From personal to online selling: How relational selling shapes salespeople’s promotion of e-commerce channels

In the digital economy, many business-to-business companies expect their salespeople to promote e-commerce channels to customers as alternative ways to purchase. However, salespeople are often hesitant to comply with this approach, which despite its high practical relevance, has been rarely examined by academic research. Therefore, the authors develop a theoretical framework outlining key determinants of salespeople’s promotion of e-commerce channels. To this end, the authors integrate relational-selling theory with goal-setting theory and test their conceptualization using a multilevel data set comprising surveys of 68 salespeople, 220 customers, and objective company data. The results show that salespeople who are more relational-selling oriented are less likely to promote the use of e-commerce channels—especially if a customer has a negative attitude toward e-commerce or if competitors are focused on personal selling. With these findings, our study helps managers improve their salespeople’s essential role as promoters of e-commerce channels.