No abstract

The recent work of Sujan, Weitz, and Kumar (1994) brings into sharp focus two distinct goal orientations of salespeople: learning and performance. In this article, the authors make two primary contributions to this emerging topic in salesforce literature: (1) They develop and examine novel propositions that shed light on how supervisors influence the goal orientations of salespeople, and (2) They examine whether supervisors’ influence on their salespeople's orientations is moderated by salesperson experience. The article's hypotheses are tested using data from salespeople in two Fortune 500 companies. The results support several of the a priori hypotheses and suggest that supervisory behaviors (as perceived by salespeople) have a significant influence on salespeople's learning and performance orientations. Furthermore, the authors obtain some support for the hypothesized moderating effect of salesperson experience.

The adaptive selling literature identifies effective salespeople as those who match their influence tactics to suit the characteristics of buyers. However, prior research is largely silent on the specific influence tactics that salespeople use and the effectiveness of these tactics across different types of buyers. The authors propose a theoretical model that uses Kelman's (1961) underlying influence processes of internalization, compliance, and identification to identify the seller influence tactics that salespeople use and to assess which of these tactics will resonate with three types of buyers: task-oriented buyers, interaction-oriented buyers, and self-oriented buyers. The authors test their model with data from 193 bidirectionally matched buyer-seller dyads. The results strongly support the theoretical model and suggest that buyers are more complex than originally presumed. However, salespeople seem to recognize this complexity and use the combination of influence tactics prescribed by theory for persuading these types of buyers.

The authors examined the moderating effects of coping tactics on the relationship between negative emotion and work performance. Findings indicate an adverse effect of emotion on performance; however, this effect is moderated by coping tactics. Venting (expressing one's negative feelings to others) amplified the adverse effects of negative emotion. Self-control had mixed effects: On one hand, it buffered the adverse effects of negative emotion, yet on the other hand, it had a negative direct effect on outcomes. Task focus had a positive direct effect on performance but no buffering (moderating) effect. Implications of these findings for understanding the effects of negative emotion and coping in the workplace are discussed.

The authors assessed previously unexplored processes by which information seeking and self-efficacy contribute to self-regulatory effectiveness in industrial selling. They assessed the synergistic interaction of inquiry and monitoring with respect to role clarity and tested whether this interaction was further moderated by self-efficacy. Results indicated that the role-clarifying effects of feedback inquiry and monitoring were contingent rather than independent. Role clarity increased as the combination of inquiry and monitoring increased. Furthermore, these joint effects were moderated by self-efficacy, such that high-self-efficacy employees were able to effectively use the combination of inquiry and monitoring to clarify role expectations, whereas low-self-efficacy employees were not. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed.