The authors use meta-analysis techniques to investigate the evidence that has been gathered on the determinants of salespeople's performance. A search of the published and unpublished literature uncovered 116 articles (the list of which is available upon request) that yielded 1653 reported associations between performance and determinants of that performance. The results indicate the determinants can be ordered in the following way in terms of the average size of their association with performance: (1) role variables, (2) skill, (3) motivation, (4) personal factors, (5) aptitude, and (6) organizational/environmental factors. When ordered according to the amount of the observed variation in correlations across studies that is real variation (i.e., not attributable to sampling error), the determinants rank as follows: (1) personal factors, (2) skill, (3) role variables, (4) aptitude, (5) motivation, and (6) organizational/environmental factors. To investigate whether the associations between each of the categories of predictors and performance could be partially accounted for by the presence of moderator variables, the results were broken out by customer type, product type, and type of dependent measure used. The results indicate that the strength of the relationship between the major determinants and salespeople's performance is affected by the type of products salespeople sell. The authors discuss the implications of these findings for sales managers and researchers.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 169.230.243.252 on Sun, This position paper argues that current knowledge of the determinants of motivation and performance in industrial selling is woefully inadequate. As a first step toward improving this situation, the authors offer a conceptual model which identifies a set of individual, interpersonal, organizational, and environmental variables that may influence a salesman's motivation and job performance. The model incorporates many constructs and research findings from industrial psychology and other disciplines, but its primary purpose is to provide a conceptual framework and some specific hypotheses to help guide future empirical research in sales management. the study of this field to "second-class" status. The authors attempt to rectify this situation by (1) reviewing the sparse literature on sales motivation and performance, (2) reviewing the general behavioral science literature on the motivation of employees, and (3) offering a set of propositions which should stimulate and provide directions for future research in sales management. PRESENT VIEW OF SALES MOTIVATION ANDPERFORMANCE One particularly crucial aspect of sales management that has received little attention from marketing scholars is the motivation of salesmen and the determinants of sales performance. In the marketing and sales management literature, the salesman's motivation to expend effort on the job and his resulting performance usually are viewed as functions of one or several independent variables considered separately. Most of this literature focuses on four sets of predictor variables: (1) the aptitude or ability of the salesman, (2) financial compensation and incentives, (3) psychological incentives, and (4) organizational and managerial factors. Sales AptitudeThe limited empirical work investigating the effects of sales aptitude on performance is summarized in 156
While the unique characteristics of the industrial salesman's role has stimulated much recent research, this uniqueness requires the development and use of occupation-specific measurement instruments. A job satisfaction measure specifically designed for industrial salesmen is presented together with norms, a detailed description of the methodology employed, and techniques to evaluate the new instrument's factor structure, reliability, and construct validity.
This report concerns the impact of several organizational climate variables on the job satisfaction of a cross-section of industrial salesmen. To gain greater insight into how climate affects salemen's feelings about their jobs, the relationships between each climate variable and each of seven components of job satisfaction also are examined. Finally, the managerial implications of the findings are explored, and actions that might lead to improvements in salesforce morale are discussed.
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