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The purpose of this paper is to examine the performance of salespeople when selling new products (namely, electronic goods) in a business-to-business context by incorporating the organizations’ perceived psychological climate into goal orientation theory.

The current study uses the goal orientation theory to examine the performance of 158 salespeople based on new electronic product sales. Organizational psychological climate perceptions (i.e. customer orientation, sales supportiveness and sales innovativeness) are included as variables that can moderate salespeople’s performance. This study used partial least squares to examine its proposed model.

This study found that the learning goal orientation and the performance-prove goal orientation positively affect salespeople’s self-efficacy to sell new products, whereas a performance-avoid goal orientation negatively affects efficacy. In addition, new product selling self-efficacy itself has a positive influence on new product sales performance. As for the moderator, sales supportiveness and customer orientation have the ability to moderate the relationship between self-efficacy and performance.

This study has implications for sales managers or product managers who are responsible for promoting new products. First, this study’s findings suggest that managers should consider employing performance-prove goal-oriented staff and learning goal oriented staff to sell new products. Second, management can attempt to develop a more supportive climate for the sales team, such as assisting the team in obtaining needed resources from other departments. Finally, management needs to let salespeople know that they are doing their best to understand what new products existing and potential customers will need in the near future.

This current research is one of the first to examine how the perceived psychological climates of organizations (i.e. sales supportiveness, sales innovativeness and customer orientation) may moderate salespeople’s performance when selling new products. Second, this research examines how different types of goal orientation affect salespeople’s self-efficacy when selling new products. Previous results have not always been consistent regarding the influence of a performance-prove goal orientation. Last but not least, this study tests how new product selling self-efficacy mediates the relationships between goal orientations and new product sales performance as scholars have suggested that more research into the mediating role of self-efficacy is needed.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating effect of salesperson environmental and goal orientation on the relationship between strategic orientation for failure recovery and performance behavior.

In total, 287 usable samples were collected from surveying sales representatives. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that the recovery strategy has a positive and significant impact on performance behavior. However, this relationship can be influenced by high levels of competitiveness to generate a smaller commitment in the sales team in behavioral performance and by the fact that salespeople who have a high learning goal orientation ascribed stronger relationships between the recovery strategy and performance goal.

Academically, this research has several purposes. In the sales area, the authors analyze the strategic orientation for failure recovery. The authors believe that this approach is necessary to improve the scientific quality of the studies in the sales area.

Although sales managers influence to a great extent their salespeople's outcomes, research examining the impact of leadership effectiveness and learning orientation in the sales department is limited. As such, an investigation of the impact of sales managers' learning values and leadership – on the grounds of goal‐setting and leader‐member exchange (LMX) theories – on salespeople's goal orientation and performance is warranted. This paper aims to investigate these issues.

To explore these issues, the author presents the extant literature on learning orientation, goal orientation and leadership quality, in an effort to provide the basis for the development of theoretical propositions. A strategic learning pathway is proposed for further research indicating that sales managers' learning orientation and leadership affect salespeople's goal orientation and performance.

Each of the underlying propositions is explored and managerial and research implications are identified. The proposed model indicates that it is vital for sales managers to pursue strategic learning and create favourable learning conditions and processes that facilitate organisational learning and change.

The research framework provides a new perspective to sales managers for strategic implementation of learning practices in the sales environment.

The purpose of this study is to develop a theoretical model that posits locomotion-assessment ambidextrous orientation as predictor of salesperson acquisition–retention ambidexterity, which as a consequence increases sales. The authors drawing on regulatory focus theory and self-regulatory for this propose.

Salespeople involved in the study represent different firms selling a wide variety of food and household products to a wholesaler, which resells them to supermarket chains. The authors collected data from 231 industrial salespeople.

First, salesperson assessment focus amplified locomotion’s effect on acquisition–retention ambidexterity. Second, salespeople increased their performance by implementing an acquisition–retention ambidextrous orientation that balances prospecting for new customers and growing existing customers. Third, findings revealed a mediating effect of ambidextrous orientation on the relationship between regulatory mode and sales performance. Finally, outcomes supported the conditional moderated-mediated effect of regulatory mode in explaining performance through ambidextrous orientation.

Results suggest that salespeople need to equalize their dual orientations in a complementary way to elaborate their selling strategies according to each customer. For example, in an unbalanced orientation, putting high levels of assessment into a sales encounter can reduce the effective and efficient use of time in interacting with customers.

The authors further illustrate the importance of using both locomotion and assessment in attaining sales goals (Pierro et al. 2013). This synergistic effect is known as the complementary hypothesis (Pierro et al., 2006a, 2006b). Each dimension complements the other and has a moderated-mediated effect on performance through acquisition–retention ambidexterity.

This paper aims to explore the impact of salespeople’s goal orientation and self-regulatory mode on their performance through sales ambidexterity and sales technology infusion (STI) using a sales technology ecosystem approach.

This paper adopts a qualitative methodology, through in-depth interviews with salespeople from a diverse range of industries, age profiles and contexts, to explore the narratives and original meanings related to their goal orientation, self-regulatory mode, ambidexterity, STI and performance.

Sceptics are salespeople who may fear or hesitate to fully use the sales technology, whereas enthusiasts are ambidextrous salespeople with high STI, who are more open to change and able to face uncertainty, regardless of the differences in their background in terms of industry, age and experience.

STI may be influenced by individual factors, such as the salesperson’s goal orientation and self-regulatory mode. Hence, sales organizations should try to foster and facilitate further STI and sales ambidexterity, which are key to achieving positive outcomes in today’s technology-intensive sales settings.

This paper extends the current literature on sales technology and sales ambidexterity within a sales technology ecosystem perspective and provides new insight on the combined impact of these variables on the salesperson’s performance.

While the importance of salesperson market orientation behavior (SMOB) is widely acknowledged, as evidenced by the increasing research attention this concept is receiving, discussion of its antecedents and consequences in the literature remains limited. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the antecedents of SMOB and the underlying process through which it influences sales performance.

A causal model was developed to analyze the antecedents and consequences of SMOB. This proposed model and various hypotheses were tested using data obtained from a sample of 264 salespeople in the Taiwanese financial services industry.

The learning orientation and behavioral controls of salespeople positively influence SMOB. In addition, SMOB plays a critical role in improving two types of “working-smart” behaviors (i.e., sales planning and adaptive selling), thereby achieving better sales performance.

This report sheds light on the importance of SMOB in today’s personal sales environment and uncovers the underlying mechanisms through which SMOB contributes to sales performance. It also offers specific guidelines for the assessment and management of SMOB to enhance the performance of salespeople within the financial services industry.

The purpose of this article is to provide a new conceptualization of a salesperson's customer orientation, as a multi‐dimensional construct. The authors aim to base their new conceptualization on extensive evidence from literature review, and synthesis of the review of literature.

An extensive literature review of the extant conceptualizations and operationalizations of salesperson's customer orientation is first carried out. Based on the review and synthesis of literature, a salesperson's customer orientation with six domain areas is conceptualized, through several propositions in the paper.

The findings of this study suggest that salesperson's customer orientation has six domain areas, namely, providing information to customers, understanding customer needs, fulfilling customer needs, creating and delivering customer value, sustaining customer satisfaction, and maintaining long‐term relationships with customers.

The sales managers can now apply more specifically, any of the six domain areas of customer‐oriented selling, and understand the conditions under which a particular domain area is important for customers.

Salesperson's customer orientation hitherto has been considered only as an application of the marketing concept. The domain of this construct, or its various sub‐domain areas were not clearly delineated so far in the literature. This paper clearly explicates the domain areas of the construct while defining customer‐oriented selling in the changed world of selling today.

The purpose of this study is twofold: to analyze sales managers’ person-focused and process-focused supervisory feedback as a potential goal-orientation antecedent, and to examine the relationship between different types of sales personnel goal orientations and two aspects of job performance: behavior-based and outcome-based. Based on previous sales motivation research, the authors look at the antecedents and outcomes of sales representatives’ goal orientation.

A cross-sectional survey design was used with a sample consisting of 326 pairs of sales reps and their supervisors. Average sales position tenure was 5.30 years.

Sales representatives’ performance-prove goal orientation (PPGO) can be triggered by positive person-focused feedback from their managers, and performance-avoid goal orientation (PAGO) can be triggered by negative person-focused feedback. A learning goal orientation (LGO) can be triggered by positive process-focused feedback. The authors also found that when job performance is broken down into outcome-based and behavior-based components, the process by which goal orientation influences performance is more easily determined. PPGO sales reps in the sample clearly focused more on outcome-based performance, while PAGO sales reps focused on behavior-based performance. LGO was only associated with behavior-based performance among the respondents, meaning that it cannot be used as a predictor of outcome-based performance.

First, a cross-sectional design may not be the best method for judging variable directions of causality. A longitudinal method is recommended for more detailed research. Second, the variance the authors noted in the three goal orientations may be due to impression management. Previous researchers have not addressed response bias regarding goal orientation; future researchers may want to add social desire response items to control for response bias from impression management.

The findings can help sales managers understand how their feedback styles can result in different types of goal orientation and different effort allocation in their sales staff. Managers interested in developing PPGO sales reps should offer more whole-person praise. Since negative person-focused feedback can trigger more conservative behaviors, they should use other approaches to criticizing their employees. If their goal is to promote individual learning in sales personnel, they will want to give process-focused feedback, either positive or negative.

This study contributes to the literature on the external influences of goal orientation, especially the effects of social (rather than institutional) factors in manager feedback on goal orientations among their sales staffs. To the authors’ knowledge, this is the first attempt to study relationships between three types of goal orientations and various performance dimensions. The data clarify the links between two types of performance (outcome- and behavior-based) and three types of goal orientations (PPGO, PAGO and LGO).

This study aims to explore the effects of three competency layers of personality on salesperson effort and performance: self-efficacy, competitiveness and entrepreneurial motivation.

A two-study approach with data from 285 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople in the USA and 342 B2B/business-to-consumer salespeople in Poland is used. This study has also used structural equation modelling with partial least squares, common method assessment and mediation testing.

The findings show that across both studies, entrepreneurial motivation relates directly and positively to effort: salespeople with a greater entrepreneurial motivation exert more effort to perform their sales-related tasks. In addition, competitiveness and self-efficacy are two antecedents of entrepreneurial motivation in a sales context.

This study introduces the concept of entrepreneurial motivation as a goal orientation.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of salespeople’s customer orientation on the relationship between sales manager personal characteristics, fellow salespeople’s characteristics, job satisfaction and adaptive selling and salespeople’s performance in the insurance industry in Jordan.

A structured and self-administered survey was employed targeting 500 insurance salespeople working at insurance companies operating in Jordan. The final sample size was 320 salespeople representing a response rate of 64 percent. A Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path analysis was also used to test the hypothesized relationships of the research model.

The empirical findings indicate that salespeople’s customer orientation fully mediates the effect of fellow salespeople’s characteristics and adaptive selling on salespeople’s performance. Sales managers’ personal characteristics have a direct effect on salespeople’s performance, contrary to job satisfaction that had no effect on salespeople’s performance.

This paper has examined only five factors that affected directly and indirectly salespeople’s performance; meanwhile other factors may affect their performance, such as salespeople experience, internal marketing and corporate image. Additionally, the fact that paper’s sample consisted only of insurance salespeople working at insurance companies limits its generalization potential to other industries.

The findings emphasize the importance of fostering good relationships among fellow salespeople’s characteristics and adaptive selling strategies. Further, sales managers’ personal characteristics directly affecting salespeople’s performance signifies the importance to hire managers with the right personal approach.

This paper represents one of the early attempts that investigate factors affecting salespeople’s performance through the mediating role of customer orientation. Accordingly, the findings shed more light into the strategic role of this construct in enhancing salespeople’s performance. Also, the paper is the first of its kind to build and examine an integrated model of salespeople’s performance in the insurance market of Jordan, which provides valuable empirical evidence concerning the drivers of salespeople’s performance in the insurance industry in Jordan.