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Ninety‐four per cent of the bankers who responded to a recent survey think that establishing a sales culture is very important to their institution’s success, yet less than half had actually instituted even the most rudimentary reforms. This article outlines the reasons which make the transition to a sales culture imperative, describes the basic features of organizational culture in general and sales culture in particular, and presents seven best practices that facilitate the painstaking process of transition to a sales culture in banks. The strategies discussed increase sales per employee, improve cross‐selling to high‐value customers, and enable banks to focus on solving customer needs to the mutual benefit of both parties. It requires providing consistently excellent service quality and sales and customer interaction training for all boundary‐spanning employees.

This study aims to assess and measure the sales culture within the commercial banks in Jordan, and to provide top management of these banks with the database which may be required for improving the banks' selling effectiveness.

The study has been conducted on a convenience sample of 1,000 employees selected from those of all the commercial banks operating in Jordan. Sales culture was measured by using the Sales Culture Index (SCI), consisting of 65 statements. The data required for this study were collected by a self‐structured questionnaire.

The findings of the study indicate that the overall employees' perception of sales culture in the surveyed banks is moderate. However, the sales culture in the non‐Jordanian banks was stronger than that in the Jordanian banks.

As is the case in any study, some limitations relevant to this study cannot be abandoned. For instance, the findings of this study are based on self‐report perceptions of both the employees and the customers. Data collected by this approach may or may not be accurate to that extent, which reflects the respondents' real feelings.

The results of this study would enable management in the commercial banks in Jordan to design internal marketing programs aimed at building a strong service‐minded sales culture among employees.

This is a first attempt to assess and measure the sales culture in the commercial banks in Jordan.

The concept of culture has been an important subject of managerial interest over the past decade, yet little has been written about how culture can be managed within the industrial salesforce. Describes the key components of a salesforce culture and explains the characteristics of a well‐managed salesforce culture. Finally, develops suggestions for managing the industrial salesforce culture around three strategic factors: planning, implementation and control. Concludes by providing some guidelines for further research in this important area.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how national cultural values affect sales collaboration directly and how it interacts with the firm's reward structure. The results are linked with firm performance.

The conceptual framework is tested on a large sample of sales organizations across 26 countries. Due to the nested nature of the data, hierarchical linear modeling is used to test the hypothesized framework.

Sales collaboration is positively related to firm performance, while individualism and masculinity are negatively related to sales collaboration. Rewards alignment leads to greater sales collaboration and is particularly important in highly individualistic and masculine societies.

The study identifies rewards alignment as an actionable management tool to foster greater sales collaboration and, in turn, enhanced firm performance. The study suggests that this is particularly important in cultures associated with high individualism and masculinity. These two values can hinder sales collaboration within the firm, but firm practices (rewards alignment) can counter societal tendencies.

The effects of cultural values have been neglected in prior research on sales collaboration and firm performance. The findings in this study suggest that culture is important and, at times, it can be beneficial for the organizational culture to counter the dominant national cultural values.

The purpose of this paper is to present an argument for the importance of organizational culture and organizational socialization as controls for business‐to‐business salespeople.

Organization theory suggests that social forms of control can be an effective influence on salesperson activities and behaviors. Based on organization theory, the paper presents a typology of social control combinations and offers propositions to guide future research.

It is suggested that different combinations of organizational culture and socialization moderate the relationship between person‐organization fit and relevant outcomes such that, under various social control environments, creativity is greater, salesperson performance is higher, and salespeople are less likely to leave the firm and will experience greater job satisfaction.

The primary limitation is that it is conceptual in nature. Despite this, arguments presented herein support that socialization activities set the stage for salespeople's attitudes, behaviors, and performance, while organizational culture can reinforce or undermine the firm's socialization efforts. This provides the necessary foundation for future empirical research applying organizational theory to salesperson control.

Salespeople remain the driving force for revenue generation for many business‐to‐business firms. Sales managers are challenged with the task of directing salespeople to meet organizational objectives. However, based on organizational theory, traditional control methods may be less effective because of the unique characteristics of the business‐to‐business sales position. The research suggests that the organizational culture and the socialization tactics used by the sales manager can be tools that sales managers can use to control and direct the activities of salespeople.

Previous research has focused predominantly on outcome‐ and behavior‐based controls for business‐to‐business salespeople and has largely overlooked the potential influence of social controls such as organizational culture and organizational socialization. This research fills that gap.

The purpose of this paper is to address the globalisation/culture issue by comparing two Asian countries in which there has been limited prior research regarding their respective supermarket industries, namely, Singapore and Malaysia.

The research design adopted a case-study approach, with two general cases (the New Singaporean and Malaysian supermarket retail industries), made up of two embedded cases each (retailers and manufacturers operating within each country).

The overall finding is that despite prior assumptions that suitability is reliant on product type or country choice, there are a number of sales promotion techniques that are inherently suited to the supermarket industry as a whole. The majority of these “inherently suitable” techniques are price-based and the conclusion is then that these techniques can be used globally. Value-added techniques, on the other hand, should be localised to fit with the market in which they are being applied.

Tools best suited to the grocery product sales environment appear to be price-based or linked to price reductions (i.e. price discounting and discount-linked point-of-purchase (P-O-P) or end-of-aisle (E-O-A) displays combination and volume offers), suggesting that those tools which are inherently suitable to the industry are likely to meet retailers' shorter-term objectives rather than manufacturers' longer-term ones. The difficulty faced by manufacturers, then, is aligning their sales promotion objectives with the tools that are best able to achieve results in the supermarket environment.

Globalisation of the supermarket industry has also meant that marketers continue to need a better understanding of cross-cultural issues and their effect and national culture frameworks can be used to develop marketing theories which are suited to a particular region. The current research identifies preferences for different sales promotion techniques in the two nationally similar, yet ethnically diverse, countries under study, as well as examining application of these techniques in the retail environment.

This study aims to empirically investigate the effects of supportive, innovative and information technology (IT)-driven organisational culture on the optimisation of knowledge-sharing behaviour capability (KSBC) among sales executives. The authors propose that such effects are mediated by the sense of well-being (SWB) and IT-driven absorptive capacity (ITAC) among sales executives.

A conceptual model was developed. Survey data were based on a sample of 323 sales executives of different manufacturing and service-intensive (i.e. business to consumers) firms. The data analyses were conducted by structural equation modelling (SEM) and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) methods.

Results from SEM support all the direct relationships. Supportive and innovative organisational culture has a significant and positive influence on the optimisation of KSBC among sales executives, and these effects are mediated by their SWB. Moreover, the ITAC of sales executives mediated the relationships between IT-driven organisational culture and optimisation of KSBC among them. Results from fsQCA with the same data show that ITAC and SWB among sales executives are necessary conditions for the optimisation of KSBC. In addition, ten combinations of these variables were explored, where three sufficient conditions significantly influenced the outcome variable.

This study is cross-sectional in nature and is conducted among sales executives by combining the data from manufacturing and service-intensive firms. To examine the proposed model, this study can be supplemented by future research using a longitudinal data collection method separately.

This research shows an effective role to optimise KSBC among sales executives in the field of knowledge management practice literature. Supportive, innovative and harmonious culture, IT-driven communication platform and well-established IT learning plans implemented by the firms can sophisticate to optimise KSBC among sales executives.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this research is a pioneer study conducted to explain the KSBC among sales executives by using mixed methods research. This research discusses the antecedent of knowledge-sharing capability among sales executives from the viewpoint of sales executive’s psychology and identifies the different roles of SWB and ITAC on individual’s KSBC.

Despite the necessity of close integration between marketing and sales, managers report less than satisfactory results in this area. This paper aims to examine what keeps the two functions apart. It proposes going beyond surface level behavior to examine the different sub‐cultural mental frames that characterize the two functions.

A total of 44 salespeople and marketers across four different organizations in different industries were interviewed.

The research finds that conflicts between marketing and sales are driven by differences in beliefs about the valid scope and focus of activity, time focus, valid sources of knowledge, differences in perceived status, and the relationship to the business environment.

Managers need to focus on removing implied status barriers between sales and marketing, provide sales with a strategic voice, and attend to structural issues that drive the two functions apart.

Research on the sales‐marketing interface remains scarce. The paper examines this from a cultural point of view and identifies a number of basic cultural frames that explain behavioral differences between the two functions. Critically, it also identifies significant points of difference on which to build greater understanding between the two functions.

Some of the key issues facing banks in the UK are examined in order to become better at selling in the personal banking market. These issues concern attitudes towards organisational changes for sales including those of personnel and physical organisation. Implicit in these issues are matters of changes in management style, training, motivation and recognition of branch sales personnel and the direct salesforce. Interviews were held with senior sales and/or marketing executives in the leading banks and a building society. While each of the organisations interviewed has made considerable advances in achieving the required cultural change, Midland Bank is well under way towards accomplishing a sales culture. The results indicate that the radical change called for in developing a true sales culture requires major alterations to management structure and style and is most likely to be successfully achieved by “top‐down” target setting based on corporate business objectives. The need for different approaches in developing an appropriate sales‐and market‐orientation in counter staff and direct sales staff is discussed.

For the past several decades, the sales control literature has focused on the outside sales context. This study aims to extend sales control research by examining formal and informal sales controls, embodied by cultural controls, used by sales managers in an inside sales context, where the sales agent’s performance focus extends beyond sales outcomes to include the influence of operational phone outcomes.

Based on 232 B2C and B2B inside sales agent survey responses, this study presents evidence that in an inside sales department, this study focuses on the congruent effect of formal sales and cultural sales controls on inside sales agent overall performance.

Based on 232 B2C and B2B inside sales agent survey responses, this study presents evidence that in an inside sales department, the operational focus of sales activities and resultant operational performance mediates the relationship between sales controls and inside sales agent sales performance, whereas cultural controls centered on maximizing inside sales autonomous motivation positively moderates the effect of operational outcomes on an inside sales agent’s sales performance.

By focusing on the tenants of an inside sales agent’s overall performance, this research provides practitioners a holistic view of the inherent conflict inside sales managers must balance between the impact of formal sales controls and the benefits of cultural controls.

By being the only study to examine sales controls in an inside sales context, with a broad definition of overall performance to include both sales and operational phone outcomes, this study extends sales control research to a new sales context. The need to jointly focus on operational results, as well as sales outcomes, illustrate the importance of cultural controls compared to other sales processes and outcome controls