Synergistic Effects of Relationship Managers’ Social Networks on Sales Performance

Abstract

This article integrates relationship marketing and social network perspectives to develop and test a model that links objective sales performance with the informational and cooperative benefits that stem from relationship managers' (RMs') social capital structure (brokerage and density) and relations (formal and informal networks). The authors demonstrate the effect of cross-network and overlap-network synergies on performance. Data about both formal and informal networks of 464 employees, including 101 RMs, demonstrate that RMs' performance improves with cross-network synergy when informational benefits from wide-reaching, nonoverlapping ties in the informal network combine with the cooperative benefits of a densely interconnected formal network. In addition, the effects of formal and informal social capital structure on performance increase significantly when RMs have a high degree of network overlap between their formal and informal networks.

Research in marketing strategy

“…they do not examine phenomena within the marketing strategy domain delineated in our review framework-even though some of these examine phenomena that are within the general field of strategic marketing. In fact, the largest category of papers published in these journals (36%) contains studies of marketing tactics that examine one or two individual marketing program elements such as advertising (e.g., Fang et al 2016), product and price (e.g., Slotegraaf & Atuahene-Gima 2011;Steiner et al 2016), channel (e.g., Gooner et al 2011;Samaha et al 2011), and selling (e.g., Gonzalez et al 2014;Harmeling et al 2015) without examining or explicitly controlling for the remaining marketing mix elements.…”

“…The second largest category of papers published in these journals during this period (15%) deal with marketing strategy-related inputs (6%) (e.g., marketing resources and capabilities) (e.g., Grewal et al 2013;Luo & Homburg 2008), outputs (9%) (positional advantages and performance outcomes) (e.g., Katsikeas et al 2016;Morgan & Rego 2006;Rego et al 2013), or both (e.g., Gonzalez et al 2014;Homburg et al 2011;Rego et al 2009). A further 6% of all papers published in these journals focus on internal (i.e.…”

Social Networks within Sales Organizations: Their Development and Importance for Salesperson Performance

“…Of particular interest is an increasing body of work that highlights the importance of social networks in quantifying internal dynamics for sales organizations (e.g. Ahearne et al 2012;Gonzalez et al 2014;Ustuner and Iacobucci 2012).…”

“…Given the link between access to resources and job performance (e.g., Seibert, Kraimer, and Liden 2001), social network perspectives provide potent insights into internal organizational dynamics and their impact on individual level outcomes (e.g. Ahearne et al 2012;Gonzalez et al 2014).…”

“…Although social network analysis has spurred a great deal of interest in the marketing and sales literature, there are still relatively few empirical marketing studies using network analysis (e.g. Ahearne et al 2012;Gonzalez et al 2014;Ustuner and Iacobucci 2012).…”