Purpose
Previous sales research remains limited to analyzing the influence of sales activities with sales agent tenure. To date, research on this subject has focused on the downstream direct or ...indirect impact of sales activities to sales performance, failing to consider whether sales activities impact a sales agent’s tenure. This paper aims to assess the effect of sales activities on sales performance and sales agent engagement on sales agent tenure through the lens of autonomous motivation to better understand sales activities as an overall sales process antecedent
Design/methodology/approach
Through the utilization of secondary sales operational data, this research demonstrates the influence of sales activities on multiple sales agent outcomes, while depicting the importance of sales managers creating an autonomous motivational climate.
Findings
This research demonstrates the direct relationship between sales activities to job engagement and sales performance. However, sales activities have a negative relationship to sales agent tenure, which require a sales manager to create an autonomous motivation to mediate the relationship between sales activities and sales agent tenure.
Practical implications
Organizations are provided with sample methodology and analysis to better determine how a culture grounded in autonomous motivation mediates sales activities and can be a catalyst for improving sales agent tenure. Then, provide a better understanding of the effect of actual sales activities on important sales department work outcomes.
Originality/value
The model is the first to test holistically the influence of sales activities on sales performance, sales agent engagement and tenure jointly by using actual secondary operational data. This study provides a glimpse of the real world balance a sales manager must consider between climate and activities. Plus, this study takes initial steps to study sales agent engagement, an under-researched construct in sales research.
Experts have suggested that the next few decades will herald the fourth industrial revolution. The fourth industrial revolution will be powered by digitization, information and communications ...technology, machine learning, robotics and artificial intelligence; and will shift more decision-making from humans to machines. The ensuing societal changes will have a profound impact on both personal selling and sales management research and practices. In this article, we focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) and their impact on personal selling and sales management. We examine that impact on a small area of sales practice and research based on the seven steps of the selling process. Implications for theory and practice are derived.
COVID-19 led to a massive shutdown of businesses in the second quarter of 2020. Estimates from the Current Population Survey, for example, indicate that the number of active business owners dropped ...by 22% from February to April 2020. We provide the first analysis of losses in sales among the universe of businesses in California using administrative data from the California Department of Tax and Fee Administration. Losses in taxable sales average 17% in the second quarter of 2020 relative to the second quarter of 2019 even though year-over-year sales typically grow by 3-4%. We find that sales losses were largest in businesses affected by mandatory lockdowns such as accommodations, which lost 91%, whereas online sales grew by 180%. Placing business types into different categories based on whether they were considered essential or nonessential (and thus subject to early lockdowns) and whether they have a moderate or high level of person-to-person contact, we find interesting correlations between sales losses and COVID-19 cases per capita across counties in California. The results suggest that local implementation and enforcement of lockdown restrictions as safety measures for public health and voluntary behavioral responses as reactions to the perceived local COVID-19 spread both played a role.
Plain English Summary
Business sales dropped by 17% on average due to the pandemic during the second quarter of 2020 in California. Accommodations lost 91% of sales, whereas online sales grew by 180%. Sales fell more steeply in counties with more COVID-19 cases. We examine how much businesses lost in sales using administrative sales tax data. The average losses of 17% in the second quarter of 2020 relative to the second quarter of 2019 occurred even though year-over-year sales typically grow by 3-4%. We find that sales losses were largest in businesses affected by mandatory lockdowns such as accommodations, drinking places, and arts, entertainment, and recreation. Distinguishing between essential and nonessential businesses, which were subject to early lockdowns, and by the level of person-to-person contact, we find that local implementation and enforcement of lockdown restrictions for public health safety and voluntary responses to the perceived local COVID-19 spread both played a role. The results suggest that small businesses may need more support from governments and consumers to mitigate the strong shift to online vendors, and that the pandemic must be brought under control as a prerequisite to a full recovery.
Managerial and academic literature provide only limited guidance on how to drive the digital transformation of sales. This article presents a model for in-depth analysis of sales processes, goals for ...each process in terms of effectiveness and efficiency, and a structured set of digital responses. For managers, it provides actionable guidelines on how to drive the digital transformation of sales, a large set of inspiring examples, and an international benchmarking opportunity.
Little is known about the interface between separate marketing units and sales units. This article develops a multidimensional model of the marketing and sales interface. The model integrates a broad ...range of conceptual domains, including information sharing, structural linkages, power, orientations, and knowledge of marketing and sales. The authors empirically explore the conceptual model through a cross-industry study of 337 European Union-based companies. They identify five empirical archetypes of the marketing and sales interface. The taxonomy shows that the role and characteristics of marketing and sales vary a great deal. This finding challenges existing stereotypes about marketing and sales. Finally, the article explores organizational outcomes of the five configurations. The findings suggest that the most successful configurations are characterized by strong structural linkages between marketing and sales and a high extent of market knowledge in marketing.
The COVID-19 pandemic has changed how salespeople interact with customers and with business-to-business (B2B) organizations. Organizations must confront the shifts in how their salespeople operate. ...Recent research recommends firms develop an adaptive sales force to address disruptions like a pandemic and be prepared to meet such challenges in the future. Based on interviews with marketing and sales executives, we explore how firms have responded to these interconnected changes during the COVID-19 pandemic and offer insight into best practices deployed across industries.
Forced Sales and House Prices Campbell, John Y.; Giglio, Stefano; Pathak, Parag
The American economic review,
08/2011, Letnik:
101, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
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This paper uses data on all house transactions in Massachusetts over the last 20 years to show that houses sold after foreclosure, or close in time to the death or bankruptcy of a seller, are sold at ...lower prices than other houses. Foreclosure discounts are on average at 27 percent of the value of a house. Moreover, foreclosures that take place within small local geographies of a house lower the price at which it is sold. Our preferred estimate is that a foreclosure at a distance of 0.05 miles lowers the price of a house by about 1 percent. JEL: D14, R31 PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
Changes in technological and sales environments necessitate organizations to constantly invest in equipping salespeople with newer technological knowledge and tools. However, the success of ...investments in technological transformation hinges on salespeople’s beliefs regarding technology, in general, and their recognition that enhancement of technological skills results in better sales outcomes. This study develops and tests a framework that illustrates how continuous techno-training can serve as an important resource for influencing critical technology-related and sales-related outcomes. Specifically, drawing from job demands-resources theory and research on technology training in the sales context, we demonstrate that continuous techno-training can help in developing techno-efficacy directly as well as indirectly through fostering techno-expectancy and suppressing techno-stress. In turn, we show that techno-efficacy is positively related to sales-efficacy, which enhances both sales effort and sales performance. Based on our findings, we offer several meaningful implications to sales research and practice.
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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