Browsing by Author "Kerr, Peter D."

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Hiring for sales success: the emerging importance of salesperson analytical skills
    (Elsevier, 2022-02-05) Peesker, Karen M.; Kerr, Peter D.; Bolander, Willy; Ryals, Lynette J.; Lister, Jonathan A.; Dover, Howard F.
    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.
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    The impact of performance measurement diversity on customer-oriented selling behavior
    (Elsevier, 2023-03-04) Kerr, Peter D.; Franco-Santos, Monica
    Motivated by recent high-profile cases of salespeople behaving ‘badly’ (i.e., unethically, aggressively, or misleading toward customers), we investigate traditional behavioral controls to examine the specific relationship between performance measurement choices and selling behavior with a survey of 207 business-to-business salespeople. Borrowing from attention-based theory and the theory of planned behavior, our findings suggest that sales management can encourage more pro-customer behavior by using a more diverse performance measurement schema to influence the underlying drivers of customer-oriented selling behavior, including salesperson attitudes and subjective norms. This is particularly important in transactional selling environments where the use of diverse measures has the strongest effect on pro-customer attitudes and customer-oriented selling behavior.
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    ItemOpen Access
    The interplay between objective and subjective measures of salesperson performance: toward an integrated approach
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-03-16) Kerr, Peter D.; Marcos Cuevas, Javier
    The frameworks to measure salesperson performance have not advanced in parallel with the degree of transformation of professional selling. To address this issue, research in organizational performance advocates for the use of more comprehensive and integrated measurement frameworks, incorporating both objective and subjective measures. However, in sales research, this integrated approach is rare, with most studies using either objective or subjective measurement. Thus, in this article, we explore the combined use of objective and subjective measures of salesperson performance. We conduct a systematic review of sales performance and then investigate empirically, through a survey of 207 salespeople and 39 interviews with sales leaders, the specific role played by subjective measures of individual sales performance. A key finding of the study is the widespread use of diverse measures of performance in practice and the limited measurement approaches used in sales research. We contribute by articulating the differences in the conceptualization and operationalization of salesperson performance between industry practice and scholarly research. We propose a set of principles for selecting measures of performance in sales and present a framework that extends current conceptualizations of effectiveness and efficiency by incorporating a third dimension, competency, that also needs to be measured.
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    Reclaiming the contingent nature of the determinants of salesperson performance: an extended meta-analysis
    (Taylor & Francis, 2023-09-18) Kerr, Peter D.; Marcos Cuevas, Javier
    Professional selling has been transformed over the last decade and is in constant flux. Fundamental changes have occurred in how best to achieve salesperson performance and how to measure it. In this article, we present a meta-analysis of the determinants of salesperson performance using 150 studies, 936 raw effects, and ten moderating variables captured from 2009 to 2020. Our findings enable us to identify 19 key determinants of performance and to classify these within a sales determinant continuum, ranging from universal, to context-specific to necessary but insufficient predictors of performance. Our results show the significant influence the operationalization of salesperson performance has on the relationship between sales determinants and performance outcomes. Our study offers more nuanced guidelines for sales management practice than previous studies and suggests a greater alignment between research sampling and performance measurement methods to further our understanding of sales performance going forward.