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8/3/2019 Review Note
1/4
Role identity and attributions of high-performing salespeople
In the USA companies spend a big amount of more than $7 billion per year to train the
salespeople for better working. And with the passage of time the need of more capablesalespeople increases the companies also increase the functional areas from where they could
find variety of workers for enhancing companies working.
Sales research article identifies two broad theories: a) a sale consultant identity that represent
a company's products or services in order to obtain new customers. The term sales consultant
is broad because the exact duties and scope of responsibilities depend on the type of business.
For example, some sales consultants help other businesses improve their sales force. Other
sales consultants inform and advise customers or clients about products or services with the
primary goal of generating sales. b) a technical specialist identity mainly focused on vertical
integration, physical facilities, even a seemingly superior product can no longer assure a
competitive edge. Instead, sustainable advantage is more and more likely to come from
developing superior capabilities in a few core service skills--and out-sourcing as much of the
rest as possible. In short we define a sales consultant as a salesperson who views their role as a
relationship manager aiming to help customers with challenges across all dimensions of their
business, with the goal of providing solutions and creating collaborative relationships. We
define a technical specialist as a salesperson who relies on their particular product/service
knowledge to solve customer problems. Sales consultants view themselves as consultative
problem-solvers, whereas the technical specialists focus on using their own technical
specialization to fit customer needs. In relying on their own technical skills, technical specialists
may be more inclined to overlook the talent of other organizational members dispersed across
the selling organization. In contrast, sales consultants see their role as solving customer
problems regardless of where the needed expertise might be found. Further, the relational
focus of sales consultants enables discovery of unmet customer needs and opportunities;
whereas, the technical specialists focus on current technical problems may limit the
identification of ways in which to help customers in the long run.
In situations where the outcome was immediately known based on whether or not a sale was
made. In the sales literature on attributions, research has predominantly focused on generalcausal beliefs a salesperson makes and the subsequent intentions for future actions such as to
work harder, to seek assistance, or to change strategies.
A sample of 60 business-to-business salespeople and their respective sales managers at Fortune
100 high-technology company. The salespeople in our sample classified their role perception in
the company, and described attributions for both a recent successful and unsuccessful
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customer engagement. Additionally, sales managers provided overall performance ratings for
each salesperson. Collecting data from multiple sources allowed them to examine the
relationships among role identities, attributions, and performance.
In this research paper three contributions to the identity and attribution of sales people have
been made. First, to demonstrate that business-to-business salespeople who possess different
role identities perform differently. Few studies have examined the impact of identity upon
performance. While previous research on attributions has focused solely on global attributions
(locus of causality, causal stability, and controllability) examine finer-grained attributions that
relate to relationships surrounding the selling process and the attributions corresponding to the
technical performance of the product/service provided. By isolating these two attribution
categories, relational factors and technical factors provide specific theoretical and practical
implications for sales management.
An array of research has examined the way in which self-enhancing attributions vary withindividual factors such as optimism and self-efficacy. The dominant theme from this research is
that attributions depend on the way in which we view ourselves. Based on this literature, we
propose that there are differences in both role identity and attributions between higher- versus
lower-performing salespeople.
Hypothesis:
Role identity is the way in which we define and view ourselves in a given role. In the sales
context for high-technology products and services, we suggest that two natural identities
emerge:
1) An identity as a sales consultant
2) An identity as a technical specialist
Exploratory study was conducted at a Fortune 100 high technology company. The sample
consisted of 60 business-to-business salespeople each responsible for identifying, securing, and
managing resources, including the personnel and knowledge needed for each engagement.
A one-hour telephone interview was conducted with each salesperson. Open-ended questions
were asked about the details of how each engagement unfolded.
For each engagement the salesperson was asked about attributes, role identity and
performance.
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H1 was examined by conducting planned contrasts comparing the performance between
salespeople who saw themselves as sales consultants to those salespeople who saw themselves
as technical specialists.
H2 and H3 examined the relationships among role identity and attributions for engagement
success and failure. The descriptive results illustrate a clear difference between the attribution
patterns in successful versus unsuccessful engagements.
The descriptive results illustrate a clear difference between the attribution patterns in
successful versus unsuccessful engagements. In successful engagements, 48.3 percent (n 29)
of salespeople overall attributed success to the performance of the team; whereas only 6.7
percent (n 4) of salespeople attributed unsuccessful engagements to the team. Further,
whereas 65 percent (n 39) of salespeople attributed unsuccessful engagements to either
another department within the selling firm or to the customers organization, only 1.7 percent
(n 1) of salespeople overall attributed success to either another department within the sellingfirm or the customers company.
Analysis shows that salespeople who attributed success to relational factors performed better
than those attributing success to technical factors. Not surprisingly, the type of salesperson
attribution was also linked to salesperson performance. Specifically, not only did salespeople
who thought of themselves as sales consultants, rather than technical specialists, tend to
attribute success to relational factors, but those salespeople who attributed success to
relational factors had higher performance than those who attributed success in a customer
engagement to technical factors.
One of the more striking differences across engagements, regardless of role identity, is
salespeoples attribution of failure to another division or department within the organization,
with 35 percent of salespeople attributing failure to another division or department within their
organization. Further, 30 percent of salespeople blamed the customers company for failure.
These results contrast to successful engagements in which no salesperson attributed success to
another division of the selling company or to the customer organization itself. By attributing
success to internal factors shaped by the salesperson and failure to external factors, the results
are consistent with attribution theory. Performance differences across roles and attribution
categories and engagements.
To cut-short this richest research has shown that most of the behaviors of salespeople mostly
depend upon how they themselves identify their roles. Moreover their attributes defines that
how they will be performing in future
The positive relationship found between relational attributions and performance suggests sales
training programs may benefit by diagnosing the attributions for successful and unsuccessful
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