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Adopts a case‐study approach in examining a manufacturing company in the food machinery business and its fortunes following increased automation. Considers issues such as company organization and culture, focusing particularly on employee participation and the development of Team Selling. Argues that employee participation is of vital importance, given that the motivation of a company as a whole rather than just departments brings everyone together in a successful team, dedicated to quality and on‐time performance.

This study seeks to investigate causal relationships between sales management programs designed to build customer relationships by solving customer problems and selling firm performance.

Hypotheses were developed and supported based on theories developed from the market orientation and sales management literature. Using survey results from sales managers and reported profitability data, those hypotheses were tested using multiple regression.

Results indicate that consulting‐oriented post‐sales training and consulting‐oriented evaluation are significant influences on salesforce efficiency. Consulting‐oriented evaluation is a significant influence on customer retention. The strongest influences on profit growth are initial sales training and post‐sales training learning, but a composite variable of all elements of the consulting‐oriented sales management program is a significant influence on profit growth.

The sampling frame of this study was limited to medium to large industrial manufacturing firms; therefore any conclusions drawn from this study cannot be generalized beyond these types of firms. Future consulting‐oriented sales management research should expand the types of firms studied. Future research should also measure the relationships between consulting‐oriented sales management programs, firm market and learning orientation, adaptive selling, and salesperson customer orientation.

In industries where relationship building and partnering are considered mutually beneficial and important by buyers and sellers there should be greater emphasis on: listening skills, diagnostic skills, and problem solving skills in sales training; sharing effective strategies to build customer relationships and sharing of effective customer problem‐solving strategies in post‐sales training learning; measuring customer cost savings and obtaining customer satisfaction feedback in evaluation systems; and compensating salespeople for customer retention, positive customer feedback, and increased sales from current customers.

This study fills a gap in the literature for firm level research on the consequences of sales management programs, particularly programs that encourage sales consulting. This study makes a contribution to the literature by determining whether industry conditions encourage those programs or moderate their relationship to performance.

Highlights two major directions in the character of the personal selling function — the first is the increasing professional nature of industrial selling, the second is growing managerial orientation within selling. Notes the selling process is evolving and broadening in ways which can make the salesperson valued to the buyer beyond product or service value offered. Says that salespeople receive much broader scopes of authority. Examines cause and effect of changes in selling characteristics, reviewing evidence specific to these new directions. Propagates some of the feelings that are negatively hung on salespeople such as being selfish, deceitful, lazy and often downright dishonest. Goes on to explain why these are wrong and gives positive connotations to try and put things right. Key is understanding the process of buying‐selling because there must be a solid conceptual foundation to support the diagnostic process. Summarizes that hiring, training, compensation and other sales management practices must be adjusted — but the evidence base seems to promote a promising future.

Three major environmental changes are taking place regarding business-to-business salesforce. The first trend is the marketing discipline's shift from a product-focus to a service-focus. In response, firms are shifting their salesforce from a product-focus to providing integrated products and services or solutions to their customers. The second trend that is affecting salesforce is the enhanced utilization of technology, as technology is being used to handle some selling tasks (e.g., information provisioning). The third trend is globalization that is evolving to a stage where global salesforce originating from different countries is interacting with customers from different countries. This chapter suggests that these three trends are changing salesforce strategy, structure, and processes. The chapter reports on the decline in product-based salesforce, growth in customer-focused and global salesforce, globalization of salesforce, and the broader business and research implications. The shifts are dramatic and for researchers, it will be a new and fertile area of research.

Internal marketing has been proposed as a way of increasing lower level commitment to corporate strategies and improving organizational integration. Most previous discussions of the topic have focused on methods of internal promotion, persuasion and influence. Limited attention has been given to differences in management styles which affect internal marketing. This article examines the impact of consultative and participative styles of management on internal marketing. It shows how general managers, department managers and individuals can use internal marketing to increase employee involvement in reaching decisions, making commitments and taking action.

The purpose if this article is to study the relative impact of industry competitive conditions on salesforce consulting time and consulting effectiveness, relative to the impact of type of sales training.

Surveys were sent to sales managers and hypotheses were tested in simultaneous equation models.

Industry product differentiation has the greatest impact on consulting effectiveness. Industry customer segment number has a positive influence. The relationship between consulting time and consulting effectiveness is highest in commodity industries.

Future studies should expand the sampling frame to include all manufacturing industries, service firms, and consumer goods firms. Future studies should include other firm variables such as strategy, structure, and level of market orientation to improve the explanation of variation.

Sales managers in commodity industries have a relatively high opportunity to enhance customer relationships by enhancing the consulting aspects of their sales management programs.

This study furthers our understanding of the contingency nature of sales management practices on salesforce behaviors and the contingency nature of the impact of those behaviors. This study provides managers in commodity industries with an understanding of the potential value of increasing the extent of consulting‐oriented sales training. This study also suggests that managers seeking to increase salesforce consulting should consider restructuring the salesforce by customer group.

Digital solutions (DS) that build on recurring revenue models (RRMs) offer new opportunities to continuously create and capture superior value. However, many firms fail to engage their sales force in digital solution selling (DS selling), leading to agency problems that receive little attention in literature. This study aims to examine the drivers of agency problems that surface in the transition toward DS selling and the sales control systems that resolve these problems.

The authors conducted a qualitative, inductive study. Data were collected from interviews with 72 marketing and sales managers representing 53 industrial firms transitioning toward DS selling.

DS selling is subject to adverse selection and moral hazard caused by motivation-related, opportunity-related and ability-related drivers. Input, capability, activity and outcome controls – detailed in this study – can resolve these agency problems.

The limitations of this study’s methodology and scope suggest several directions for future research. Methodology-wise, the authors mainly relied on cross-sectional interview data from informants in Central and Northern Europe. Scope-wise, more research is needed on the capabilities, processes and steering instruments supporting DS sales. Finally, only now do the authors begin to understand which compensation plans motivate DS selling.

The controls identified in this study help managers to steer their sales force in DS sales.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to investigate DS sales control systems. Thereby, the authors enhance prior understandings of solution selling, agency problems and sales control systems.

The Internet is a rapidly expanding community, adding many new converts daily. Although initially the domain of computer scientists and network engineers, the Internet and Internet‐like services now include users such as accountants, lawyers, demographers, business development people, product planners, and corporate CEOs. In fact, virtually all businesses can find substantial benefit from the use of the Internet. Reaching these decision‐makers and demonstrating the value to their businesses is the task facing anyone interested in the sales of Internet services. Marketing Internet services requires one to practice an ancient art form using new paints and canvases.

This article evaluates the effect of technostress due to implementation of sales technologies on sales professionals in terms of changes in job satisfaction and role stress and potential mitigation strategies including technostress inhibitors and job commitment.

The study utilizes a survey data collection from sales professionals in B2B consultative roles selling to business customers from construction, industrial supply and business service firms, including items that explore before and after factors around a customer relationship management implementation.

Technostress results in a decrease in job satisfaction and an increase in role stress of sales professionals. Job commitment moderates the decrease in job satisfaction, i.e. the higher the job commitment the less significant the decrease in job satisfaction.

Sales forces need to implement technostress inhibitors to help mitigate the effects of technostress in exacerbating other sales professional stressors. These inhibitors should be contextualized to the unique situation of the sales organization.

The study examines the dark side of sales technologies. Our research expands current understanding by considering new relations among technostress-creating conditions and two work-related outcomes that are salient to sales professionals, namely role stress and job satisfaction. Further, we investigate the change in these outcomes before and after the implementation of sales technologies rather than only considering them at one point of time, after the fact.

This study aims to extend current research efforts by examining the dual role of salesperson brand and organizational identification in driving organizational citizenship behaviors, brand advocacy and ultimately brand market performance.

This study uses an online survey to collect data from a cross-sectional sample of salespeople. The measurement model and proposed research hypotheses are tested with SmartPLS.

Study results show that each level of identification has a stronger influence on the type of behaviors relevant to that foci of identification. That is, salesperson organizational identification has a significant and strong effect on organizational citizenship behavior while the influence of salesperson organizational identification on brand advocacy is not significant. Along the same lines, salesperson identification with the brand significantly influences brand advocacy behaviors but not their overall organizational citizenship behaviors. These empirical findings are consistent with assertions in the literature that variables (antecedents or outcomes) associated with identification at a certain level will have a stronger relationship with identification at that level.

Despite existing research efforts on the potential positive outcomes of salesperson identification, there is less empirical evidence regarding the dual role of brand and organizational identification. This research contributes to the current literature by proposing and empirically examining the differential (identity-matching) antecedents and outcomes of salespeople’s dual identification with the organization and the brand. Furthermore, existing research mostly focuses on organizational or sales management outcomes but not brand specifically related outcomes. Theoretically, this research draws on social identity theory to investigate the combined effect of salesperson brand and organizational identification on key brand-related outcomes. Managerially, this study provides empirically-based suggestions for managers interested in harnessing the power of identification.