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This research explores the determinants and consequences of salesperson polychronicity in a business-to-business (B2B) sales environment. Additionally, the study examined the link between the antecedents and consequences of salesperson polychronicity using resistance to change (RC) and manager trust in salesperson (MT) as moderators.

A conceptual framework was developed by testing eight hypotheses based on data collected from 378 salesperson-manager dyads.

The authors find that opening leader behavior is positively associated with salesperson polychronicity, while closing leader behavior negatively influences salesperson polychronicity. In addition, salesperson polychronicity positively affects service recovery performance and customer-directed organizational citizen behaviors (OCB). Finally, the RC and MT significantly and positively moderate the linkage between the antecedents and consequences of salesperson polychronicity.

This study is original because this is the first study to address polychronicity as an individual trait in a B2B environment where multitasking behavior is of paramount importance.

To sustain firm profitability, it is critical for sales managers to direct business-to-business (B2B) salespeople to generate revenues by simultaneously acquiring new customers and selling to current customers. However, emerging research indicates territory-based B2B salespeople have a preferred customer engagement orientation that reflects a tendency for engaging in selling activities to new (i.e. hunters) and/or existing (i.e. farmers) customers, suggesting that managerial ambidexterity directives could have deleterious effects on salespeople. This paper aims to address this possibility by investigating the moderating effects of salesperson regulatory focus on the relationship between managerial directives for salesperson ambidexterity and salesperson job satisfaction.

The study uses a mixed-method approach by using a field study of 106 matched sales manager–salesperson dyads from a large Fortune 500 B2B industrial distributor sales force and an experiment involving 152 B2B salespeople from a cross-section of industries.

The results indicate that sales manager ambidexterity requests reduce salesperson job satisfaction. However, the findings also demonstrate that salesperson regulatory focus moderates these negative effects such that the negative effect of manager ambidexterity requests on job satisfaction is reduced for salespeople with high vs low levels of regulatory focus ambidexterity balance. The results from the cross-sectional experimental study illustrate the cognitive mechanism that helps explain why this occurs.

The Fortune 500 firm used in Study 1 uses a territory-based generalist sales force model where salespeople are not incentivized to prioritize hunting over farming (and vice versa). As a result, the findings may not generalize to firms with hunting/farming incentive systems or to those that operate in particular industries requiring a focus on either hunting or farming.

The findings show why managers attempting to direct territory-based salespeople to increase their ambidexterity behaviors may undermine the job satisfaction of certain salespeople by triggering a decrease in motivation while the same directives have the opposite effect for other salespeople. The findings also demonstrate salesperson reactions to ambidexterity requests, which provide additional insights for effective salespeople hiring, training and management.

The findings have implications for better understanding the effectiveness of sales management leadership directives. The study also offers a promising direction for future research to investigate salesperson receptivity to managerial controls.

This study aims to examine the applicability of Hartmann et al.’s (2018) service ecosystem framework to the day-to-day management of the modern sales force. The authors provide a review of the framework, acknowledging its strengths, while also indicating areas for advancement. The authors conclude with recommendations to the framework and indicate opportunities where future research could advance sales theory.

A review of the theoretical underpinnings of the service ecosystem framework is weighed against the established roles and responsibilities of the modern sales force in the literature.

The ability of the framework to capture the multi-level, multi-actor and dynamic aspects of sales represents an improvement in the conceptualization of selling is critical. Suggestions around the refinement for meso-level sales interactions and a more pliant application of service dominant-logic are offered.

The suggested extensions of the framework continue the advancement of novel theorization for the field of sales. Priorities for future research include consideration of ethical implications of the framework and formulations of new management strategies reflective of the broad and dynamic properties of the ecosystem conceptualization.

This paper provides managerial guidelines and implications tied specifically to the thick and thin crossing points and how they may impact employee decision-making.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to pointedly examine the service ecosystem framework with respect to established principles of managing a modern sales force.

Although social networks play an important role in individual ambidexterity, few studies have examined the impact of salespeople's social networks on sales-service ambidexterity. The purpose of this paper is to explore how salespeople's internal and external social networks affect sales-service ambidexterity.

The unique data of 331 salespeople from 39 units in retail banking industry and insurance industry were collected, and the hierarchical linear model was adopted to test the hypotheses. Finally, the alternative measure of the dependent variable and the alternative estimation method were adopted for robustness test.

The results show that the strength of salespeople's internal social networks and the extensiveness of salespeople's external social networks could facilitate sales-service ambidexterity of salespeople separately and synergistically. Salespeople's role breadth self-efficacy partially mediates the influences of internal and external social networks on sales-service ambidexterity, while empowerment climate and transformational leadership positively moderate the aforementioned mediational process by strengthening the relationship between salespeople's role breadth self-efficacy and sales-service ambidexterity.

Practical guidelines are provided for managers to shape ambidextrous salespeople by facilitating salespeople's internal and external social networks, promoting transformational leadership and creating empowerment climate within the unit.

To the best of the author's knowledge, this paper is the first to systematically examine the impact of salespeople's social network on sales-service ambidexterity. Drawing from social cognitive theory and the ambidexterity literature, this research reveals the mechanism of how salespeople's internal and external social networks contribute to sales-service ambidexterity.

The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the notion of thin crossing points from a social network perspective and to outline the concrete networking strategies that enable salespeople to foster mutually valuable resource exchange (i.e. to thin crossing points) across a selling ecosystem.

The authors integrate extant theoretical perspectives to advance a conceptual framework of sales-related networking across three key actors in a selling ecosystem: intraorganizational selling actors and actors in customers and external partner organizations.

Thin crossing points are defined as figurative transaction points at the boundary between organizations or organizational subunits at which actors engage in mutually valuable resource exchange in the process of value cocreation. To thin crossing points with key ecosystem actors, salespeople must adapt networking strategies considering the time and trust constraints inherent in a network relationship. Such constraints inform the most advantageous network centralities (degree, eigenvector and betweenness) and actions to impact key network properties (tie strength, contact diversity) that enable salespeople to efficiently develop social capital and thus to optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first social network-based exploration of salespeople’s role in thinning crossing points with key ecosystem actors. It advances a novel conceptual framework of sales-related networking strategies that foster social capital development and optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

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.

This study aims to investigate moderators affecting the impact of salesperson acquisition-retention (AR) ambidexterity on sales performance based on the motivation-opportunity-ability (MOA) framework.

The authors collected triadic data through 391 questionnaires from salespeople, 50 questionnaires from sales managers and archival data about each salesperson’s performance. Hierarchical linear modeling was applied to test the hypotheses.

The results indicate that salesperson AR ambidexterity positively affects sales performance. The positive effect is strengthened by capability control but weakened by outcome control and activity control. The authors also find that sales experience and market attractiveness hurt the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity.

First, this study does not examine the mediating mechanism underlying the effect of salesperson AR ambidexterity. Second, sales-service ambidexterity is another ambidextrous variable for salespeople. Future research can consider AR and sales-service ambidexterity together.

First, managers should be cautious when encouraging experienced salespeople to conduct AR ambidexterity. Second, managers need to use capability control to motivate salespeople with AR ambidextrous behaviors. Third, AR ambidexterity could be not required in a market with many opportunities.

Although some studies have examined the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity, they reveal inconsistent findings, which suggest contingent conditions on the effectiveness of salesperson AR ambidexterity. However, the attention on the contingent conditions is limited. Therefore, this paper systematically investigates the contingent conditions from the MOA framework. The findings provide some insights into when salesperson AR ambidexterity is effective.

This study aims to investigate the direct effect of the behavior-based sales control system on job outcomes: salesperson’s performance and turnover intentions. The current study also intends to integrate these two streams by conceptualizing work engagement as a mediating variable between behavior-based sales control systems and salespersons’ job outcomes in the pharmaceutical sales context.

Data was collected through multi-stage stratified random sampling from a sample of 619 salespersons working in 20 pharmaceutical firms (multinational and national) through self-administered questionnaires.

The structural equation model yielded results indicating that the behavior-based sales control system was positively related to salespersons’ work engagement and negatively to turnover intentions while the relationship between the behavior-based sales control system and salespersons’ job outcomes was mediated by work engagement.

Two relatively separate lines of investigation have appeared in academic literature. The first line centered on sales force control systems and salespersons’ related consequences, whereas the second line of investigation emphasizes work engagement and its consequences. Although both lines are important, a diminutive research effort has been made to join these two different lines of investigation in sales management, specifically, in the pharmaceutical context. Focusing on this, the current research explores the role of an unexplored construct of work engagement in a pharmaceutical sales context. Second, it addresses the need to identify additional mediating variables to clarify the inconsistent relationship between sales control systems and job outcomes, such as job performance and turnover intentions.

Service–sales ambidexterity (SSA) offers sales managers crucial information about dealing with customer service failures through an effective management control system. This study aims to scrutinize the relationships among SSA, salesforce control system, salesperson’s role stressors and service recovery performance (SRP) in the business-to-business (B2B) context.

An analysis is conducted based on survey data collected from 586 B2B sales employees participating in an extensive survey. Structural equation modeling is used to analyze the proposed hypotheses.

Empirical findings suggest that behavior-based control harms SSA. On the other hand, outcome-based control has a positive impact on SSA. The research outcomes further disclose that SSA positively impacts salesperson role conflict and emotional fatigue, whereas emotional fatigue negatively impacts SRP. Salesperson resilience notably moderates the association between SSA and emotional fatigue.

The study addresses there is a dearth of research on SSA applying the sales management control system. When studying about ambidexterity in sales context, many supervisory styles have been explored; however, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first systematic attempt to understand how sales management control systems play a role in SSA.