Do Technology-Based Sales Support Materials Make a Difference in Personal Selling? The Impact of Technology Usage by Gender in the Personal Selling Process

Abstract

Technology usage is widespread across most fields of business. In sales, “back-end” technologies, such as customer relationship management or salesforce automation, offer a foundation for effective and efficient “front-line” interactions in the personal selling process (PSP). In many instances, “front-line” technology applications have replaced traditional, hard-copy sales support materials. However, do these technology-based sales support materials (TSSM) offer meaningful utility in the PSP? Using a randomized field experiment, the current study answers the question through examining the use of TSSM within the PSP and across genders. Results indicate that the use of TSSM offers utility during the presentation and objection-handling stages of the PSP. There are no gender effects associated with technology use. The study offers educators pedagogical recommendations regarding the use of TSSM within the PSP. The study also validates the PSP scale.

A Critical Review of the Literature for Sales Educators 2.0

“…This lack of research is problematic since technological advances are expected to shape both the sales profession and sales professionals dramatically (Singh et al, 2019). In addition to the Inks et al (2020) article in this special issue that examines virtual role-plays, Lee and Heinze (2020) investigate how technology-based sales support materials affect the personal selling process. The possibilities for research are almost limitless; and include such learning areas as social selling, artificial intelligence (AI), and the sales process, the use of mobile platforms, technology, and sales force management, analytics, technology-based assignments, and projects, virtual collaboration.…”

“…Second, responding to calls for research that offer insights for improving classroom and online learning experiences (Inks et al, 2020; Lee & Heinze, 2020), our review details important class topics, learning exercises, and relevant research findings. We thus provide an extensive set of classroom implementable research for instructor reference and academic inquiry (see Table 4).…”

Running With Your Hair on Fire: Lessons Learned From Transitioning a National University Sales Competition From Face-to-Face to Virtual in 16 Days

“…Transitioning from face-to-face to a virtual environment generated a host of issues to be addressed, including choosing an appropriate web-conferencing platform, providing remote training and support, creating a schedule that accommodates time-zone differences, communicating with judges, buyers, coaches, and competitors in a timely and effective manner, managing the role-plays virtually, managing the virtual scoring process (including mitigating virtual data entry errors), distributing results and recreating an environment suitable for networking, the exchange of ideas and spontaneous interaction to create learning opportunities. Especially challenging is that use of virtual technologies is both problematic and beneficial (Lee & Heinze, 2020). Below is description of some of the challenges associated with changing the NCSC format to virtual from face-to-face 16 days out from the start of the competition.…”