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The effective and efficient motivation of the sales personnel affects the sales of a firm directly. The aim of this paper is to study the incentive effects of different compensation contracts under the framework of multi‐agent principal agent model, and it finds that the optimal contract is not the one that ties one salesperson's compensation to his own performance, but the one that ties his compensation to all the salespersons' performance. Factors that influence the incentive degree are also discussed. The purpose of this article is to design a reasonable incentive contract for salespersons where there are competitions between them.

A multi‐agent model where the efforts of one agent harm the performance of the other agent is established.

The optimal compensation of a salesperson is always composed of two parts: an incentive for an agent to improve his own performance and a disincentive for the agent to harm his colleague's performance, provided that there is a competition relationship between the two agents.

This model applies only to the rewards incentive of multi‐agents with competitive relationships.

The conclusion could be used anywhere when there are two agents with one's behavior harming the other's performance.

A multi‐agent model where the efforts of one agent harm the performance of the other agent is established to study the compensation design problems for agents.

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.

The study examines the effects of behavior-based and outcome-based control systems on service-sales ambidexterity, role conflict, emotional exhaustion and job performance in salespeople.

Data are collected from 704 salespeople in Ghana. The proposed hypotheses are tested through the structural equations modeling technique.

The study finds that both behavior-based and outcome-based controls have positive and significant effects on service-sales ambidexterity in salespeople. Similarly, the study discovers that service-sales ambidexterity has a positive and significant impact on both role conflict and emotional exhaustion in salespeople. The study also finds that role conflict and emotional exhaustion both have a negative impact on job performance. Finally, the study finds that salespeople's grit moderates the negative relationship between emotional exhaustion and job performance.

The results imply that while salespeople's service-sales ambidexterity may be beneficial to their individual and firm performance, it may also lead to role conflict and emotional exhaustion.

The current study demonstrates how control mechanisms can lead to service-sales ambidexterity in salespeople and how this can lead to role conflict and emotional exhaustion.

Sales quotas typically “drive” sales organizations. As such, the ability of the sales organization, both individually (the salesperson) and the group (the total collection of the sales professionals), to accomplish its quota has a significant impact on the performance of the sales and marketing organization, as well as the entire firm. Within the context of this use, quotas represent a critical sales goal, although very little is actually known about their strategic or operational use within marketing organizations. The purpose of this paper is to investigate quotas from a strategic and operational perspective to provide additional insight into understanding sales quotas. Specifically, this manuscript investigates the consequences of failing to achieve quota and the relationship between these consequences and salesperson performance, salesperson income, and the firm’s annual sales revenue. In addition, the relationship between these variables and quota difficulty, and quota performance are explored.

The purpose of this study is to develop a model for business to business salesperson performance (SP) with a service ecosystems perspective.

To achieve the research aims, classical grounded theory was used. The data was gathered through in-depth interviews with 20 sales managers and main sales actors.

After coding and analyzing the data, salesperson institutional performance is introduced as a core category including three main dimensions of regulative, normative and cognitive-cultural performance. Multi-level factors determining SP are identified and performance results are introduced in a multi-level long term way. The sales actors, macro variables, actors’ orientations and sales method are introduced as circumstances, while salesperson stressors are presented as covariants deterring the fulfillment of salesperson’s activities.

This study focuses on the contributions of the salesperson in the alignment of institutional arrangements or the results of their being institutionalized, as well as determining the factors and variables affecting it.

Reports a study of sales management in UK companies, which explores the relationship between behaviour‐based control systems and outcome‐based control systems. Although conventional theory has suggested that behaviour performance and outcome performance result from different stimuli, we find that behaviour‐based control is positively associated with both behaviour performance and outcome performance. We find also that organizational commitment and sales territory design are significantly related to salesforce performance. This suggests a number of important avenues for improving salesforce performance. These findings and the growing emphasis on building long‐term, collaborative buyer‐seller relationships favour the use of behaviour‐based control systems in many sales management situations, and suggest a new agenda for management attention in improving salesforce effectiveness.

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.

This paper aims to examine whether and how sales technology (ST) use helps salespeople perform better through the modification of their customer-qualification skills and customer-oriented selling behaviors. Also, the moderating role of salespeople’s technology self-efficacy is analyzed. Technological advancements have become an integral part of the personal selling process, yet the relationship between salesperson’s technology use and salesperson performance remains primarily unsubstantiated.

Data are collected from a diverse sample of 265 salespeople across different industries. Hypotheses are tested with structural equation modeling.

The results indicate that a salesperson’s customer-qualification skills and customer-oriented selling fully mediate the effect of technology use on outcome performance. In addition, salespeople high in technology self-efficacy seem to get the most out of their technology use. More specifically, the influence of technology use on customer-qualification skills and customer-oriented selling is stronger for salespeople with high rather than low self-efficacy. Interestingly, technology use only increases performance for salespeople with high self-efficacy.

Prior evidence on the consequences of ST on performance is not conclusive. The study adds value to both managers and scholars providing new insights of the link between technology use and performance and its underlying mediating and moderating processes. Without an understanding of the ST-performance relationship, sales managers may increase ST costs but decrease potential returns.

This study aims to address the need to study salespersons’ thought self-leadership (TSL) and its effectiveness through the interplay of self-efficacy, skills and behavior at the individual level. It also advances the agenda of integrating self-leadership into marketing literature.

A model was tested using survey data collected from salespeople within pharmaceutical companies located in India and other Asian countries. A structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses.

The results suggest an interesting interplay between a salesperson’s TSL and his/her sales performance. The results also demonstrate the relationship between TSL and self-efficacy and the mediation mechanism through which self-efficacy influences sales performance. Results support the role of TSL as a distal predictor of performance and delineate the complexity of the mediation mechanism through theoretical grounding and empirical evidence.

The research suggests that a salesperson’s TSL relates positively with the sales performance through three process variables; self-efficacy, selling skills and adaptive selling behavior. The results should encourage managers to leverage salesperson’s TSL strategies to build a self-leading sales force and optimize supervision cost. Moreover, training the sales force for enhanced TSL has immediate payoffs in terms of increased selling effectiveness. The study also discusses theoretical implications.

By examining TSL in the sales context, the study makes an original contribution to the extant literature. The results of the study enrich the extant information on self-leadership and sales performance linkages by suggesting a mediation mechanism and proposing an integrated framework with selling skills and adaptive selling behavior.

This study aims to address the need to study salesperson’s customer orientation and its effectiveness to explain the efficacy of predispositions and skills at individual level. This study is set in the Indian context and, therefore, offers a detailed insight from an Indian sales force perspective. Also, this study introduces self-leadership into sales literature.

A model was tested using survey data collected from salespeople within a print media company located in India. A structural equation model was used to test the hypotheses.

The results suggest an interesting interplay between salesperson’s customer orientation and his/her sales performance. The relationship between customer orientation is fully mediated by salesperson’s emotion regulation ability and his/her salesmanship skills. Results support the role of natural rewards strategies as driver of individual level customer orientation which will be of great interest in future research in this area.

The research suggests that a salesperson’s customer orientation relates positively with sales performance through two process variables – emotion regulation and salesmanship skills. Within an Indian sales force, individual salesperson’s customer orientation is significantly influenced by his/her natural rewards strategies which have important implication for sales force recruitment. Moreover, sales training and other interventions targeted toward building salesmanship skills and emotion regulation abilities may actually enhance effectiveness of customer-oriented sales force. Theoretical and managerial applications are also discussed.

This study extends the literature through its examination of an Indian sales force, the incorporation of self-leadership construct (natural rewards strategies) and its argument for an alternative approach toward salesperson’s customer orientation effectiveness.