nach oben

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

Erschienen in:

08.11.2019 | Original Empirical Research

Antecedents and performance outcomes of value-based selling in sales teams: a multilevel, systems theory of motivation perspective

verfasst von: Ryan Mullins, Bulent Menguc, Nikolaos G. Panagopoulos

Erschienen in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science | Ausgabe 6/2020

Einloggen

Aktivieren Sie unsere intelligente Suche, um passende Fachinhalte oder Patente zu finden.

search-config

KI-gestützte Suche

Aus

Abstract

Firms are increasingly deploying a value-based selling (VBS) approach in their sales organizations to drive growth for new offerings. However, VBS adoption remains challenging, signaling that leaders need guidance to motivate VBS. Drawing from the systems theory of motivation, we examine motivational mechanisms at two levels—salesperson and sales team—to understand how to motivate, and benefit from, VBS. Using multisource data (i.e., salespeople, managers, archival performance) from 70 sales teams in a U.S.-based manufacturing and services provider, our findings illustrate drivers and outcomes of VBS. Specifically, we uncover a framework of salesperson, leader, customer, and team factors that help explain salesperson motivation for VBS. Importantly, we link VBS to customers’ adoption of new products to support VBS’s role for selling new products. Critical for sales team strategy, our model also integrates a team-level motivational mechanism to provide a comprehensive framework for salesperson and sales team motivations and outcomes.

Nächster Artikel Cheaper and smaller or more expensive and larger: how consumers respond to unit price increase tactics that simultaneously change product price and package size

Sie haben noch keine Lizenz? Dann Informieren Sie sich jetzt über unsere Produkte:

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft+Technik" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 102.000 Bücher
über 537 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Automobil + Motoren
Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Elektrotechnik + Elektronik
Energie + Nachhaltigkeit
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Maschinenbau + Werkstoffe
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Springer Professional "Wirtschaft"

Online-Abonnement

Mit Springer Professional "Wirtschaft" erhalten Sie Zugriff auf:

über 67.000 Bücher
über 340 Zeitschriften

aus folgenden Fachgebieten:

Bauwesen + Immobilien
Business IT + Informatik
Finance + Banking
Management + Führung
Marketing + Vertrieb
Versicherung + Risiko

Jetzt Wissensvorsprung sichern!

Jetzt informieren

Nur mit Berechtigung zugänglich

Lam et al. (2019) focus on customer contexts impacting hunting–farming ambidexterity. Similarly, the interplay of leadership (proxy efficacy), group (social support, performance management), and individual traits (goal orientations) help influence service–sales ambidexterity (Yu et al. 2015).

We acknowledge that we do not include motivational states and goal generation as mediators in our model between discretionary inputs and goal-striving. However, multiple studies propose direct links between empowering leadership behaviors and sought-after behaviors such as service-oriented citizenship behaviors (Auh et al. 2014) and adaptive selling behaviors (Ahearne et al. 2005). Similarly, meta-analytic results provide robust evidence that regulatory foci predict unique variance in work behaviors after controlling for personality, motivation, and attitudinal predictors (Lanaj et al. 2012). As such, we follow similar work on systems theory that favors a parsimonious theoretical model (e.g., Chen et al. 2007).

We thank an anonymous reviewer for contributing this insight.

Competitive intelligence (Cronbach’s alpha = .86) was measured with a three-item, seven-point scale (i.e., “I try to gather and transmit reliable information about competitors”; “I always assign myself objectives to obtain information about competitors”; “I ask customers about our competition’s strategies”) drawn from Rapp et al. (2011).

It is possible that VBS has an inverted U-shaped effect on customers’ adoption of new products. The rationale is that at very high levels of VBS, salespeople completely focus on the customer’s bottom line, creating value for the customer, but this might involve existing rather than new (and usually more expensive) products. As such, adoption of new products might be hampered at very high levels of VBS. We test this alternative model by entering the squared term of VBS in addition to its main-effect in the model. Although we find that the main effect of VBS is related significantly to adoption of new products (γ = .089, p < .05), the squared term of VBS is not related significantly to adoption of new products (γ = −.001, p > .10).

We thank an anonymous reviewer for suggesting these potential process variables.

Aberdeen Group (2011). Value-based selling: Building a best-in-class capability for sales effectiveness. Accessed on July 31, 2018.

Ahearne, M., Mathieu, J., & Rapp, A. (2005). To empower or not to empower your sales force? An empirical examination of the influence of leadership empowerment behavior on customer satisfaction and performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(5), 945.CrossRef

Ahearne, M., Rapp, A., Hughes, D. E., & Jindal, R. (2010a). Managing sales force product perceptions and control systems in the success of new product introductions. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(4), 764–776.CrossRef

Ahearne, M., MacKenzie, S. B., Podsakoff, P. M., Mathieu, J. E., & Lam, S. K. (2010b). The role of consensus in sales team performance. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(3), 458–469.CrossRef

Ahearne, M., Lam, S. K., Hayati, B., & Kraus, F. (2013). Intrafunctional competitive intelligence and sales performance: A social network perspective. Journal of Marketing, 77(5), 37–56.CrossRef

Amundsen, S., & Martinsen, Ø. L. (2014). Self–other agreement in empowering leadership: Relationships with leader effectiveness and subordinates' job satisfaction and turnover intention. The Leadership Quarterly, 25(4), 784–800.CrossRef

Anderson, J. C., Narus, J. A., & Van Rossum, W. (2006). Customer value propositions in business markets. Harvard Business Review, 84, 1–4.

Anderson, J., Kumar, N., & Narus, J. A. (2007). Value merchants: Demonstrating and documenting superior value in business markets. Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.

Auh, S., Menguc, B., & Jung, Y. S. (2014). Unpacking the relationship between empowering leadership and service-oriented citizenship behaviors: A multilevel approach. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(5), 558–579.CrossRef

Bijlsma-Frankema, K., de Jong, B., & van de Bunt, G. (2008). Heed, a missing link between trust, monitoring and performance in knowledge intensive teams. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 19(1), 19–40.CrossRef

Blocker, C. P., Cannon, J. P., Panagopoulos, N. G., & Sager, J. K. (2012). The role of the sales force in value creation and appropriation: New directions for research. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 32(1), 15–27.CrossRef

Brockner, J., Higgins, E. T., & Low, M. B. (2004). Regulatory focus theory and the entrepreneurial process. Journal of Business Venturing, 19(2), 203–220.CrossRef

Burmeister, A., Li, Y., Wang, M., Shi, J., & Jin, Y. (2019). Team knowledge exchange: How and when does transformational leadership have an effect? Journal of Organizational Behavior.

Chase, K. S, & Murtha, B. (2019). Selling to barricaded buyers. Journal of Marketing, 83(6), 2–20.

Chen, G., & Kanfer, R. (2006). Toward a systems theory of motivated behavior in work teams. Research in Organizational Behavior, 27, 223–267.CrossRef

Chen, G., Kirkman, B. L., Kanfer, R., Allen, D., & Rosen, B. (2007). A multilevel study of leadership, empowerment, and performance in teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92(2).

Chen, G., Kanfer, R., DeShon, R. P., Mathieu, J. E., & Kozlowski, S. W. (2009). The motivating potential of teams: Test and extension of cross-level model of motivation in teams. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 110(1), 45–55.CrossRef

Chen, G., Farh, J. L., Campbell-Bush, E. M., Wu, Z., & Wu, X. (2013). Teams as innovative systems: Multilevel motivational antecedents of innovation in R&D teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98(6), 1018.CrossRef

Crowe, E., & Higgins, E. T. (1997). Regulatory focus and strategic inclinations: Promotion and prevention in decision-making. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 69(2), 117–132.CrossRef

CSO Insights (2018). The growing buyer-seller gap: Results of the 2018 buyer preferences study.

D’Innocenzo, L., Luciano, M. M., Mathieu, J. E., Maynard, M. T., & Chen, G. (2016). Empowered to perform: A multilevel investigation of the influence of empowerment on performance in hospital units. Academy of Management Journal, 59(4), 1290–1307.CrossRef

De Jong, B. A., & Elfring, T. (2010). How does trust affect the performance of ongoing teams? The mediating role of reflexivity, monitoring, and effort. Academy of Management Journal, 53(3), 535–549.CrossRef

DeCarlo, T. E., & Lam, S. K. (2016). Identifying effective hunters and farmers in the salesforce: A dispositional–situational framework. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 44(4).

Deeter-Schmelz, D. R., & Ramsey, R. P. (2003). An investigation of team information processing in service teams: Exploring the link between teams and customers. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(4), 409–424.CrossRef

DeShon, R. P., Kozlowski, S. W., Schmidt, A. M., Milner, K. R., & Wiechmann, D. (2004). A multiple-goal, multilevel model of feedback effects on the regulation of individual and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 89(6), 1035.CrossRef

Dong, Y., Liao, H., Chuang, A., Zhou, J., & Campbell, E. M. (2015). Fostering employee service creativity: Joint effects of customer empowering behaviors and supervisory empowering leadership. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(5), 1364.CrossRef

Fornell, C., & Larcker, D. F. (1981). Evaluating structural equation models with unobservable variables and measurement error. Journal of Marketing Research, 39–50.

Fu, F. Q., Richards, K. A., & Jones, E. (2009). The motivation hub: Effects of goal setting and self-efficacy on effort and new product sales. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 29(3), 277–292.CrossRef

Fu, F. Q., Richards, K. A., Hughes, D. E., & Jones, E. (2010). Motivating salespeople to sell new products: The relative influence of attitudes, subjective norms, and self-efficacy. Journal of Marketing, 74(6), 61–76.CrossRef

Hackman, J. R. (1992). Group influences on individuals in organizations. In M. D. Dunnette & L. M. Hough (Eds.), Handbook of industrial and organizational psychology (2nd ed.), 3, 199–267. Palo Alto, CA: Consulting Psy chologists Press.

Higgins, E. T. (1997). Beyond pleasure and pain. American Psychologist, 52(12), 1280.CrossRef

Higgins, E. T. (2000). Making a good decision: Value from fit. American Psychologist, 55(11).

Hinterhuber, A., & Snelgrove, T. C. (Eds.). (2016). Quantifying and documenting value in business markets. In A. Hinterhuber and T. C. Snelgrove (Eds.), Value first then price: quantifying value in business to business markets from the perspective of both buyers and sellers, 3–13. Routledge, Abingdon, UK.

Hofmann, D. A., & Gavin, M. B. (1998). Centering decisions in hierarchical linear models: Implications for research in organizations. Journal of Management, 24(5), 623–641.CrossRef

Jaramillo, F., & Mulki, J. P. (2008). Sales effort: The intertwined roles of the leader, customers, and the salesperson. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 28(1), 37–51.CrossRef

Johnson, J. S., Friend, S. B., & Horn, B. J. (2014). Levels of analysis and sources of data in sales research: A multilevel-multisource review. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 34(1), 70–86.CrossRef

Jong, A. D., Ruyter, K. D., & Lemmink, J. (2004). Antecedents and consequences of the service climate in boundary-spanning self-managing service teams. Journal of Marketing, 68(2).

Khusainova, R., de Jong, A., Lee, N., Marshall, G. W., & Rudd, J. M. (2018). (re) defining salesperson motivation: Current status, main challenges, and research directions. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 38(1), 2–29.CrossRef

Kohli, A. K. (1989). Effects of supervisory behavior: The role of individual differences among salespeople. Journal of Marketing, 53(4), 40–50.CrossRef

Lam, S. K., DeCarlo, T. E., & Sharma, A. (2019). Salesperson ambidexterity in customer engagement: Do customer base characteristics matter? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 1–22.

Lanaj, K., Chang, C. H., & Johnson, R. E. (2012). Regulatory focus and work-related outcomes: A review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 138(5), 998.CrossRef

Langfred, C. W. (2004). Too much of a good thing? Negative effects of high trust and individual autonomy in self-managing teams. Academy of Management Journal, 47(3), 385–399.

LeBreton, J. M., & Senter, J. L. (2008). Answers to 20 questions about interrater reliability and interrater agreement. Organizational Research Methods, 11(4), 815–852.CrossRef

Marks, M. A., & Panzer, F. J. (2004). The influence of team monitoring on team processes and performance. Human Performance, 17(1), 25–41.CrossRef

Menguc, B., Auh, S., & Kim, Y. C. (2011). Salespeople’s knowledge-sharing behaviors with coworkers outside the sales unit. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 31(2).

Menguc, B., Auh, S., & Uslu, A. (2013). Customer knowledge creation capability and performance in sales teams. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(1), 19–39.CrossRef

Moorman, M. & Vogel, L. (2012). The race to excel at value-based selling: A new and necessary approach to talent transformation. Accessed July 31, 2018, https://www.zs.com/publications/whitepapers/the-race-to-excel-at-value-based-selling-a-new-and-necessary-approach-to-sales-talent-transformation.aspx

Morgeson, F. P., & Hofmann, D. A. (1999). The structure and function of collective constructs: Implications for multilevel research and theory development. Academy of Management Review, 24(2), 249–265.CrossRef

Mullins, R. R., & Panagopoulos, N. G. (2018). Understanding the theory and practice of team selling: An introduction to the special section and recommendations on advancing sales team research. Industrial Marketing Management, 77, 1–3.

Mullins, R., & Syam, N. (2014). Manager–salesperson congruence in customer orientation and job outcomes: The bright and dark sides of leadership in aligning values. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 34(3), 188–205.CrossRef

Mullins, R. R., Ahearne, M., Lam, S. K., Hall, Z. R., & Boichuk, J. P. (2014). Know your customer: How salesperson perceptions of customer relationship quality form and influence account profitability. Journal of Marketing, 78(6), 38–58.CrossRef

Mullins, R. R., Bachrach, D. G., Rapp, A., Grewal, D., & Beitelspacher, L. S. (2015). You don’t always get what you want, and you don’t always want what you get: An examination of control–desire for control congruence in transactional relationships. Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(4), 1073–1088.CrossRef

Neubert, M. J., Kacmar, K. M., Carlson, D. S., Chonko, L. B., & Roberts, J. A. (2008). Regulatory focus as a mediator of the influence of initiating structure and servant leadership on employee behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93(6), 1220.CrossRef

Petrin, A., & Train, K. (2010). A control function approach to endogeneity in consumer choice models. Journal of Marketing Research, 47(1), 3–13.CrossRef

Preacher, K. J., Zhang, Z., & Zyphur, M. J. (2016). Multilevel structural equation models for assessing moderation within and across levels of analysis. Psychological Methods, 21(2).

Rabe-Hesketh, S., Skrondal, A., & Pickles, A. (2004). Generalized multilevel structural equation modeling. Psychometrika, 69(2), 167–190.CrossRef

Rapp, A., Ahearne, M., Mathieu, J., & Schillewaert, N. (2006). The impact of knowledge and empowerment on working smart and working hard: The moderating role of experience. International Journal of Research in Marketing, 23(3), 279–293.CrossRef

Rapp, A., Agnihotri, R., & Baker, T. L. (2011). Conceptualizing salesperson competitive intelligence: An individual-level perspective. Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 31(2), 141–155.CrossRef

Rapp, T. L., Bachrach, D. G., Rapp, A. A., & Mullins, R. (2014). The role of team goal monitoring in the curvilinear relationship between team efficacy and team performance. Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(5), 976.CrossRef

Sacramento, C. A., Fay, D., & West, M. A. (2013). Workplace duties or opportunities? Challenge stressors, regulatory focus, and creativity. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 121(2), 141–157.CrossRef

Schmitz, C. (2013). Group influences of selling teams on industrial salespeople’s cross-selling behavior. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(1), 55–72.CrossRef

Sharma, P. N., & Kirkman, B. L. (2015). Leveraging leaders: A literature review and future lines of inquiry for empowering leadership research. Group & Organization Management, 40(2).

SiriusDecisions (2015). It's 2015. What have you done for me lately? Accessed 1 Aug 2018.

Stanton, J. M. (2000). Reactions to employee performance monitoring: Framework, review and research directions. Human Performance, 13, 85–113.CrossRef

Steenburgh, T. & Ahearne, M. (2018) How to sell new products. Harvard Business Review, November.

Terho, H., Haas, A., Eggert, A., & Ulaga, W. (2012). ‘It's almost like taking the sales out of selling’—Towards a conceptualization of value-based selling in business markets. Industrial Marketing Management, 41(1), 174–185.CrossRef

Terho, H., Eggert, A., Haas, A., & Ulaga, W. (2015). How sales strategy translates into performance: The role of salesperson customer orientation and value-based selling. Industrial Marketing Management, 45, 12–21.CrossRef

Terho, H., Eggert, A., Ulaga, W., Haas, A., & Böhm, E. (2017). Selling value in business markets: Individual and organizational factors for turning the idea into action. Industrial Marketing Management, 66, 42–55.CrossRef

Thomas, R. W., Soutar, G. N., & Ryan, M. M. (2001). The selling orientation-customer orientation (SOCO) scale: A proposed short form. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 21(1), 63–69.

Töytäri, P., & Rajala, R. (2015). Value-based selling: An organizational capability perspective. Industrial Marketing Management, 45, 101–112.CrossRef

Van der Borgh, M., & Schepers, J. (2018). Are conservative approaches to new product selling a blessing in disguise? Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 46(5), 857–878.CrossRef

Van der Borgh, M., De Jong, A., & Nijssen, E. J. (2017). Alternative mechanisms guiding salespersons’ ambidextrous product selling. British Journal of Management, 28(2), 331–353.CrossRef

van Wyk, J., Bornstein, J., & Brooke, P. (2018). Selling industry 4.0: The new sales mind-set for connected products. Deloitte insights. Accessed 1 Feb 2019.

Wang, X. H. F., & Howell, J. M. (2012). A multilevel study of transformational leadership, identification, and follower outcomes. The Leadership Quarterly, 23(5), 775–790.CrossRef

Weitz, B. A., Sujan, H., & Sujan, M. (1986). Knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior: A framework for improving selling effectiveness. Journal of Marketing, 50(4), 174–191.CrossRef

Wieseke, J., Ahearne, M., Lam, S. K., & Dick, R. V. (2009). The role of leaders in internal marketing. Journal of Marketing, 73(2), 123–145.CrossRef

Wilden, R., & Gudergan, S. P. (2015). The impact of dynamic capabilities on operational marketing and technological capabilities: Investigating the role of environmental turbulence. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 43(2), 181–199.CrossRef

Wooldridge, J. M. (2010). Econometric analysis of cross section and panel data (2nd ed.). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Yu, T., Patterson, P., & de Ruyter, K. (2015). Converting service encounters into cross-selling opportunities: Does faith in supervisor ability help or hinder service-sales ambidexterity? European Journal of Marketing, 49(3/4), 491–511.CrossRef

Zhang, X., & Bartol, K. M. (2010). Linking empowering leadership and employee creativity: The influence of psychological empowerment, intrinsic motivation, and creative process engagement. Academy of Management Journal, 53(1), 107–128.CrossRef

Titel: Antecedents and performance outcomes of value-based selling in sales teams: a multilevel, systems theory of motivation perspective
verfasst von: Ryan Mullins
Bulent Menguc
Nikolaos G. Panagopoulos
Publikationsdatum: 08.11.2019
Verlag: Springer US
Erschienen in: Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science / Ausgabe 6/2020
Print ISSN: 0092-0703
Elektronische ISSN: 1552-7824
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00705-2

Cheaper and smaller or more expensive and larger: how consumers respond to unit price increase tactics that simultaneously change product price and package size

Original Empirical Research

The interplay between business and personal trust on relationship performance in conditions of market turbulence

Original Empirical Research

Brand relevance and the effects of product proliferation across product categories

Original Empirical Research

Customer engagement in social media: a framework and meta-analysis

Review Paper

Correction to: Beyond valence: a meta-analysis of discrete emotions in firm-customer encounters

Correction

Toward a theory of spirals: the dynamic relationship between organizational pride and customer-oriented behavior

Original Empirical Research