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Technology will continue its pervasive global impact on marketing strategies and program components in the twenty‐first century. Technology is changing markets and buyer preferences and the rate of change is likely to increase in the future. Highlights several of the more apparent impacts of technology on markets and the organizations competing in these markets. While change is challenging, it is also exciting. Organizations that are market‐driven and learn how to leverage technologies and other competencies can anticipate promising opportunities for growth and performance.

Job involvement is the psychological identification with one's job. Recent trends in sales organizations have heightened the need for increased job involvement among salespeople. Little research has been done to investigate the relationship of job involvement to demographic, job situational, and market variables in a sales setting. Results of a survey of 417 field salespeople revealed support for associations between job involvement and these variables. Implications are discussed for sales managers and sales researchers.

As productivity pressures, job uncertainties, changing sales strategies, and growing international competition increase, the salesperson experiences unprecedented levels of job stress. Cause and effect of job stress still remains poorly understood. Examines the role of a number of organizational variables including met expectations, role conflict, role ambiguity, job satisfaction, organization commitment and intention to leave and their relationships to job stress. The sample is drawn from an international, service‐oriented salesforce of a large Fortune 500 organization. Provides strong support for the hypothesized model relationship. Presents a discussion and implications of the results along with a summary of needed future research.

Investigates the antecedents and outcomes of salesperson burnout. Prior research on burnout in personal selling is extended by including a more complete set of predictors of burnout, and by testing the conceptual model of burnout using a multi‐company sample of field salespeople in an international setting. Relationships among burnout, attitudes, and behavior are predicted based on relevant literature, and are tested using survey results from 148 field salespeople in Australia. Path analysis results show that the proposed conceptual model fits the data well. Intrinsic motivation, role ambiguity, and role conflict are all significant antecedents of burnout. Job satisfaction and salesperson performance are direct outcomes of burnout, and also mediate the indirect influence of burnout on organizational commitment and intention to leave. Implications for salesforce management and future research are discussed.

For the past several decades women have been moving into the United States workforce in greater numbers and they have been gaining access to the types of jobs that were, traditionally, performed exclusively by men. Despite this progress, they are still having difficulty penetrating the so‐called “glass ceiling” into upper management positions (Alimo‐Metcalfe 1993; Tavakolian 1993). Many reasons have been advanced, but the most compelling of these concerns the “glass walls” that support the “glass ceiling”. The “glass walls” refer to those invisible barriers that limit the ability of women and minorities to gain access to the type of job that would place them in a position to break through the “glass ceiling” (Townsend 1996). If women are to gain parity with men in the workforce, they need to succeed in the positions that lie inside the “glass walls” that will enable them to rise through the “glass ceiling” to upper management.

Literature has seen a few famous salesmen suffering from burnout. Think of Willy Lomax’s famous disintegration in Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or the tortured individuals in the work of David Mamet. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted as to why salespeople suffer from burnout, certainly outside the USA.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of adaptive selling (AS) when “click and brick” in control multichannel consumers (MCCs) encounter in-store salespeople.

An online survey was administered to 387 college students from several southeastern colleges in the USA. The study consisted of a single manipulated factor (AS: high vs low) and a second measured factor (degree of MCC search: high vs low). Covariance-based structural equation modeling was selected and analysis was conducted using IBM SPSS AMOS 22.0.0.0.

The findings indicate that while perceptions of control in the retail store increase as customers engage in more multichannel search behavior, the path from perceived control (PC) to purchase intention (PI) is also positively affected by AS as multichannel search increases.

To increase in-store purchases by consumers using the physical location as an information channel, professional sales training, specifically AS skills, should be considered by retail managers for in-store sales personnel. Our findings suggest that salespeople can use AS skills to increase the likelihood of the MCCs’ in-store PI while not reducing their feelings of PC.

In a time where many marketers struggle with how to combine multichannel retailing efforts effectively, this research confirms that new channels create MCCs who desire control. AS shows promise as a technique for retailers to use when selling to a consumer who values control.

The purpose of this exploratory study was to identify those corporate sales activities that lead to teams' higher rates of retention of corporate customers. Twenty-two of 29 National Basketball Association (NBA) teams participated. Teams were categorized based on their success at retaining corporate customers for the three-season period 1998-99 to 2000-01. Key conclusions that led to higher rates of customer retention were: 1) teams having total control over the sale of corporate inventory; 2) corporate sales staff training; and 3) teams understanding that customers needed assistance in the activation of sponsorship programs.

Attention was called in the March number of this Journal to the promotion of a Bill for the reconstitution of the Local Government Board, and the opinion was expressed that the renovated Department should contain among its staff “experts of the first rank in all the branches of science from which the knowledge essential for efficient administration can be drawn.”

Considering recent changes in sales practices, such as the sales role becoming more strategic, increased reliance on technology for sales activities, increased stress from adding technological responsibilities to the sales role and decreased avenues of social support (such as traditional forms of community) to cope with work-related stressors, there is a need to reconsider Verbeke et al.’s (2011) classification scheme of determinants of sales performance, which was based on literature published before these critical changes became apparent. This paper aims to conduct a systematic review of sales performance research published during 1983–2018 to propose an extension to Verbeke et al.’s (2011) classification.

This paper followed a systematic approach to the literature review in five sequential steps – search, selection, quality control, extraction and synthesis – as suggested by Tranfield et al. (2003). In total, 261 peer-reviewed journal papers from 36 different journals were selected for extraction and synthesis.

The findings make the following additions to the classification: strategic and nonstrategic activities as a new category, technological drivers of sales performance and job-related psychosocial factors as a broader category to replace role perceptions. Derived from the job demand–control–support model, three subcategories within the category of job-related psychosocial factors are psychological demands (encompasses role perceptions and digital-age stressors such as technostress creators), job control and work-related social support.

This paper identifies that manager’s role in facilitating technology skills, providing informal social support to remote or virtual salespeople using technology, and encouraging strategic behaviors in salespeople are future research areas having good potential. Understanding and building positive psychology aspects in salespeople and their effect on sales performance is another promising area.

Newly added technological drivers draw the attention of sales firms toward the influence of technology and its skilful usage on salesperson performance. Newly added strategic activities makes a case for the importance of strategic participation in salesperson performance.

This review extends Verbeke et al.’s (2011) classification scheme to include recent changes that sales profession and literature have undergone.