Models of Salesperson Performance

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Models of Salesperson Performance
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The rest of the semester

• Well address more tactical issues in sales force
  management
• Performance Drivers Evaluation
• Motivation Compensation
• Selection Training
• Sales Force Automation/E-commerce
• Pulling it all together (Digital Think, Group
  Projects)

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Components of Performance

• Role perceptions
• Aptitude Personality
• Skill Level
• Motivation Level
• Organizational/environmental variables
• Rewards

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Role Perceptions

• A primary influence on how salespeople perform
  is their perceptions of the demands placed upon
  them
• A role is a prescription
• it tells you the activities and behavior that are
  expected of anyone in a position
• Role partners
• communicate expectations
• pressure salespeople to meet them
• A role partner is anyone with a vested interest
  in how a salesperson does the job, such as
• the boss, the customers, other executives, other
  salespeople and support people, people who are
  significant in the sales reps personal life

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Role Stress

• Role stress is like a disease most reps suffer
  complications of role stress
• Why?
• Sales is at the boundary of the firm salespeople
  are boundary spanners, which means lots of role
  partners
• Salespeople often have to be creative find
  solutions reconcile needs
• A sales reps performance affects performance of
  lots of other people
• Sales reps personify the cruel voice of the
  marketplace (scapegoat- kill the messenger)
• Time and resource constraints necessitate
  tradeoffs between role partners expectations

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Role Stress (continued)

• Day after day, salespeople grapple with the
  messages their role partners send them and the
  pressures role partners put on them.
• Two things create role stress (create problems
  that eventually will make the salesperson
  miserable)
• Perceived Role Conflict
• Perceived Role Ambiguity

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Perceived Role Conflict

• you feel that the demands of your role partners
  are incompatible. To make one happy, you have to
  upset another (perceived).
• Upshot misery poor motivation

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Perceived Role Ambiguity

• You feel you dont have the information to cope
  with your job demands
• dont know how to do a task
• dont know what role partners expect
• dont know how your performance is being
  evaluated
• dont have clear objectives
• SUM unsure how youre doing and what to do next

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How to reduce Role Stress

• Communicate! Give feedback!
• Even bad news is better than no news
• Salespeople must have accurate expectancies
  instrumentalities
• Training and encouragement increase expectancies
  for desired levels of performance- people who
  believe they can, often do
• Accept that some role stress is normal (even
  desirable)
• but be especially alert for dysfunctional levels
  of role stress in inexperienced people

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Sales Manager Atmosphere Creation

• Traditional Approach
• Authoritative management
• Emphasis on rewards the manager gives out
• pay
• promotion
• recognition of achievement
• Leading to
• Motivation to work harder intensity, persistence

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Non-traditional atmosphere

• Participatory leadership
• Emphasis on intrinsic rewards motivation
• people work because selling satisfies them with
• challenges
• pride in serving customers
• pride in skills
• Warm Culture
• informal
• sense of shared values
• identify with company
• long-term employment

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Aptitude Personality

• Intelligence, cognitive abilities, verbal
  intelligence, math ability, sales aptitude
• Responsibility, dominance, sociability,
  self-esteem, creativity/flexibility, need for
  achievement/intrinsic rewards, need for
  power/extrinsic rewards
• Focus on these during selection decisions

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Skill Level

• vocational skills
• sales presentation skills
• general management
• interpersonal
• vocational esteem
• Focus on these via training

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Motivation Rewards

• Expectancies salespersons estimates of the
  probability that effort will lead to improved
  performance on a specific dimension
• Instrumentalities salespersons estimates that
  improved performance will lead to increased
  rewards
• Valence for reward how much the salesperson
  wants the reward
• Deal with this in designing the compensation
  package

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Can we predict who will be a good performer?
Percent of Variance in Performance Explained
Weighted Mean Correlation Coefficient
Number of Correlations Reported
Variables Affecting Performance
(R)
(R)2
1. Aptitude 2. Personal Characteristics 3.
Skill Levels 4. Role Perceptions 5.
Motivation 6. Organizational/Environmental
Factors
820 407 178 59 126 51
.138 .161 .268 .294 .184 .104
.019 .026 .072 .086 .034 .011
Adapted from Gilbert A. Churchill, Jr., Neil M.
Ford, Steven W. Hartley, and Orville C. Walker,
Jr., The Determinants of Salesperson
Performance A Meta-Analysis, Journal of
Marketing Research (May 1985), p. 107.
SOURCE
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Nevertheless, we think we can
Characteristics of a Successful
Salesperson (percent of all characteristics
cited multiple responses were possible
Committed to quality and customer service,
aggressiveness, persistent, self-confident
48
Sales, problem-solving, communication, time
management
25
Product, industry, market
13
Meets objectives
11
4
Completes paperwork, political acumen
17
Summary

• This model gives us a framework to address
  various components of performance
• Overall, we might not find strong relationships,
  but on a company by company basis there are
  probably some indicators of success