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 capable salespeople 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 general causal 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

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 with individual 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.

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 customer s organization, only 1.7 percent (n 1) of salespeople overall attributed success to either another department within the selling firm or the customer s 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 salespeople s 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 customer s 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

engagements, and relating these attributions to desired collaborative skills. Size, culture, and management style also matters in variety of roles of salespeople. The skills of an individual are based upon the role identification. The salespeople who possess role identities of sales consultants were more inclined to search for ways to solve a customer s current and future problems.