impact of MC systems' organizational structure and provide useful guidance on how managers should allocate segment- and task-related responsibilities among multiple sales channels.
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