Social Cognition in Sales || Adaptive Selling--Insights from Social Cognition

Adaptive Selling--Insights from Social CognitionAuthor(s): Fred W. Morgan and Jeffrey J. StoltmanSource: The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Vol. 10, No. 4, Social Cognitionin Sales (Fall, 1990), pp. 43-54Published by: M.E. Sharpe, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40471835 .

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Fall 1990 43

Adaptive Selling-Insights from Social Cognition by Fred W. Morgan and Jeffrey J. Stoltman

Introduction

Research exploring the determinants of sales performance has evolved steadily over the years and has generated alternate explanatory frameworks (Churchill et al 1985). More recently, the concept of adaptive selling has emerged as a powerful organizing theme for research and for managerial models of supervision and control. Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan (1986, p. 175) define the practice of adaptive selling as "the altering of sales behaviors during a customer interaction or across customer interactions based on perceived information about the nature of the selling situation."

Research to date on sources of salespeople's adaptation has focused primarily on their knowledge structures, which contain their views of customers, selling situations, selling procedures, and interactions (cf. Leigh and McGraw 1989; Leigh and Rethans 1984; Leong, Busch, and Roedder John 1989; Sujan, Sujan, and Bettman 1988; Szymanski 1988; Szyman- ski and Churchill 1990). In this research, several related questions have not yet been resolved: When is adaptation an appropriate response (Jolson 1989)? How much adaptation is effective/efficient in a particular situation (Weitz 1981)? Is adaptation even possible when interacting with certain prospects/ customers? One way to resolve these issues is to

About the Authors Fred W. Morgan (Ph.D., Michigan State University) is a Professor of Marketing at Wayne State University in De- troit. He has published extensively and contributed to this Journal, and to the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Jour- nal of the Academy of Marketing Science, and industriai Marketing Management among others. He has presented many papers at national and regional conference meet- ings. Dr. Morgan's current research interests include customer/salesperson interaction and sales management as well as the impact of the legal environment on marketing and business strategy. Jeffrey J. Stoltman (Ph.D., Syracuse University) is an As- sistant Professor of Marketing at Wayne State University in Detroit. He has published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Advertising, and the Journal of Business Re- search, as well as in the Proceedings of national confer- ences. Dr. Stoltman's current research interests include the application of the concepts and methods of social and cognitive psychology to the study of marketing communications and situational influences on buyer behavior.

focus on the salesperson's motivation (defined both internally and in terms of externalities, such as managerial intercession) and/or the knowledge structures salespeople develop and retain.

However, at a more fundamental level, skills and abilities underlying adaptive selling require examination. Defined in social cognition terms, this level of analysis requires a consideration of the innate capabilities and tendencies of the human cognitive apparatus. This mechanistic view should not be taken literally, but is introduced to formulate the issue more broadly than merely individual differences, e.g., beyond the differences between novice and expert salespeople. What needs to be explored is the possibility that shared, basic human fallibili- ties are operating in adaptive selling.

For example, compelling evidence shows that personal failures are much more likely to be attributed to the situation rather than to one's own behavior (Markus and Zajonc 1985). To learn from their mistakes, i.e., to revise their behavior after an unsuccessful sales call, salespeople must be able to identify the source of their failure and be motivated to make necessary adjustments. If such attributional errors are common in a personal selling context, this learning process seems unlikely. As can be seen in this example, the study and management of personal selling should embrace the perspectives found in social cognition, i.e., that there are common limitations and biases related to obtaining and using information (Fiske and Taylor 1984; Higgins and Bargh 1987; Markus and Zajonc 1985; Nisbett and Ross 1980; Sherman, Judd, and Park 1989).

The purpose here is to underscore the social cognition capabilities and tendencies that are prepotent ingredients of personal selling. First, various sources and associated problems of adaptive selling are reviewed. Second, these problems are examined from an information acquisition perspective. Third, areas for empirical research involving salespersons are developed. Finally, basic managerial suggestions are offered, derived from earlier sections of this analysis.

Journal of Personal Selling &- Sales Management, Vol. X (Fall 1990), pp. 43-54



44

A Review of Adaptive Selling Principles and Problems

Weitz's (1978) ISTEA framework (see Figure 1) provides a useful organizing perspective for integrating social cognition findings into the selling and sales management literature. Impression formation is the triggering stage in this model. In theory, the personal selling process follows a first "solution" to the "problem" defined by the salesperson's initial view of both the customer and the selling situation. The framework postulates adjustments to the initial impression/solution, to the strategy which was identified based on this impression (which may in itself involve a choice from among several strategies), and in the implementation (or transmission) of this solution. Adjustments, i.e., adaptations, can occur during any task or phrase of the selling process.

Sources of Adaptive Selling

Weitz (1978) views perceptual ability as a skill which underlies a salesperson's adaptability (Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan 1986). This talent encompasses such activities as probing for information, asking questions, listening, and detecting verbal and non-

ISTEA Sales Process Model

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Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

verbal cues. Empirical support for the relationship between these proficiencies and selling effectiveness is meager, however, perhaps because it is seen as self-evident. Weitz (1978) was successful in demonstrating a relationship between selling effectiveness and impression formation skills, the latter defined in terms of the accuracy of an impression of a customer's choice attributes, choice rules, and choice modifiability. Recently Szymanski and Churchill (1990) provided a much needed examination of several of the basic cues upon which the perceptual process operates. They found differences regarding how successful and unsuccessful salespeople weight certain cues presumably applied in prospecting (see also Schuster and Danes 1986).

Rather than examine information acquisition and impression formation skills directly, most researchers have pursued the proposition that adaptability stems from the significant reservoir of knowledge that more effective salespeople seemingly possess. These studies implicitly assume that knowledge structures reflect both perceptual prowess and one's ability to enact cognitive solutions. More effective salespeople are believed to be better at collecting and distilling crucial information and are thus more capable, as implied by research demonstrating the existence of correlated differences in knowledge structure (Leigh 1987; Leigh and McGraw 1989; Leong, Busch and Roedder John 1989; Szymanski 1988) and enactment strategies (Spiro and Weitz 1990). Adaptation is initiated when knowledge structures provide a match between presented circumstances and available routines/solutions for those settings. That is, the salesperson assays the current situation relative to his/her recollections of prior sales encounters and then acts in a way thought to be most likely to lead to a sale.

Scripts have proven to be a particularly attractive concept in examining these routines and solutions. Defined as knowledge structures containing selling events and action sequences, sales scripts have been shown to be different both for effective and ineffective salespeople and across different selling situations (Leigh and McGraw 1989; Leong, Busch, and Roedder John 1989). Category-based knowledge structures have also been demonstrated to be useful in differentiating salespeople and situations (Szy- manski 1988; Szymanski and Churchill 1990; Sujan, Sujan, and Bettman 1988). These various knowledge structures are conceptualized as the basic mecha- nism by which important differences in the selling environment are perceived and acted upon. They are one of the basic resources that afford the salesperson an adaptive response capability, and they are



Fall 1990 45

typically seen as preferable to sales approaches or presentations which are essentially standardized and invariant.

Over a period of time, a combination of formal training, social learning and imitation, and trial and error produces the knowledge structures salespersons possess and the adaptive behaviors they ex- hibit. Yet, knowledge reservoirs and, by implication, behavioral repertoires reflect both accurate and inaccurate impressions of buyer motives and styles; they are also deeply rooted in salespersons' beliefs about human nature.

Regardless of their origin and accuracy, knowledge structures act as guidelines for social exchange. These structures are implicated in the impression formation stage of the ISTEA model. In this stage pre-existing concepts of buyer types and styles operate much like stereotypes and are matched against the information encountered in situ. They may, under ideal circumstances and with vigilance, be ad- justed both during and as a result of a sales interaction. However, for reasons discussed below, salesperson knowledge structures are likely to operate as stereotypes often do, and vigilance and adjustment are unlikely. Effective selling depends on something more than an opportunity and sufficient motivation to be adaptive. It requires foresight and an ability to perceive and integrate information. This suggests a need to move beyond examining knowledge alone to also consider the ways in which knowledge is used. To presume that important knowledge structure differences reflect an individual's ability to perceive and motivation to adapt is shortsighted. The extent to which basic limitations and biases may be operating to influence sales outcomes should be examined. This analysis must extend beyond the issue of stereotyping to which Weitz (1978) directed our attention more than a decade ago.

The limitation of the adaptive selling framework begins to surface as the perceptual process which triggers a given knowledge structure is scrutinized. Two unstated premises underlie adaptive selling: (1) this process is basically accurate and (2) appropriate usage occurs once the chosen solution has been put into effect. As depicted below, adaptive selling relies upon the successful navigation of many potentially flawed cognitive operations. The basic locus of the problems created is the influence of pre-existing concepts salespeople possess. Some represent concepts regarding basic human nature (e.g., the sincer- ity of other people), while others represent selling- specific (e.g., effective closing techniques), or customer-specific (e.g., analytic communication styles) concepts. Until now, possession of such concepts has

been assumed to be positive. Interestingly, the basic information acquisition, perception, and inference processes which underlie impression formation have not been the focus of much discussion or empirical verification.

Overview of Potential Problem Areas

In their simplest form knowledge structures con- sist of a salesperson's expectations or "theories" of how/why (1) customers behave and (2) sales interactions occur as they do. An implicit, normative model of the manner in which a salesperson should operate upon these theories would suggest that they weigh all the evidence in forming an impression, in devising appropriate response strategies, etc. Yet, given the evidence reported in the social cognition literature, there is reason to expect that these normative models are not being applied. As Nisbett and Ross (1980) point out, the influence of one's prior theories of social behavior is stronger when any one of several conditions is satisfied: (1) if these theories are held with confidence (e.g., "female prospects behave in certain ways"), (2) if these theories are accessible (e.g., "prospect is clearly a female"), (3) or if the data (the perceptual stimuli) are sufficiently ambiguous and do not suggest clear alternative ex- planations (e.g., "female prospect's interest in product is difficult to discern").

Showers and Cantor (1985) have suggested two additional factors promoting the use of prior knowledge: That prior theories are utilized depending on the goals that are in effect or the degree of accuracy required. In sales situations cost-effective, outcome- oriented goals are typically operative, thereby mo- tivating theory- or concept-driven processing and behavior. This type of response is problematic if the salesperson (1) acts on the basis of a flawed theory; (2) believes he/she is objectively responding to situational data, but is in reality theory-driven; (3) single-mindedly adheres to theory in the face of disconfirming evidence, or (4) simply ignores such evidence (Fiske and Taylor 1984; Nisbett and Ross 1980). Table 1 illustrates these inappropriate salesperson responses.

Theory-driven, or top-down, decision-making is essentially an efficient approach to perception and problem-solving. The heuristic function/potential of this approach tends to minimize the time and effort needed when interacting with the environment (Bobrow and Norman 1975; Norman and Bobrow 1975). This type of processing is more likely than so- called data driven, bottom-up processing which re- fuses initial labels or solutions and instead moves



46 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

Table 1 Examples of Inappropriate "Theory-Driven" Salesperson Behavior

Problematic Behavior Example Salesperson acts on the basis of a flawed Salesperson sees buyer as motivated by economics

theory when the buyer is actually worried about job security

Salesperson is theory-driven though be- Salesperson believes he/she is paying attention to lieves him/herself to be responding ob- prospect, but then acts out the scripts based on jectively to situational data predispositions

Salesperson adheres to theory in the face Salesperson believes the script will work despite of disconfirming evidence what the customer is saying

Salesperson ignores disconfirming evi- Salesperson attributes lost sales to purchasing dence agent, not to stated reasons

forward iteratively in an experimental fashion (Bargh 1984). Given the findings in social cognition research, salespeople are likely to continue to rely heavily on their initial classifications of customers despite opportunities and abilities to make necessary adjustments. Expediency and savings of time and effort are often achieved, however, by sacrificing some degree of accuracy in the process. The top- down/heuristic processing characteristic must be recognized because subsequent stages of ISTEA fol- low from the selection and application of various strategies for the desired goal sequence (usually to close a sale).

There is also reason to question how unbiased and analytic the impression formation process is (MacArthur 1981). As detailed by Cohen and Basu (1987) in a consumer research setting, both analytic (evaluating a situation by cumulatively viewing individual aspects of the situation) and nonanalytic (viewing a situation holistically as a composite) processes are involved in accessing and using knowledge categories. They propose that "conditions that reduce the availability of cognitive resources in a given context (e.g., time pressure, distractions, etc.) lead to greater reliance on exemplar-based and nonanalytic processing" (p. 466). That is, salespeople trying to meet quarterly quotas while selling to a diverse set of customers may arrive at overviews assessments (nonanalytic approach) of selling circumstances instead of looking for several key features (analytic approach) during each sales encounter. In aggregate, the review by Cohen and Basu (1987) is quite consistent with and relies heavily upon the social cognition literature and maintains that analytic processing is the exception, rather than the rule.

Previous research on the script concept recognizes the nonanalytic/heuristic manner in which knowledge structures operate. In fact, the script concept is

attractive because it offers a means of reducing the cognitive load salespeople must manage. However, scripts are somewhat inflexible when triggered (Leigh 1987); hence, they would produce the same consequences of theory-driven processing. Further- more, because knowledge structures in general operate in this manner (Galambos, Abelson, and Black 1986), the adaptation identified in the ISTEA model is not clearly a given.

Additionally, in the social cognition literature the general finding is that expectations and naive theories of social action are somewhat impervious to change (Miller and Turnbull 1986). Without proper training and vigilance, most individuals assimilate rather than accommodate data that seem not to fit the model which has been invoked. This accounts for the remarkable persistence of even the most inaccurate belief systems, such as negative stereotypes. This suggests that, once adopted, categorization schemes and similar cognitive structures may be used over extended periods of time despite their effectiveness or veridicality. Such behavior is even more likely if salespeople have been meeting pre- scribed quotas. Effective adaptive selling is unlikely to result or improve in such a circumstance.

Two implications evolving from these various problems are twofold. First, the interaction at had is likely to be sub-optimal because of the failure of salespeople to make necessary adjustments or to abandon inappropriate mental models of buyer behavior. This can result in a customer feeling he/she is not being heard or, even worse, ignored. Beyond this, assimilation bias negates or overwhelms the opportunity for learning, if the sales representative can survive with the inadequate knowledge structure. Both conditions seem to be quite different than the image adaptive selling calls to mind. This for- malization demands that greater attention be focused upon salespersons' pre-existing concepts



Fall 1990 47

about buyers, as well as on the matching process that precedes the use and determines the influence of these concepts. Upon close examination, salesperson's perceptual acuity and knowledge use can be brought into question.

Limited/Biased Information Acquisition

Most of the problems identified above center on acquiring and using information. Nisbett and Ross (1980) and Fiske and Taylor (1984) provide an expli- cation this phenomenon, which can be viewed from the standpoint of the salesperson interaction with customers and prospects. Nisbett and Ross (1980) provide a broad taxonomic perspective of the problems, while Fiske and Taylor (1984) take a procedural view of these issues.

Nisbett and Ross (1980) Perspective

Nisbett and Ross (1980) examined the range of inferential problems that surface in social cognition. These are best described as inherent limitations and biases as well as natural by-products of heuristic processing strategies. They were very careful to distinguish between the functionality of these tendencies and the extent to which these tendencies could be regarded as logical or rational as defined by some external standard or normative model. The "standard of proof" or criterion in the studies reviewed by Nisbett and Ross (1980) encompasses the sufficiency and veridicality of memory; the nature of evalua- tions, judgments, and choices; and overt attempts to act or to act upon others. From a personal selling perspective, five limitations are relevant: descriptive problems, detection of covariation, causal inference, theory testing, and normativeness (Nisbett and Ross 1980). These limitations are discussed below.

Descriptive Problems. Here the issue is the proper "mapping" of available information into and from memory. These problems surface because of the powerful influence of prior expectations and their impact on the sampling of the information presented. The perceiver-salesperson is generally una- ware of this influence. In a sales situation, this would directly involve verbal and nonverbal cues detected by the salesperson as to customer styles, needs, etc. (Grikscheit and Crissy 1973). The initial categorization of a prospect by a salesperson is likely to be unaltered by what they consider to be unimportant characteristics or distinctions. Because these "errors" are never truly considered, i.e., described to oneself, they are unlikely to provoke a change in the salesperson's theories or procedures. They

would continue to treat individuals as members of a grouping, despite the opportunity to notice and adjust to important challenges to such stereotypes. This type of problem also makes it unlikely that a salesperson can communicate the cues that should have been processed to others- be they new sales trainees, or sales managers.

Covariation. Ability to detect covariation refers to the judgment of relationships among events. As Bettman (1986) notes in a consumer research context, the presence of prior beliefs influences the processing of subsequent information, and determinations about the relevancy of this information appear to be strongly affected. However, there is some evidence that people can detect covariation within a single context (Bettman 1986). Thus while some salespeople may be capable of muddling through a specific sales call, the processing necessary to adjust the knowledge structures used is biased and ren- dered somewhat ineffective across sales call experiences. Again, the problems basically surface because of the powerful influence of prior theories and expectations. Expectations seem to dominate the data that are presented: What one expects is often more important than what one actually sees.

Causal Inferences. Attributional errors have been discussed for nearly forty years in one form or another and reflect many motives and ability deficits (Markus and Zajonc 1985). The difficulty surfaces on two levels. One important finding is that there is a general failure to analyze events for causation (Markus and Zajonc 1985). The disinclination to associate actions with outcomes has profound personal selling implications. If the salesperson moves quickly from one sales call to the next, this failure is even more probable because time pressures fore- stall opportunities for reflection. Problems can also arise during a specific sales call. If the salesperson is disinterested in causation, he/she is unlikely to con- template or test alternative solutions or strategies. This would be true even if a buyer were to act in manner that is unexpected, if only to a modest degree. For example, a salesperson easily securing an order 20% larger than expected may exit quickly rather than asking the purchasing agent for an ex- planation.

The other causal inference issue is the tendency for people to ignore multiple sources of causation and to adopt and use overly simplistic causal expla- nations. In particular, causal interpretations are very susceptible to one's point of view (Markus and Za- jonc 1985). Thus, if a salesperson were to engage in causal reasoning because of an unexpected or un- satisfactory customer response, he/she is unlikely to




suspect some inadequacy or inappropriate behavior on his/her own part. The attribution would probably be to the situation, which in selling involves the buyer as the focal point. This is a variation on the "fundamental attributional error" which has proved to be a robust finding in social cognition (Markus and Zajonc 1985). Attributions of cause and effect and of success and failure are vital in a personal selling context (Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan 1986). Sales- people need to pay close attention to the often subtle reasons why customers act one way or another. The presence and use of "routinized" mental models reduce the probability that such vigilance occurs. One must be motivated to discover and correct mis- perceptions. Yet, if attributions are made to change or some other external force and not to the inade- quacies of one's own ability and knowledge, the locus of the problem is not discovered and improve- ments cannot not take place.

Theory Testing. At the center of these various problems lies the existence and use of naive theories, which can range from broad theories of human nature about trust, morality, ethics, etc., to specific theories about the actions of specific individuals. These theories have a powerful influence on data acquisition by reducing the likelihood that the full complement of information available is being col- lected and analyzed. The "theory testing" problem isolated by Nisbett and Ross (1980) reveals perhaps the darkest side of this discussion: From a learning perspective, the theories themselves will probably not be modified/corrected without significant inter- vention.

As Miller and Turnbull (1986) note, persistence of theory happens because the value of the disconfirmatory data is refuted and/or because of the manner in which deviations are attributed. Gains are attributed to the ability of the salesperson, while losses are attributed to the motives or inherent unpredict- ability (a theory) of the customer. Thus, even if objective reality is obviously inconsistent with an expectation, which in itself takes some effort to perceive, this deviation will generally be ignored or assimilated than accommodated. In general, people seem to posses/use few disconfirmatory skills (Miller and Turnbull 1986). They are on most occasions genuinely disinterested in refuting or changing their expectations. This conserves scarce cognitive and emotional resources and preserves one's self-esteem. Some have even argued that it is inherently easier to confirm than to disconfirm (see the related discussion in Markus and Zajonc 1985).

This problem is exacerbated by the fact that memory tends to function better in the case of confirm-

atory data. To the extent changes do occur, they require sufficient cause, e.g., a clearly discrepant bit of data, and the motivation to act. Even when these conditions are satisfied, change tends to happen by way of accretion- a fine tuning of existing structures, not a total replacement or revision of existing, albeit flawed, theories (Crocker, Fiske, and Taylor 1984; Rumelhart and Norman 1978).

Normativeness. In effect, normativeness requires an assessment of how realistic it is to expect that people will act in ways other than what has been depicted here. Although intuitive strategies may not approximate the solutions of formal, scientific models, they are often good enough. What needs to be determined is where the "good enough" boundary can be drawn. In addition, Nisbett and Ross (1980) note that the behavioral consequences of these problems can often be muted, even canceled out by other strategies or behaviors, a compensatory outcome. Finally, collective behavior has to be considered. If flawed theories and inferences are widely shared within an organization, a circumstance that might be created when senior salespeople are responsible for training sales recruits, how does one reasonably expect them to be disconfirmed?

Fiske and Taylor (1984) Model

As shown in Figure 2, Fiske and Taylor (1984) have developed a tractable view of the problems discussed above. The flow chart arrangement suggests a processing orientation. Their perspective can be used to develop significant enhancements to sales training programs. Several steps are implicated, each with multiple sources of potential bias. Throughout the stages of gathering, sampling, selecting, and integrating information the influence of pre-existing theories can be seen. In a sales encounter, the salesperson will tend to notice, perhaps even seek out, cues which confirm his/her views of the kind of behaviors to be expected from a prospect (ethnic heritage, sex, physical features, etc.) and organization (asset size, number of employees, industry, degree of centralization, etc.) being pursued.

In addition, Fiske and Taylor (1984) have drawn attention to basic heuristics which seem to dominate these processing activities (see also Markus and Za- jonc 1985). As noted above, expectations that are held with confidence, are easily accessed, or appear more salient seem to dominate. The saliency can be linked to the expectations which are present and can either be controlled via the motivation to attend to certain information, or automatic in the sense



Fall 1990

Inferential Processes and Sources of Bias

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that the knowledge structure which has been acti- vated determines what is relevant (see Bargh 1984).

The gathering stage may be the most susceptible to the collective inferences Nisbett and Ross (1984) have observed. These inferences require attention both because of their potentially damaging effects and because of the high degree of social learning presumed to occur in personal selling. The problems noted with respect to sampling suggest that the use of anecdotally based training or managerial inter- vention strategies can be problematic. This would reinforce or legitimize the use of small sample or vivid information at the expense of diagnostic or relevant information. The selection stage reflects problems with covariation noted above, but also extends to include problems in separating representative, or diagnostic data from the remainder of the data. Because of the lack of disconfirmatory processing, diagnosticity is typically nonexistent. It surfaces as a problem in the final, integration stage as well where cues are weighted improperly and/or the wrong cues are used. The integration stage is also affected by the use of too few cues as a consequence of diagnostic deficits and/or as a by-product of the heuristic strategies that dominate this process. These heuristics minimize cognitive effort and place

49

a premium on the easily accessed and used solutions. Yet, with the proper motives, vigilance, and training, the identification of more useful, or representative cues seems to be inherently achievable.

Fiske and Taylor (1984) provide additional argu- ments for earlier assertions regarding difficulties encountered during the impression formation step of ISTEA. The need for training regarding how to adjust/modify is even more obvious. The essence of the prior discussion is that there is a difference between using the wrong cues and the wrongful use of cues. However, research to date examining the differences between effective/expert/experienced salespeople and their opposites has focused only on the former. A more complete research agenda is thus necessary.

Research Issues

A research agenda encompassing the issues raised here can be formulated as a natural extension of the inquiries examining salespersons' knowledge structures. The crucial aspect of such research is to develop appropriate measures and methodological procedures which allow for the examination of the inferential problems discussed above. For example, Szymanski and Churchill (1990) studied the prospecting stage of personal selling and found differences between effective and ineffective salespeople in terms of the weights assigned to six cues about prospects, i.e., different knowledge structures, but no differences in the quantity of knowledge available. The cues were described by Szymanski and Churchill (1990, p. 169) as "six of the more highly consensual" ones. The results may well have changed if salespeople had been asked to list and order the six most important cues. This latter approach would have come closer to revealing the relationship between sales effectiveness and information selection and use, particularly by holding salespersons' learning abilities, inherent intelli- gence, and experience constant. Other selling stages could just as easily be analyzed via similar meth- odologies.

Script research provides another linkage among the social cognition literature, knowledge structures, and sales performance. Leigh and McGraw (1989, p. 31) urged researchers to examine the sales scripts of more- and less-effective salespeople. Their classification of script components into categories according to frequency of mention by respondents is particularly useful in studying cognitive processing and is analogous to the concept of cue diagnosticity offered by O'Sullivan and Durso (1984). Effec-




tive salespeople, if they are superior at adapting to various customer signals, should be expected to gen- erate a greater number of essential scripts during a free elicitation exercise, and should be able to identify truly diagnostic cues which instantiate a given script.

In addition, the information sampled by the salesperson is profoundly influenced, if not virtually defined, by the equally biased and cognitively limited customer. As Higgins (1981) notes, communicators should take the audience's or recipient's characteristics into account. This includes and extends beyond the notion of buyer styles to consider the perspective, motives, and limitations of the other party. To date, research on adaptive selling has not considered the adaptive practices of customers. An obvious step would be to develop customer scripts to ascertain if outstanding purchasing agents have richer and more complex knowledge structures developed in response to different salesperson types and presentations.

Customers can, and do, act as causal agents (Fiske and Taylor 1984). They perceive back, form impressions of the salesperson, and act in accordance with their strategies and implementation models. These issues need to be explored further. Is the sales pres- entation dependent upon who controls a given sales interaction? Imbalance can occur, such as when the magnitude of the sale is large and the customer is in a position to demand concessions and may even insist on setting the agenda and the ground rules, e.g., national accounts. Weitz (1981) has offered some initial thoughts on the issue of control, but this issue needs to be explored further (see Fiske and Taylor 1984).

The fundamental research concern, therefore, should be which information will be attended to, encoded, integrated, stored, accessed, and used within any context, across contexts, and over time. Given that information is sampled and that this sampling is biased, the degree and locus of this behavior is an area requiring empirical study. For example, in the sales setting, which of the sources of bias noted by Fiske and Taylor (1984) are particularly prominent, vary by sales effectiveness, or by selling process stage?

The sampling, cognitive processes, and the impact of motives and goals are also defined by the nature of the information that is presented. Thus, the characteristics of sales situations and customers must be examined with far greater precision. The objective or subjective (presumed) structure, relevance, diagnosticity, and saliency (or perceivability) of these cues must be studied. That some situations allow

greater latitudes of acceptable behavior, while others are, by definition, more rigid (Showers and Can- tor 1985) might be a useful starting point. As implied above, care must be taken to ensure (1) that research procedures have external validity, i.e., not artifac- tual and (2) that inferential abilities of salesperson/ subjects are reflected in the outcomes.

Previous research has demonstrated that experts or successful salespeople, apparently because their knowledge structures are more enriched and fine- tuned, seem more capable of making connections with customers. However, these salespeople are apparently exerting greater effort in the process and so a question remains: Is it more important to edu- cate a salesforce or to motivate them to make the effort, the working "smarter" versus "harder" debate (Sujan 1986; Sujan, Weitz, and Sujan 1988)? A related question is if greater levels of effectiveness and efficiency are possible.

Possession of a greater capacity to learn, read and react quickly, test multiple solutions simultane- ously, even an innate understanding or a facility for dealing with others, can all help to compensate for cognitive limitations. The contribution of these factors is seemingly what has driven previous attempts to discover aptitudes or personality traits that are correlated with sales effectiveness. However, pro- ceeding based on the assumption that a high degree of (accurate) perception and adaptation occurs is substantially different from assuming that salespeople are minimally proficient and can compensate for the problems noted here by trying harder or locating particularly vulnerable buyers. The compensatory- adaptive distinction has important implications for future research.

Six important areas for further research have been developed by adapting a scheme used by Cantor, Mischel, and Schwartz (1982). The questions posed in Table 2 provide a more formal perspective for conducting social cognition research in a personal selling setting. These questions involve salesperson training issues and other managerial practices.

Managerial Implications

The above discussion illustrates the problems that are present during the initial stages of the selling process, implicating both selling procedures and the organizational culture. Errors that stem from the wrong premise, e.g., overly simple schemes for clas- sifying prospects, may be corrected by current training programs by virtue of the inculcation of categorization schemes and refined knowledge structures. However, such programs are unlikely to minimize



Fall 1990 51

Table 2 Knowledge Structures Topics: Questions for Future Research in a Personal Selling Context

Research Areas Research Questions 1. Multiple Focus Questions What are the overarching schemes salespeople use to

categorize experiences? Are these schemes related to experience or sales performance?

2. Structure/Context Questions How orderly, complex, and consensually agreed upon are the representations? Which information is central/diagnostic? How do salespeople make determinations of information centrality?

3. Triggering Questions What factors lead to the use of certain knowledge structures? Access as a function of ease and what else? What role will goals and expertise play? Is monitoring activity something that is triggered separately?

4. Goodness of Fit Questions What are the criteria for use/adjustment? How much deviation/what deviations prompt adjustments? What is the process that underlies adjustment?

5. Maintenance/Change Ques- Under what conditions will assimilation or accom- tions modation of most recent sales experiences occur?

6. Acquisition Questions How are these schemes acquired? What is the role of formal training, social learning, and trial and error?

Adapted from Cantor, Mischel, and Schwartz (1982)

the errors which arise from basic cognitive operations. Sales managers need to consider the skill levels of their salesforce and consider the liabilities created by the biases and limitations discussed here. Clearly, there should be more to this assessment than "can they ask probing questions" or "do they listen."

Training modules themselves can be developed around the presence of these problems and their consequences. For example, traditional training ma- terials describing characteristics of attractive prospects may be inadvertently impeding the develop- ment of requisite inferential skills by salespeople. If prospect categories are described in considerable detail across several attributes, but without adequate discussion about why some of these attributes vary in concert, sales trainees are not being encouraged to look for covariation. They may therefore develop poor on-the-job habits, looking for obvious cues and thereby not evolving validated interrela- tionships among customer attributes, i.e., underde- veloped categorical knowledge structures. Salespeo- ple must be encouraged to ask about such interre- lationships during training seminars; moreover, sales trainers should describe why these associations exist and how they were discovered.

The organization's culture influences the training done by a firm's own salespeople in that training may be providing an opportunity to pass along sub-

optimal theories of selling processes and customer styles. This can happen even if the sales represent- atives providing the training are effective in a dollar volume sense. Considering the normativeness issue, sales managers must explore the possibility that their salespeople are collectively making errors because they share selling scripts (Martin 1982). Inex- perienced salespeople are particularly vulnerable here because they may be persuaded to adopt sales strategies of their successful cohorts who possess greater social judgment skills. The strategies may not be totally separable from the salespeople adapting them to different sales situations.

Generally, sales managers should also be advised to be attentive to the attributions, both theirs and their subordinates, that are being made about salesperson success and failure. The opportunity to learn from mistakes is invaluable, but can be very elusive. One way to formalize this process is to develop call reports which focus upon the reasons why sales calls turned out the way they did. Salespeople who can be induced to complete these reports, which can be summarized for later use in training or can be used as input for developing customer behavior models, are moving in the direction of synthesizing causal inference patterns. Of course, sales managers must monitor these reports regularly to help with their interpretation and to "encourage" their completion. However, the attribution problems described above




could easily invalidate the information contained in call reports.

This process of analysis and review would be an effective way to begin identifying truly diagnostic features/cues. One useful distinction is between core (or central), peripheral, and irrelevant events, activities, etc. (Hastie 1981). Extending this one step further and combining it with the vigilance mecha- nism, salespeople should be alerted to their reliance on a small number of vivid, easily accessed, but not necessarily relevant cues as to buyer needs and styles. They should also be made aware of the difference between knowledge driven/adaptive practices and compensatory processes. Without damaging salespersons' egos, they should be made aware of the circumstances when something other than their skill may have accounted for success.

With respect to a causal attribution, sales managers must assume responsibility for being the voice of objectivity and reason (Mowen et al 1985). Yet the salesperson's problems may go unnoticed or untouched if performance is satisfactory (e.g., attain- ing quotas). This performance may easily stem from hit/miss operations and/or compensatory practices. As noted by Weitz, Sujan, and Sujan (1986), it is vital that the strategies being used, not the effort, be evaluated. In addition, sales managers are also subject to causal deficits and are therefore likely to make attributions to salespersons or externalities, seldom both. Finally, many of these causal attributions are probably shared by sales managers, particularly if they have had significant selling experience. They too would be expected to share the flawed theories of buyers as that one source of the salesperson's malady.

On an individual level, thought verification (Tes- ser 1986) and reality monitoring (Johnson and Raye 1981) are skills which would prove invaluable. This would require salespersons to be trained in methods to maintain control over their thoughts, to slow down the process, and to ask themselves whether they really have an adequate understanding. In effect, this is a strategy for vigilance which allows certain activities to proceed in an automatic fashion, while other critical cues or signposts are used to trigger an adjustment.

Identification and even partial amelioration of these liabilities should lead to greater success. Fur- ther, with the emergence of the concept of relationship marketing (Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh 1987; An- derson and Narus 1990), a great deal of selling occurs over an extended period of time, with significant consequences emanating from any sales interaction that occurs in the present potentially reaching far

into the future. Thus, one can argue about a finan- cial impact on present and future business (Bencin 1990). To extend this one step further, customers are beginning to assert a greater degree of control and to establish a different, clearer set of boundaries delimiting acceptable and pleasing marketing behaviors. Thus, it may be important to intercede and at a minimum sensitize salespersons so that current sales calls are not unpleasant and unrewarding experiences (Levine 1990). This may even be regarded as a key to reducing significant turnover and morale- related problems. Even the effectiveness of proficient salespeople can be improved by achieving in- creasingly sensitive knowledge structures and by facilitating their efforts to gather, analyze, and integrate information.

Conclusion

As ways to help managers control salespersons' limitations begin to be established, several concerns should be kept in mind. First, it may be functional to be less than accurate (Nisbett and Ross 1980; Weitz 1981). Therefore, the triggering and adjustment mechanisms need to be examined in light of the motives which are operative. Second, given that much of what is practiced is a function of shared, collective misconstrual, both the individual and the organization will have difficulty disconfirming or abandoning less-than-accurate schemes. This suggests the need for objective, third-party involvement to evaluate current selling practices. Finally, greater attention needs to be given to the complex nature of the social interaction that defines a sales interaction. In addition to the problem-solving agenda the buyer and seller are presumed to share, they also share or will conflict in their understanding of the rules of social interaction. But perhaps more impor- tantly, this interaction will be the consequence of two equally susceptible cognitive machines. In fo- cusing on the problematic nature of selling from one side of this dyad, investigators have likely underes- timated the potential for problems and misunder- standing noted here.

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Documents

Social Cognition in Sales || Adaptive Selling--Insights from Social Cognition