Sales and Merchandising Commons^™

What Makes Strategy Making Across The Sales-Marketing Interface More Successful?, Avinash Malshe, Ravipreet S. Sohi

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

Extant research on marketing strategy making (MSM) lacks process-based theoretical frameworks that elucidate how marketing strategies are made when sales and marketing functions are involved in the process. Using a grounded theory approach and data collected from (a) 58 depth interviews with sales and marketing professionals and (b) a focus group with 11 marketing professionals, we propose that MSM within the sales-marketing interface is a three-stage, multifaceted process that consists of Groundwork, Transfer and Follow-up stages. Our process-based model explicates the specific activities at each stage that are needed to develop and execute marketing strategies successfully, the sequence in which …

Gender Differences In Communication:Implications For Salespeople, Daniel H. Mcquiston, Kathryn A. Morris

Scholarship and Professional Work - Business

As more women enter into the traditionally male-dominated occupations of sales and purchasing, an understanding of gender differences in communication can provide salespeople with added information to increase their effectiveness. 1his paper begins with a review of the research on gender differences in verbal and non-verbal communication and then applies these findings to the field of sales. The paper concludes with managerial implications and recommendations for how salespeople might account for gendered aspects of their communications and by so doing potentially increase the effectiveness of their sales process.

The Often-Neglected Term In The Entrepreneurial Equation—The Purchase Order, Deaver Brown, Joseph E. Levangie

New England Journal of Entrepreneurship

Many entrepreneurs are enthralled with their company’s technologies, products and potential markets. Invariably these emerging ventures present bedazzling business plans with industry-wise vernacular, detailed market research, and sophisticated financial spreadsheets. They often flaunt their “optimized business models.” Investors, however, typically want to know when and how the sales will start meeting the Plan. “Where’s the purchase order?” is the refrain. In this article, our “Practitioner’s Corner” associate editor Joe Levangie collaborates with a long-time colleague, Deaver Brown, to address how businesses should “make sales happen.” Levangie warns that Brown’s elitist education (Choate, Harvard College, Harvard Business School) should not be …

The Effects Of Environment Dynamism And Heterogeneity On Salespeople's Role Perceptions, Performance And Job Satisfaction, Ravipreet S. Sohi

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

This article develops a structural equations model which examines the effects of environmental dynamism and heterogeneity on salespeople’s role conflict, role ambiguity, performance and job satisfaction. The model is tested with EQS, using data collected from 230 salespeople in multiple companies and industries. Indicates that environmental dynamism reduces satisfaction and performance, and increases role conflict and ambiguity. Notes that environmental heterogeneity also reduces performance and increases role conflict, but does not have a significant effect on role ambiguity.

Salespersons’ Perceptions About Sales Contests: Towards A Greater Understanding, William H. Murphy, Ravipreet S. Sohi

Department of Marketing: Faculty Publications

Aims to improve understanding of an important and widely used management tool for motivating the salesforce – sales contests. Begins by introducing the question: what factors are associated with salespeople's feelings towards a sales contest? Several potentially relevant characteristics that are expected to be associated with various feelings towards contests are discussed. To test the hypotheses, data were collected through verbal protocols and surveys from salespeople belonging to a division of a Fortune 100 firm. Results indicate that salespeople's self-esteem, commitment level, and career stage play a role in influencing feelings towards the sales contest.

The impetus for this research …