"The Salesman" is one of the most extensively studied men in the business world.
"What makes a successful salesman" has been one of the most frequently asked and incompletely answered questions in marketing.
It took 20 years to change the word salesman to salesperson but still the question remains as significant as it was.
The persistence of the question is hardly due to lack of research. This has changed in the early 60's; the volume of research has continued to rise since.
These studies have included investigations of the potential match between:.
1. Salesperson personal characteristics and the selling job.
2. Salesperson personal characteristics and the buyer.
Less attention has been devoted to the salesperson's actual behavior in the selling situation, or, in industrial buying settings, to buyers" views regarding salesperson knowledge and skill of preference for the nature of the buyer-salesperson relationship.
Many models that prescribe salesperson's behavior omit the individual buyer preferences or treat the buyer as an object to be manipulated by the salesperson and generally, fail to take into account the buyer's organizational role.
Different schemes have been developed which consider the nature of the selling situation. These are useful but still do not provide insight regarding preferences of individual buyers within an organization.
Finally, models of organizational buying behavior have been developed to focus on the interaction between individuals within the buying organization or on the relationship between the buying and the selling organizations.
However, this article reports on research that focuses on a relatively unexplored question of how buyers view the salespersons" role and how these views vary as a function of the buyer's situation.
Selling Effectiveness.
Selling effectiveness is hard to define or to comprehend.
But it can be expressed in terms of sales volume, profitability, market share, or performance relative to budget or quota.