An ecosystems analysis of how sales managers develop salespeople

Purpose The purpose of this study is to identify and explain how leadership behaviors of sales managers can enhance the development of salespeople within the context of those interpersonal connections and interactions that is the sales ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach The authors collected and analyzed qualitative data from in-depth interviews with a sample of 36 sales professionals. Over 47 hours of interviews were transcribed and analyzed via NVivo. The statements were labeled as particular leader behaviors using the Miles and Huberman (1994) coding system. Findings The study identifies coaching, customer engaging, collaborating and championing as the four key leader behaviors that are relevant to the sales ecosystem. Specifically, coaching and customer engaging enhance the individual microsystems of salespeople; and collaborating and championing enhance the corresponding mesosystems. Analysis of the interview statements further revealed that trust, confidence, optimism and resilience are four relational elements that tend to coexist with these leader behaviors in the sales ecosystem. Practical implications This study provides a structure for sales organizations to strengthen their sales ecosystem through targeted interventions and training for those that manage salespeople. Past research finds that sales organizations too often neglect this type of managerial training. Originality/value This is the first study to examine sales leadership through the lens of Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological systems theory. Further, the qualitative methodology, which is relatively unique in sales research, provides rich data that is particularly useful for exploring how and why things have happened

A qualitative study of leader behaviors perceived to enable salesperson performance

This study builds on and extends previous sales leadership research by exploring sales professionals’ perceptions of effective leadership behaviors. Semistructured interviews with both sales leaders and salespeople working in a global enterprise software company were examined through a qualitative analysis. Results indicated that participants believed sales leadership played an important role in influencing sales performance. When asked to describe specific sales leader behaviors that best enable salesperson performance, sales professionals – both sales leaders and salespeople – overwhelmingly referenced coaching, followed by collaborating, championing, and customer engaging. We define and describe these four key sales leader behaviors and identify four potential mediating variables (trust, confidence, optimism, and resilience), from which emerges a conceptual framework of sales leader behaviors perceived to enable salesperson performance. We examine these four key sales leader behaviors and mediators in the broader context of leadership theory, particularly transformational, servant, authentic, and adaptive leadership theories. The key contribution of this study is the identification of a set of leader behaviors that are likely to be especially effective in modern sales organizations given that they originated from the perceptions of sales professionals themselves

Hiring for sales success: The emerging importance of salesperson analytical skills

Several studies suggest that accelerating technology, increasing product complexity, and an expanding volume of information in the marketplace are changing sales roles, necessitating a review of the current sales skills required for success. Using mixed methods, we examine the skills required of contemporary B2B salespeople. First, we draw on unique data from 3.8 million LinkedIn job postings to examine which skills sales recruiters are seeking in new hires. Whilst confirming the importance of previously researched sales skills, this identified a sales skill largely disregarded by the extant literature: salesperson analytical skills. We triangulated these findings through interviews with 20 sales executives and developed a scale to measure this new analytical skills construct. Then, to test the scale's predictive and nomological validity, we used survey data from 251 business-to-business salespeople. Results reveal that salesperson analytical skills have both a direct and a moderating effect on sales performance across varying selling situations