Sales Call Reluctance and Sales Performance in Banking

1
Sales Call ReluctanceandSales
PerformanceinBanking
2
Problem

• Visibility management is a critical core
  competency associated with success in the direct
  sales profession.
• To be successful, salespeople must consistently
  make themselves, their products and services
  visible in the marketplace.
• They accomplish this by prospecting, initiating
  contact on a regular basis with prospective
  buyers through the use of the telephone, group
  presentations, social networking, referrals from
  existing customers and other organization-specific
  practices.
• However, some salespeople, managers, trainers and
  consultants, are conflicted about or hesitant to
  engage in these visibility management behaviors
  and may consequently avoid them or dismiss their
  importance.

3
Problem (Continued)

• Escape and avoidance behaviors related to sales
  prospecting situations are collectively referred
  to as sales call reluctance.
• Many studies have linked lower levels of sales
  call reluctance to higher levels of sales success
  in a variety of sales-oriented cultures and
  settings.
• This study examined the relationship between call
  reluctance diagnostic measures and performance in
  salespeople working in the banking industry.

4
Method

• The Sales Preference Questionnaire (SPQ) is a
  limited purpose, self-descriptive inventory
  designed to diagnose fears specifically
  associated with initiating first contact for
  sales prospecting purposes.
• It consists of 19 diagnostic scales plus two
  composite measures (Table 1).
• One hundred and sixty-two salespeople employed by
  a bank to sell banking products and services
  were participants in the study.

5
Method (Continued)

• Each individual completed the SPQ as part of the
  organizations standard career development
  protocol.
• Due to the limited sample size, four scales were
  selected for analysis based on results of several
  previous SPQ studies of high and low producers
  across industries, organizations and national
  settings.
• Objective sales rankings were assigned by
  supervisors based on the organizations
  proprietary weighted performance criteria.
• Based on the outcome, salespeople were assigned
  either a high or low production
  classification.Twenty-eight did not meet criteria
  for either high or low group inclusion, and were
  not included in the study.

6
Data Analysis Results

• Logistic regression was used to analyze the data
  due to the categorical nature of the criterion,
  and our unwillingness to assume the variables of
  interest were multivariate normal (as assumed for
  discriminant analysis).
• Means and standard deviations are presented in
  Table 2.
• Results of the logistic regression are summarized
  in Table 3.
• Consistent with prior sales call reluctance
  research, Yielder, Doomsayer, and Prospecting
  Goal Level were significant predictors of sales
  success in the banking services setting.

7
Results (Continued)

• The model yielded an overall correct
  classification rate of 78, based on accurate
  prediction of 79 of high performers and 77 of
  low performers.

8
Discussion

• Salespeople with higher levels of sales call
  reluctance are likely to produce less than
  salespeople with little or no hesitation to
  initiate first contact with prospective buyers.
• Results of this study are generally consistent
  with results obtained in previous SPQ studies
  which also utilized objective sales performance
  criteria.
• Results from studies where broader, more
  objective ratings were used, tended to be more
  inconclusive. This suggests that SPQs
  behaviorally narrow approach may help reduce
  uncertaintywhen narrow criteria such as earned
  dollars of commissions are used, but less so in
  situations were broad constructs such as
  team-mindedness or empathy are preferred.

9
Discussion (Continued)

• The current study may have yielded anomalously
  high classification accuracy due in part to
  the narrow construction of sales used in the
  banking sector and other company- specific
  considerations. Call reluctance studies in the
  past produced variance explanations typically
  ranging from 9 to 30. ( Nagelkerke R2 for
  the present study 47.)

• Cross-industry, company and nation studies
  indicate that specific sales call reluctance
  types which interfere with new business
  generation in one setting can be comparatively
  benign or non-existent in others.

10
Discussion (Continued)

• Additional U.S and multi-national research
  projects are underway to further explore how call
  reluctance impairs sales performance in various
  industries, cultures and settings.
• Efforts continue to explore alternative ways of
  predicting sales call reluctance and producing
  diagnostic measures to guide training
  developmental applications.
• Copies of this study will be available at
  www.behavioralsciences.org

11
Table 1 (Narrative Description of SPQ Scales Goes
Here)
12
Table 2 SPQ DescriptiveStatistics Mortgage
Banking Sales N162
13
Table 3
1 Computed as log odds ratios.
14
References Demaris, Alfred, Logit Modeling, Sage
Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks, Ca.,
1992. Dudley, G.W., Goodson, S.L., Sales
Preferences Questionnaire, Behavioral Sciences
Research Press, Dallas, Texas, 1989. Hintze,
Jerry, NCSS 2001, User Guide, NCSS, Kaysville,
Utah, 2001, pg. 3175-3246. Menard, Scott,
Applied Logistic Regression Analysis, 2nd
Edition, Sage Publications, Inc., Thousand Oaks,
Ca., 2002. Norusis, Marija J., SPSS Professional
Statistics 7.5, SPSS Inc., 1997, pg.
37-64. Nunnally J.C., Bernstein, I.H.,
Psychometric Theory, 3rd Edition, McGraw- Hill,
New York, 1994, 674-680, 704-705.