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The purpose of this paper is to examine differences between Hispanic and Asian immigrants and their preferences in the appearance of and interaction with salespeople.

A total of 171 female Hispanic and 153 Asian female retail consumers in a midwestern city, who immigrated to the USA, were surveyed. Salesperson‐customer interaction and preference for salespeople with a similar ethnic appearance were assessed.

Findings from F‐tests indicated that in this study Asians have a significantly greater preference for a salesperson similar in appearance to themselves and Hispanics have significantly greater preference for salespeople who offer attentive service.

Retailers will benefit by understanding and capitalizing on differences which will encourage customer loyalty to their retail stores.

Extending the observable characteristics facet of the buyer‐seller similarity model, the research results suggest that buyers from different ethnic groups will assess salesperson characteristics differently.

Drawing on socioanalytic theory, this paper aims to explore whether a moderation mediation model can describe the mechanism linking salesperson social reputation (perceived stability and plasticity) and performance (customer share of wallet) in relationship marketing. The mediator is the salesperson’s overall equity, and the moderator is the salesperson-customer congruence.

A structured questionnaire was used to obtain data from 233 customers, served by 44 personal finance advisors at five banking agencies in Canada.

A multilevel approach showed that both perceived stability and perceived plasticity predict salesperson equity and performance. In addition, the empirical results indicated that the relationship between perceived stability and salesperson performance is partially mediated by salesperson overall equity. However, equity fully mediated the relationship between perceived plasticity and salesperson performance. Finally, the salesperson-customer congruence moderated the effect of both perceived stability and plastic on the salesperson overall equity.

This research suggests that the moderation mediation model enables predicting the relationship between the perceived personality and performance. From a managerial perspective, the author encourages sales managers to pay attention to salespersons’ equity development as well as their performance. Notably, the author suggests that sales managers support and monitor salespeople with regard to improving their social status as well as their social popularity in their interactions with customers.

Previous research in sales force literature focuses on salespersons’ self-personality to predict sales performance. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to show it is important to consider the perceived personality of a salesperson in predicting their performance. This study is also the first to introduce the salesperson reputation concept and its dimensions (perceived stability and plasticity).

The purpose of this research is to study the relationship between the HR control system and organizational results, examining the moderating effect of uncertainty and HR risk behavior.

The study analyzes the relationship between HR control systems and organizational results introducing two major moderating variables as, uncertainty and risk behavior. The data used for this study comes from questionnaire responses by sales and human resource managers of 108 Spanish firms.

The empirical results show that these moderating variables have an influence on the success of the control system, but it can be stated that the control system has an independent impact on the organizational and sales force performance.

Small sample size and cross sectional study, and the use of subjective measures of company and HR performance are the main limitations of the work.

To make correct decisions about HR control systems, managers should assess their environment and the composition of the workforce. There is not a control system that is good for all situations.

An analysis was made of an important non‐executive employee group, as the sales force is, and addressed the important issue of control and performance while the literature is focused on management control systems. The study does not limit the performance measures only to company variables, displaying customer satisfaction and human resource performance factors.

Aims to corroborate the observation which the title states, and answers the question which it poses by drawing on the results of a project conducted at a pharmaceutical company. Results showed that: the roles of sales executive and sales management had primary performance demands which were opposites; the primary attributes required for success in the two roles were also opposites; therefore those who succeed in the sales role because they possess the attributes which that role requires for success can succeed in the management role only if they also possess the opposite attributes; it is known from personality research that personality traits cluster in positive correlations, so people who possess opposite attributes are rare. Discusses the implications of this state of affairs and closes by pulling its separate strands together.

The value of long‐term relationships has become a widely studied variable in marketing. This article investigates two important characteristics of salespeople (consideration of future sales consequences and customer‐oriented selling) and their effects on the usage of long‐term relationships. In turn, associations between a long‐term relationship orientation, and a preference for long‐term compensation are explored. The findings suggest managerial and research implications for structuring of reward systems and potential tools for recruiting, selection and assignment of salespeople based on these characteristics.

Examines the effect of relationship selling activities on salesperson performance. It further explores the link between demographic selection criteria and the propensity of a salesperson to perform relationship selling behaviors. Relationship selling behaviors as examined in this study include interaction intensity, mutual disclosure, and cooperative intentions. The study was based on a sample of 487 business‐to‐business insurance salespeople. Findings indicate that interaction intensity and mutual disclosure have a significant effect on salesperson performance. Cooperative intentions do not influence performance. Results further demonstrate that some demographic criteria appear to be related to a salesperson’s likelihood of engaging in relationship selling.

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 contribution of cultural intelligence (CQ) to the level of adaptive selling behavior and customer-oriented selling behavior of salespeople in a cross-cultural selling context.

This study collected data from a total of 210 Thai salespeople who had been assigned to work at trade shows in Japan (n = 110) and in Vietnam (n = 100).

The findings show that salespeople with higher CQ tend to demonstrate a higher degree of adaptive selling behavior and customer-oriented selling behavior in both countries. The moderating effect analysis shows that the positive relationship between CQ and adaptive selling behavior is significantly higher for Thai salespeople in Japanese trade shows than in Vietnamese trade shows.

This study uses cross-sectional data collection; therefore, the results have been interpreted as associations, but not causations.

The study suggests that CQ development programs could be considered as part of the training that organizations provide to salespeople to develop cross-cultural competencies to deal effectively with foreign customers.

This study provides additional evidence concerning the benefits of CQ in an occupational area that has not been previously explored. More importantly, the result regarding the positive linkage between CQ and adaptive selling behavior was significantly stronger in the country characterized by higher cultural differences. This also contributed to CQ research by showing that differences in a cultural context might also influence the benefits of CQ in relation to the outcome variables.

In the 1990s many companies have acknowledged the critical importance of being customer‐oriented. However, as retailers contemplate the higher costs and higher revenues of increased customer service levels, they need to understand the relative importance to consumers of various aspects of customer service, particularly those delivered by salespeople. This research investigates the impact of selected salesperson service attributes and levels on consumer patronage intentions in a consumer electronics store setting. The study uses conjoint analysis to measure consumer priorities. The results indicate that salesperson’s respect for the customer, knowledge, and responsiveness are the most important attributes. Where three service levels are presented, there is a greater difference in impact between the lowest and middle levels than between the middle and highest levels. This suggests that retailers do not necessarily have to offer the best service levels to satisfy customers, but must avoid poor service levels.

The purpose of this paper is to extend Zablah et al.’s (2012) findings regarding the proper way to treat customer orientation (CO) to the study of CO among B-B salespeople in one of the most important emerging economies, India.

The authors of this study hired a professional market research firm based in Chennai, a large metropolitan city in Southern India, to manage data collection. The authors used a competing models approach to test the relationship between constructs.

CO among frontline employees operating in one of the largest emerging economies is best treated as a psychological construct that is both directly and indirectly related to performance via its ability to reduce stress and improve engagement. This finding strengthens the view of CO as a universal human work value and, more broadly, that such values operating across different cultural setting do exist. In addition, external customer mindset appears to offer a superior means to measure CO than does the widely used CO component of the SOCO scale. This conclusion is based not only upon the fact that it conceptually corresponds with the psychological nature of CO, but also that in this initial examination it exhibits a greater ability to explain employee job performance.

Managers who are able to screen and hire employees with greater CO work values should experience improved performance outcomes and also less customer ambiguity and greater satisfaction among their frontline employees. Since CO proscribes the proper way to deal with customers, greater levels of CO beliefs would counteract customer ambiguity among frontline employees operating in any environment. Accordingly, when filling frontline positions, managers should actively seek out employees who earnestly embrace the role of taking care of customers. Managers are advised to not only emphasize on salespeople whose foremost role is to take care of their customers but also to find ways to familiarize them with their products and to provide them with information regarding customer characteristics such as their background, the relationship history (especially past service and product failures), and unique preferences.