Why Do Salespeople Quit? An Empirical Examination of Own and Peer Effects on Salesperson Turnover Behavior

Abstract

Salesperson turnover can have a negative overall effect on a firm. Research on salesperson turnover has conceptually studied the consequences of voluntary turnover on a firm. However, little empirical research has investigated the antecedents of salesperson turnover—specifically, the role of own effects (relative performance, customer satisfaction, and goal realization) and peer effects (peer performance variance and turnover). Therefore, the authors propose a framework to assess the influence of own factors (through identity theory) and of peer factors (through social identity theory) on salesperson turnover. Using a proportional hazard model implemented on data consisting of 6,727 salespeople over two years, the results suggest that in addition to own behaviors, managers need to pay attention to peer behaviors because peer turnover (voluntary and involuntary) greatly increases a salesperson's turnover probability. Furthermore, the results indicate that peer effects have a greater impact than own effects. This research has implications for sales force management because it helps managers (1) identify a salesperson's turnover risk, (2) diagnose the drivers of turnover behavior, and (3) build strategies to prevent salesperson turnover.

Thank You for Being a Friend: A Peer-Learning Approach to Marketing Education

“…For example, the competitive nature of sales employees has been found to be correlated with perceptions of how competitive their peers are (Brown et al, 1998; Schrock et al, 2016). Similar peer influences have been found for a range of workplace outcomes and attitudes, including employee’s turnover intentions (Sunder et al, 2017), commitment to new strategies (Hayati et al, 2018), organizational identification (Kraus et al, 2012), and technology adoption (Weinstein & Mullins, 2012), among others. Though peer effects yield similar results to peer-learning approaches, they differ significantly in terms of how these effects are achieved.…”

Impact of religiosity and culture on salesperson job satisfaction and performance

“…Transformative actions help enhance salespeople’s job satisfaction (Aydogmus et al, 2018), and such positive actions toward enhancing customer satisfaction have also been repeatedly shown to reduce turnover (e.g. Sunder et al, 2017), in a somewhat self-reinforcing cycle. A spiritual personal orientation also helps an employee finding meaning at work (Karakas, 2010), and an ability to engage in helping to institute change and contributing to a learning environment to help others makes changes as well (Howard, 2002).…”

The turnover contagion process: An integrative review of theoretical and empirical research

“…David, Avery, Witt, and McKay (2015) found that aggregate coworker turnover was positively related to a focal employee's (supervisor‐rated) likelihood of turnover. Likewise, in a sample of business‐to‐customer salespersons, Sunder, Kumar, Goreczny, and Maurer (2017) found that the proportion of workplace peers that voluntarily quit was positively related to the likelihood that one would quit. Furthermore, peer voluntary turnover increased the risk of turnover twice as much as peer involuntary turnover (increased risk of 2.88% as compared with 1.15%), suggesting that coworker voluntary turnover is more likely to translate into employee voluntary turnover.…”

“…For example, turnover contagion may be more likely depending upon the time of year, the competitiveness of the labor market, the industry, or the type of work; identifying these trends will provide insights regarding when and how organizations may implement certain retention strategies. Moreover, the type of turnover (e.g., dismissal and downsizing) may be perceived by stayers differently and therefore has a different influence on their propensities to leave (Sunder et al, 2017). As such, practitioners may need to consider the organizational, professional, or industrial context before assuming that turnover contagion processes will generalize to their specific context.…”