Dynamic and global drivers of salesperson effectiveness

Sales research has long established that salesperson individual and team drivers are key for executing effective selling strategies. Yet radical changes in the sales context in the past decade also require today’s salespeople to adapt their selling strategies. Moreover, considering the current international selling environment, many firms pursue a wide range of attractive country markets too, which increases the complexity and challenges of managing country-specific selling strategies. The authors undertake an elasticity meta-analysis of 48 studies, conducted in seven countries and one region (Study 1), to determine the effectiveness of individual and team drivers from a dynamic and global perspective. They also perform a correlation-based meta-analysis of 328 studies conducted in 32 countries (Study 2) to assess the correlations between specific salesperson drivers and performance, and how such correlations might be conditioned by country development and cultural characteristics. The results reveal a positive elasticity of individual and team drivers on performance that decreases over time, providing managers with key empirical insights on sales management; selling skill and aptitude show greater correlation with performance than intrafirm relationship and coordination activity. The country and cultural contingency analysis further indicates a stronger correlation between salesperson drivers and performance outcomes in country markets with high unbranded competition, low resource availability, and high long-term orientation.