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This paper aims to explore how sell-side analysts and salespeople make sense of uncertainty on their market knowledge, valuation and marketing outputs.

Data is collected by direct observations of and interviews with analysts and salespeople in the Turkish stock exchange, an emerging market with considerable global fund management activity.

Analysts face considerable uncertainty on their market value forecasts but dismiss it as local dynamics not incorporable to valuation practices in global sell-side business. Salespeople, despite paying more attention to such dynamics owing to their sales tasks, limit themselves to analyst output in marketing. Both actors recognise the importance of analyst work to be able to have “a right to speak” in global sell-side business.

Changing market conditions and regulations since the time of study have been shaping analysts and salespeople work in global sell-side business, for example, the way sell-side is compensated by buy-side, buy-side’s move to receiving sell-side services from fewer brokers and hence shrinking sell-side teams. The paper does not address these. Nonetheless, it shows how valuation and marketing can be two distinct lines of work in sell-side business irrespective of market conditions and raises the question for future research as to how sell-side professionals manage this distinction, and how they make sense of and cope with broad market dynamics beyond sell-side and buy-side relations (e.g. automated trading machines, online retail trading).

The paper provides rare observation-based insights into analyst and salespeople work, including their sensemaking of uncertainty. It shows the importance of market identities and associated knowledge in valuation and marketing work in sell-side business.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new salesperson valuation model. This paper presents a calculation method for estimating both the individual lifetime value of a salesperson and the sales force equity.

This is a conceptual paper supported by a case study.

The authors contribute to the literature by operationalizing the salesperson lifetime value concept and introducing new important aspects in comparison with previous discussions, including peer effect, recruitment/hiring cost and termination costs.

This manuscript theoretically and practically contributes to personnel value management in the organization and sales force financial control. The authors introduce peer effects, hiring/recruitment costs and termination costs, which are missing as a set in previous research. In addition, this paper offers a simple but robust model to practitioners’ use.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the impact of analytical customer relationship management (CRM) on salesperson information use behavior.

To achieve the aim of this paper, a vignette experiment was undertaken. The data used for the final analysis included 125 professional salespeople across multiple industries.

This paper focuses on the personal use of competitive intelligence. The authors find that to maximize the effectiveness of using competitive intelligence, the salesperson must become adept at both choosing the correct pa`rtners to trust and properly valuing information. Properly valuing information can be accomplished through the use of analytical CRM.

The managerial implications of this paper are straightforward yet important. CRM providers have improved the tools available to salespeople (e.g., heat maps) and have partnered with other large scale providers of customer and market information (e.g., global marketing research firms) to provide a analytical tool that is user friendly to salespeople. Yet, many firms still use simplified CRM platforms, which do little more for the salesperson than offer an opportunity to document notes. Sales firms should move toward this analytical CRM system because it improves the salesperson’s ability to value information and increases the salesperson’s ability to use intelligence to link products to buyer needs.

This paper contributes to theory through confirming the importance of analytical CRM on salesperson’s information use behavior by using a motivation, opportunity and ability framework. Additionally, a methodological contribution was made through the development of an information value scale.

Describes annuitized valuation, which is a tool to measure the financial value of customer relationships. It measures the asset value of customer and represents the potential net cash flow of customers, over time. It can identify an imbalance (called a reward paradox) in the compensation policies of service firms. Avoiding this paradox must be a strategic imperative of firms committed to service quality leadership.

The increasingly complex business-to-business (B2B) sales process necessitates that sales managers strike the right balance between appropriate resource allocation, while also maintaining the profitability of the organization. While previous research has mainly focused on how changes in the business environment pose distinct challenges to salespeople, very little research has focused on how sales managers should react to these complex situations. Drawing upon the extant sales research, this paper aims to point to a gap in the literature of how sales managers deal with the complexity associated with the sales process and deal with the same.

Methods from the grounded theory research approach were used to conduct 18 in-depth interviews with B2B sales managers. Purposive sampling was used to identify the participants.

A taxonomy of sales situations that reflects the changing complexity of the sales function and how sales managers need to orchestrate their resource allocation decisions to ensure appropriate value capture from B2B relationships emerged within the themes. This paper highlights four fundamental tenets of sales situations that account for both the complexity of the sales process and the value appropriation challenge that sales managers face.

The taxonomy will help sales managers have a better understanding of the changing complexity in the B2B sales process and help them with decisions making. Sales managers can orchestrate their resource allocation to achieve value appropriation.

This paper develops a new taxonomy of the sales situation. It unravels the changing complexity of the B2B sales process and discusses how value appropriation can be achieved by sales managers.

This paper aims to find out what characterises salespeople in the most effective salesforce in Spain.

An empirical analysis has been done with 108 field sales managers from different sectors of activity to determine the conditions of the salesperson's control, professionalism and behaviour that affect his/her performance and the effectiveness of companies. A structural equations model or second generation multivariate model was used – PLS.

The results show that more effective salesforces are controlled through behaviour control systems, salespersons in this team identify with the company's strategic objectives and an important part of their remuneration is based on a fixed salary.

First, the information has been gathered on a unique hierarchical level – team managers. Second, the company's activity sector and the type of salesperson can modify the results. Finally, the size of the sample has limited the potential application of specific statistical techniques and even the generalisation of the results.

Field sales managers must help to define the salespeople's tasks to reach the company's objectives in the most effective way. This situation implies, logically, that control is exerted over behaviour and to a lesser extent over the results achieved by the salesperson.

The paper determines those variables which allow companies, and especially those persons holding responsibility in the salesforce, to increase their effectiveness. The objective enriches the knowledge on sales effectiveness and also applies, in the Spanish case, a study methodology that has been applied in other countries.

Considering that little is known on market orientation at the individual level, this study investigates the effects of individual market orientation on proactive service behavior, and subsequently, sales performance among business-to-business salespeople. Based on social cognitive theory and competing values framework, this paper also examines the interaction effects of organizational culture on the link between individual market orientation and proactive service behavior.

The study sampled 539 business-to-business salespeople from 18 corporate banks in Kuala Lumpur by using a questionnaire survey.

The results of the study show that adhocracy culture strengthens the effects of information acquisition on proactive service behavior, while at the same time weakens the impact of coordination of strategic response on the same outcome. Meanwhile, rational culture displayed negative contingent effects of information dissemination on proactive service behavior.

Given its link to sales performance and proactive service behavior, banks should motivate their employees to embrace market orientation as individual competencies. This research outcome will aid managers in developing strategies and inculcating the right culture to ensure the market-oriented behaviors are internalized and transpired into positive outcomes.

This paper contributes to the enrichment of the existing market orientation frameworks by offering underlying mechanisms (cultural environment and proactive service behavior) through which market-oriented behaviors contribute to the sales performance of business-to-business salespeople within the financial service industry. It is also among the earliest studies that examine the influence of individual market orientation and organizational culture on proactive service behavior.

This paper aims to investigate and compare both real estate agents and their service consumers' perception on ethics of real estate agents in Nigeria; an emerging economy with less organized and transparent property market.

The study adopts a survey approach to research. Using Bartlett et al.'s model of determining sample size, a total of 125 firms were randomly selected from the list of registered real estate consultancy firms in Lagos metropolis. For each firm contacted (through business addresses), three service consumers were randomly selected from their archives of consumers. Questionnaires were personally administered and retrieved with useful response rates of 70 per cent and 75 per cent for real estate agents and service consumers respectively. Data emanating from the survey were analysed using frequency distribution and ANOVA analyses.

Among other findings, the results indicate that both real estate agents' and consumers' ratings of ethics of real estate agents is average on a five‐point Likert scale. Furthermore, real estate agents' self perception of the five year trend in their ethics was positive, albeit with a strong belief that commercial consideration should take precedence over an ethical stance in a real estate transaction.

In spite of the uniformly high self‐perception of agent ethics, most practitioners in real estate agency consultancy believe that commercial or economic considerations are more important than an ethical stance in a real estate transaction. This raises a serious fundamental issue about the essence and practical understanding of ethics by practitioners and what ethics entails in the discharge of their professional duty.

The paper complements the existing body of literature on real estate ethics by providing an empirical assessment of real estate agents in an emerging economy.

Luxury companies have expanded globally, but little attention is given to the difficulties associated with expansion to culturally different countries, especially when focusing on training salespeople in rapport-building behaviors. To address this discussion, we answer these research questions: (1) Does the luxury fashion brand country of origin affect the rapport-building strategies of salespeople?; (2) How do luxury fashion employees classify customers from collectivistic cultures with emerging economies, such as that in Brazil?; and (3) What are the rapport-building strategies used by these salespeople for each of these luxury fashion customer segments?

The authors conducted in-depth interviews with salespeople, managers and team supervisors from four global luxury retailers from Britain, France and Italy that operate in Brazil. In total, the authors interviewed 20 employees with an average of greater than 7 years of experience in luxury sales. The authors based their analysis on a theoretically generated coding guide and content analysis theories.

When expanding to culturally different countries, retail companies should adopt glocal strategies, especially when luxury is involved and when customers demand exclusive attention from companies. Additionally, the authors suggest that the effectiveness of rapport building strategies is culturally dependent and should be adapted to the microlevel, especially for continental countries that are culturally diverse.

This is employee-view research, with no inputs from customers or corporate managers. Luxury fashion brand stores did not grant permission for official research within their employees nor the observation of their customers during in-store interactions. Researchers interviewed employees as individual professionals, and their identities will remain anonymous.

When expanding to culturally different countries, luxury retailers should give special attention to the adaption of sales strategies, training and sales guidelines.

This study focuses on customer-employee rapport from the company's perspective.

The research aims to establish importance scheme of geospatial factors for land valuation activities that may serve as an eye-opener and aid the concerned government agencies in drafting land valuation policies and guidelines to achieve a sound land governance and administration. It specifically identifies and weighs geospatial valuation factors to establish their importance.

The research involves discussions and survey questionnaires given to land experts (i.e. appraisers, environmental planners, land economist, geodetic engineers and assessors) who indicated their opinions on influence of geospatial factors on land value. The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) is then used to weigh the factors in terms of its importance.

The result was then compared with the multiple regression analysis (MRA) taking into consideration the standardized regression coefficient of the 15 factors. The AHP method found out the major road accessibility and slope direction as the most and least influential factors, respectively, while surprisingly MRA found major road accessibility not significant at p < 0.05 level of significance.

The research generally reflects the sub-urban type of study area; hence, inclusion of other road types such as express ways and subways and performing sensitivity analysis of AHP are suggested in future studies.

The findings of the study will provide information of concerned government agencies in improving valuation activities, as well as to update values regularly based on the geospatial factors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first effort to rank geospatial factors with analytic hierarchy analytic process that further considered both their negative and positive influences on land value. The approach surmounts the flaw and shortcomings of empirical methods of identifying importance of factors.