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The purpose of this study is to reveal important insights by examining the relationships of two different field managers’ monitoring styles with performance through salespersons’ engagement.

Data was collected from 318 salespersons’ from 20 pharmaceutical firms. Given the performance-driven nature of the pharmaceutical sales profession, field managers seek to adopt the best monitoring style, which can optimize individual’s performance while providing a healthy work environment.

The results from multivariate analysis show the evidence of positive relationship between interactional monitoring and salespersons’ engagement. The results also confirm that engagement partially mediates the proposed relationships.

Authors assimilate and extend research and theory on field managers’ monitoring, salespersons’ performance and salespersons’ engagement to advance a model of salespersons’ reactions to different monitoring styles based on self-determination theory. Perhaps in no other field, the salespersons-field managers’ relationship is as important as in the field of pharmaceutical selling. The study offers insights about the important consequence of two different monitoring styles; also the study is one of the exceptional efforts to provide evidence regarding the role of engagement in the relationship between two different monitoring styles and salespersons’ performance.

Examines how sales managers can affect and improve salesforce performance. Describes the similarities and differences between high‐ and low‐performance salesforces and the ways in which sales management can create the opportunity for salespeople to perform well. Discusses research implications and offers management guidelines to improve the effectiveness of sales organizations.

The development process for new products is critically dependent on customer‐generated new product ideas. Although several conduits exist for identifying and communicating these ideas, by far the most productive one is the organization’s salesforce. While the integral role of salespeople as the linkage between buyers and sellers is generally acknowledged by many researchers, little empirical evidence exists which explores this role. This paper explores the role of the salesforce as an information source in the opportunity identification phase of the new product development process. It presents results of an empirical study of 223 sales managers concerning actual use and effectiveness of the salesforce as a source of new product ideas and proposes specific recommendations concerning improved utilization of the salesforce as a source of new product ideas generated from customers.

INTRODUCTION A large number of variables influence the approach of the marketing function to the problem of selling, including the state of technology, the economic environment, the social structure, the climate of the age (political, institutional, religious and educational), available communication media, skills which managers apply and so on. Yet personal selling is by far the major promotional method used to increase profitable sales by offering want satisfactions to markets and customers.

The significance of the search for sales organization effectiveness is underlined by the major costs represented by the field salesforce for many organizations, and it is heightened by the pressures of global competition and new challenges to develop long‐term customer relationships as the foundation for competitive and sustainable marketing strategies. A study of sales management in British companies adds to an emerging research stream by identifying certain characteristics of superior performance and effectiveness in the business‐to‐business sales organization. We find that conventional measures of salesforce size, call‐rates, costs and productivity reveal relatively little about the differences between more effective and less effective sales organizations and may be dangerously misleading. The hallmarks of effective sales organizations we found to be: balanced compensation strategy; successful salesperson characteristics, in terms of motivation, customer orientation, team orientation, and sales support orientation; high performance in the drivers of sales effectiveness, i.e. sales presentation, technical knowledge, but most particularly adaptiveness, teamwork, sales planning, and sales support; the use of behaviour‐based control approaches involving effective monitoring, directing, evaluating and rewarding activities by sales managers; and, sound organizational structures. The research findings contribute benchmarks to a powerful management agenda to be addressed by executives in pursuing sales organization effectiveness.

Reports a study of sales management in UK companies, which explores the relationship between behaviour‐based control systems and outcome‐based control systems. Although conventional theory has suggested that behaviour performance and outcome performance result from different stimuli, we find that behaviour‐based control is positively associated with both behaviour performance and outcome performance. We find also that organizational commitment and sales territory design are significantly related to salesforce performance. This suggests a number of important avenues for improving salesforce performance. These findings and the growing emphasis on building long‐term, collaborative buyer‐seller relationships favour the use of behaviour‐based control systems in many sales management situations, and suggest a new agenda for management attention in improving salesforce effectiveness.

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.

Summarizes the basic structure of a general multi‐stage salesforce model, and presents experiences in implementing that framework. Discusses the benefits of the use of such a model, and concludes that the key to success for a small company to be based on using subjective estimates of the needs of a firm in the absence of hard data and on operational involvement of decision makers.

To ensure diffusion of new products among buyers’ firms need to ensure their acceptance by the salesforce. Few studies have, however, examined the satisfaction and performance of the salesforce in new product selling. This article reports the results of an empirical study of the effect of salesperson’s effort in new product selling on satisfaction and performance, and the potential moderators of the linkages. The results suggest that effort leads to greater satisfaction and performance. However, the strength of the relationship with respect to satisfaction is decreased by perceived self advantage in selling the new product and salesperson’s experience, but enhanced by customer role ambiguity and competitive intensity. With respect to performance, the findings indicate that the positive effects of effort are buffered by intensity of market competition and salesperson’s experience.

Some evidence on the use made by UK insurance companies of various forms of information technology (IT) in their sales and marketing activities is presented. Some views on the trends in this developing use of IT in the next two years are presented – a period when the full implications of the Financial Services Act will be seen. The results of recent research are analysed and some conclusions are drawn.