Search results

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.

The purpose of this study is to show how senior management can create work environments conducive to ethical behavior in organizations through the use of sales managers’ professionalism and professional identification. The study also aims to demonstrate the influence of professional identification in occupations other than those requiring certification.

This study conceptualizes and tests a model using data collected from a survey panel of 350 sales managers. To test the hypotheses, this study makes use of covariance structured analysis.

The results demonstrate the importance of developing sales managers’ professionalism as an antecedent to professional identification. The findings also show professional identification positively affects professional ethical values, work-related norms and occupational commitment. This study finds that work-related norms moderate the relationship between professional ethical values and ethical intentions and directly and positively influence ethical intentions.

This study used a panel sampling technique and these findings cannot be generalized to other populations. This study recommends that this study is replicated not only with sales managers but also with other categories of marketers. This study also highlights that more work using methods such as longitudinal panel data and experimentation is required to validate the current findings.

The findings are of particular interest to senior managers and managers of professional associations, as well as other sales practitioners. Because ethical intentions are affected by work-related norms and from an interaction between work-related norms and professional ethical values, senior managers need to ensure both the work activities in which their staff are involved and the professional ethical values of their employees contribute to appropriate ethical intentions.

This study introduces professional identification into the sales ethics literature and theorize relationships among the professionalism of sales managers and their professional identification, work-related norms, professional ethical values, occupational commitment and ethical intentions. This study empirically measures the professionalism of sales managers.

Sponsorship sales in professional sport is an area of increasing attention and growing investment, but the sport management literature offers only limited research about sales strategies and tactics. As a result, practitioners and academics alike have called for investigation in the area. In response to this need, the purpose of this paper is to empirically explore sponsorship sales in professional sport.

Sponsorship sales professionals working for sport properties in the four major North American sport leagues were surveyed on a variety of sponsorship sales-related variables and factors.

A total of 92 sponsorship sales professionals responded to the study, for an estimated 15.3 percent response rate. At the time of the data collection, the 92 respondents worked in the National Football League (NFL) (37), Major League Baseball (MLB) (16), National Basketball Association (NBA) (18), and National Hockey League (NHL) (21). A series of practical, conceptual, and comparative results are presented, highlighted by turnover as a problem, the importance of activation/servicing in sponsorship sales, and the high level of investment clubs are making in sponsorship sales.

First, on “coverage,” the authors acknowledge that variations in the data can be linked, to a large extent, to reporting issues due to the nature of the study, the data, and the sample. Variations in sponsor number or training, for example, are not necessarily indicative of weaknesses in the industry, but occur because of strategic differences among properties. Second, it is important to note that not all properties had personnel respond to the study. Consequently, the figures presented in this study might be a function of the individual personnel who responded rather than a true average figure for a particular league. Third, in terms of the sample, this study deals with a very specific context in the four North American major sport leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA, and NHL). Thus, one should be careful in generalizing to minor professional, collegiate, Olympic, or other sport contexts.

The finding of this paper states that the turnover of sponsors may be a structural issue and is certainly related to the demand for the particular property (Seaver Marketing Group, 2010). Driven by a number of factors, including technology shifts to digital channels and increased sophistication by the sponsorship sales departments of professional sport properties, a shift in the activation and service paradigm is reported and extended to the specific context of sponsorship sales.

Results show that sport properties in the North American major sport leagues have a strong commitment to sponsorship sales by the organization (commitment of resources), by sport personnel (who support the business side), and by their sponsorship sales professionals who report satisfaction, motivation, and support from their property.

To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first empirical research study specific on sponsorship sales in professional sport, thus providing direction for practice and future research on an issue of high importance to the sport industry.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative review of coaching research from different contexts (e.g. athletics, executive coaching, project management and sales), delineate professional sales coaching from other developmental activities and develop a research agenda for stimulating research on professional sales coaching. Professional sales coaching is considered an important sales force developmental program by both sales practitioners and researchers. Yet, research on sales coaching remains fragmented in the extant literature.

An extensive literature review of extant research and theoretical perspectives on coaching as well as insights gathered from exploratory, in-depth interviews of ten sales managers were used to develop the research agenda.

The review and research agenda identify a number of sales coaching-related topics that warrant further research. Specifically, the research agenda addresses salesperson characteristics, sales manager and coach characteristics, selling organization characteristics, sales coaching approaches, nature and effectiveness of the sales coaching process and, finally, outcomes of sales coaching. For each topic, extant research, relevant insights from exploratory interviews and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper is the first integrative review of coaching-related research in the sales literature. It offers an updated conceptualization of sales coaching and identifies opportunities for future research.

Employee engagement literature pertaining to professional salespeople has revealed several antecedents and consequences that lead to greater performance and turnover reduction. However, engagement literature in the field of human resource development (HRD) does not account for Generation Z (Gen Z), the latest in the workforce who has been noted to be vastly different from previous generations. This study aims to explore how to engage Gen Z in the context of professional selling by identifying the antecedents and consequences of employee engagement based on individual characteristics and organizational needs of this group.

A systematic literature review was conducted. In total, 21 papers relevant to employee engagement, professional selling and Gen Z were critically analyzed.

Findings indicate that Gen Z’s organizational need for mentoring and their individual characteristic of wanting job control and ownership are vital antecedents that could increase employee engagement. In addition, competitive rewards are important consequences that could improve individual sales performance.

HRD practitioners and organizational leaders must understand the unique characteristics of Gen Z to effectively engage them in the workplace. For sales organizations, there is a critical need to offer mentoring opportunities and competitive rewards from the start of Gen Z salespeople’s employment.

This research expands current engagement literature by addressing an emerging, under-explored issue – how to engage the newest workforce, Gen Z, in the context of professional selling.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a framework for team selling to sports firms that can be used to more effectively select members for sales and CRM teams and improve the performance of teams in attracting and retaining premium seating customers.

The paper provides a two‐stage framework based on the personal selling process and the activities that support CRM programs. Recommendations are guided by the sport marketing and team selling literature streams and by best practices in sport marketing.

The paper recommends the formation of two teams (personal selling and CRM) during the customer relationship cycle and provides guidelines for team member selection based on the critical activities that occur during the personal selling and CRM processes. Key success factors are provided, including the establishment of a customer‐focused organization and effective communication practices among team members and between selling teams.

Although the use of selling teams is gaining popularity in several industries, the broader sales literature lacks research that can support the development and effective management of selling teams. Within the sport marketing literature, there is no research on selling teams. The main academic contribution of the paper is the cross‐disciplinary merging of existing team selling research in the sales literature with current research and industry information on marketing and sales by sport organizations (luxury suite sales). For the practitioner, the framework provides guidance on effective team member selection and best practices for the effective management of selling teams.

Sport ticket sales is often positioned as a “foot in the door” to the sport industry due to ample job opportunities, but anecdotal reports of high turnover raise questions of the efficacy of recruitment, training and retention efforts in sport sales. The purpose of this study was to determine attrition levels among entry-level ticket sales personnel, observe whether entry-level sales positions lead to other non-selling positions within sport organizations and determine if education and market related variables are related to job tenure.

LinkedIn profiles were analyzed for 1,122 entry-level ticket salespeople listed in media guides between 2015 and 2019 in the “Big Four” North American professional sports leagues. Names were obtained from 26 NBA, 21 MLB, 20 NHL and 12 NFL teams. Survival analysis provided defection rates and demonstrated the relationship between those rates and key variables.

One in every four entry-level ticket salespeople defected within the first year and one in every two defected within 26 months. Only 8% moved on from ticket sales to a non-sales role within the sport industry. Increases in cost of living, working for an NFL team and having sport industry experience prior to taking a sales position decreased the likelihood of defecting, while increased distance between the salesperson's university and the team's location increased the likelihood of defecting.

This study applies survival analysis to a sport human relations context to understand turnover in a specific occupational discipline and establishes the turnover rate for sport sales positions.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the main drivers of change in the relational approaches adopted in business-to-business (B2B) companies as an effect of the digital transformation processes boosted by COVID-19 pandemic.

The methodology includes a qualitative study based on an abductive approach. Twenty-eight semistructured interviews and two focus groups have been carried out with sales and marketing professionals from different industries.

The research defines a conceptual framework that describes what the main changes of B2B relational approach are in a context affected by the pandemic, as well as its effects. The framework is constituted by three dimensions, namely, efficiency of the interaction, coordination and digital trust, and seven subdimensions.

This research also contributes to managerial practice, defining some directions to be fulfilled in a business context affected by the COVID-19 emergency to improve efficiency, coordination and trust.

Academic literature has greatly analyzed the transformation of the B2B scenario; less studies have explored how the relational approach is changing due to the digital acceleration caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

The primary focus of this project is to see if emotional intelligence and awareness training should be introduced into sales training programs and to see if emotional intelligence training is necessary for success in the sales profession. A recent survey of 515 professional sales representatives located in Pittsburgh, PA area firms that were chosen based on relatively large size and established reputations in the area were asked to respond to a number of questions concerning sales training and related sales experience. Factor analysis results with industry type, insurance and financial type, as an example discovered four categories of data reduction: component 1 related to emotional intelligence (identifying personality types, presentation skills, controlling one's emotions, and adaptability to change) variables, component 2 was associated with experience (years of managerial experience and years of sales experience), component 3 for people skills (sales concepts and procedures and listening skills), and component 4 dealt with technical skills (writing skills and computer competencies). Not surprisingly, communication skills, negotiating skills, emotional intelligence, and presentation skills, and the need to differentiate personality types were found to be very important to the sales practitioners. Equally not surprising that they found their professional stressful and the relevance of college course in sales with somewhat mixed reviews.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to examine the workplace experiences of current and former underrepresented ticket sales employees.

The study utilized survey methodology to answer the research questions. Purposive sampling was used to identify potential respondents: individuals who were either currently employed as sport ticket sales employees or had been previously. The researchers examined online media guides from North American major league sports teams and identified ticket sales representatives who were compiled into a database and then cross-referenced through social media platform LinkedIn. Individuals were located via LinkedIn profiles and sent an anonymous, electronic survey which included a combination of Likert scale and open-ended questions regarding respondent experiences working in ticket sales departments.

Survey responses from 511 ticket salespeople revealed negative experiences related to management and career advancement opportunities, as well as significant differences in negative experiences for underrepresented populations regarding mentorship and culture.

Sport sales managers desire to expand employee diversity (Wells et al., 2019) and improve overall retention rates, but if a clear understanding of organizational vision toward diversification is not established within sports teams, managers are less likely to embrace diversity initiatives. Thus, it is imperative to understand the lived experiences of underrepresented ticket salespeople in order to improve workplace culture and effectiveness.