Managing (Sales)People towards Performance: HR Strategy, Leadership & Teamwork

Managing people towards performance is one of the most critical priorities for managers in practice. This dissertation focuses on this important issue and explores how HR Strategy, Leaders, and Teams, impact performance. It addresses respectively how HR as a system of coherent attributes, multiple dimensions of transformational leadership, and team reflexivity can enhance the performance of (sales)people in organizations. Based on a series of field-studies, the present dissertation demonstrates a number of novel insights. First, it reveals that internal coherence of HR strategy has a positive effect on organizational performance. Second, it demonstrates that both a leader’s level of transformational leadership, as well as a team’s level of reflexivity can be functional, but also dysfunctional for job performance of people in organizations. These results are important for managers, as they represent evidence-based insights, some of which are counter-intuitive, on how they can effectively manage people towards performance. For researchers, the findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the HR-performance relationship

Drivers of Sales Performance: A Contemporary Meta-Analysis

It has been twenty-five years since the publication of a comprehensive review of the full spectrum of sales-performance drivers. This study takes stock of the contemporary field and synthesizes empirical evidence from the period 1982–2008. The authors revise the classification scheme for sales performance determinants devised by Walker, Churchill, and Ford (1977) and estimate both the predictive validity of its sub-categories and the impact of a range of moderators on determinant-sales performance relationships. Based on multivariate causal model analysis, the results make two major observations: (1) Five sub-categories demonstrate significant relationships with sales performance: selling-related knowledge (β=.28), degree of adaptiveness (β=.27), role ambiguity (β=-.25), cognitive aptitude (β=.23) and work engagement (β=.23). (2) These sub-categories are moderated by measurement method, research context, and sales-type variables. The authors identify managerial implications of the results and offer suggestions for further research, including the conjecture that as the world is moving toward a knowledge-intensive economy, salespeople could be functioning as knowledge-brokers. The results seem to back this supposition and indicate how it might inspire future research in the field of personal selling

When Intelligence is (Dys)Functional for Achieving Sales Performance

Using two different samples of salespeople, the authors investigate how a combination of general mental ability (GMA) and specific skills and capabilities (social competence and thinking styles) allows salespeople to reach their sales goals. The study finds evidence for an interaction between GMA and social competence. If combined with high social competence, high GMA leads to highest sales performance; if combined with low social competence, high GMA leads to lowest sales performance. In addition, interaction effects between GMA and a judicial thinking style were found. Salespeople high on GMA have the most potential for attaining high levels of sales performance when combined with specific skills; when lacking these skills they may become the firm’s worst performers

Stijl van Leidinggeven beïnvloedt prestaties

Ook in een contactcenter is de manier van leidinggeven bepalend voor de prestaties van de medewerkers. Dat blijkt uit een onderzoek van de Rotterdam School of Management, een onderdeel van de Erasmus Universiteit. De nadruk bij het onderzoek lag op de verkoop- en servicemedewerkers