4.6 Salespeople Are Made, Not Born

Firms often deploy monetary incentives to motivate and encourage employees to achieve organizational goals. Meeting these goals can increase revenues, profits, market share, and other valuable outcomes for the firm. This research explores the potential influence monetary incentives have on dishonest behavior, employee loyalty, and goal attainment. By evaluating these variables, the study advances the knowledge of goal attainment within the sales context.

Job related emotions constitute an underdeveloped area of study, specifically in sales. This work looks at the relationship between surface acting and selling orientation and examines the ways different sales orientations influence salesperson self-alienation at work. Furthermore, it examines how self-alienation at work relates to emotional exhaustion among salespeople. 

Previous research has shown that salesperson grit is not a consistent predictor of unethical/ethical sales behaviors. The integrated theory of ethical decision-making offers possible explanations. Our study evaluates the influence of the sales ethics subculture and salesperson grit across two distinct types of unethical behavior. The first type is named unethical sales behaviors and is motivated out of self-interest. The second type, called pro-social rule breaking, is selfless in nature. Empirical data from 197 salespeople were analyzed via SEM. When controlling for the sales ethics subculture, we find that higher levels of salesperson grit result in lower levels of selfish unethical sales behaviors, but grit does not change the amount of selfless pro-social rule breaking. Moreover, unethical sales behaviors inflict damage to the relationship between salespersons and their clients, but contrary to our beliefs, pro-social rule breaking neither damages nor improves these relationships.

While salespeople can be driven by many things, intrinsic motivators are more positively related to performance and effort than extrinsic motivators. Prior research has focused largely on intrinsic motivators such as connections a salesperson has within their organization and their customers, but few have addressed the connection a salesperson has with the products they sell. To address this issue, this study examines the impact of salesperson product involvement on selling effort and salesperson performance, a relationship that has been largely ignored in extant literature. The authors identify four moderating conditions that impact the effectiveness of salesperson product involvement: two salesperson-firm connections and two salesperson-customer connections. Results indicate that salesperson product involvement has a positive impact on salesperson performance through an increase to salesperson selling effort, but this relationship can be enhanced or diminished by various customer and organization related factors.

This study investigates the influence of salesperson religiosity on customer perceptions in business-to-consumer (B2C) interactions. Drawing from literature on religiosity's role in marketing, the research employs an experimental methodology to analyze customer perceptions in high and low-religious settings. The findings indicate that moderate inclusion of religious messaging in the sales process positively signals aspects about the seller, supporting the notion that genuine expressions of religious beliefs can enhance trust. However, excessive religiosity may be perceived as disingenuous, necessitating a balance. Importantly, customer religiosity influences sales outcomes, such as purchase intentions, satisfaction with the salesperson, word-of-mouth behavioral intentions, perceptions of salesperson honesty, and attitude toward the salesperson, prompting a nuanced approach in aligning seller beliefs with those of the customer. This research provides valuable insights for managers, urging them to authentically express religious beliefs, aligning with customer values, while cautioning against overselling.