Business-to-business (B2B) sales is increasingly imbued with expectations for salespeople to adopt a posture for what the layman might term ‘being entrepreneurial’ (i.e., thinking and behaving in ways that orient towards independent creativity, proactive initiative-taking, and willingness to take risks in trying new ways of doing things). Yet, the latest advancements in entrepreneurship scholarship remain largely disconnected from the B2B scholarly audience. In this position piece, we introduce the idea of entrepreneurial selling—where value-based selling (VBS) meets individual-level entrepreneurial constructs that tap into core facets of being entrepreneurial in one's work. We argue that concepts such as entrepreneurial mindset, alertness, imaginativeness, passion, hustle, and individual entrepreneurial orientation offer helpful yet presently untapped insights into sales behaviors, resilience, and value creation in buyer-seller relationships. By integrating core constructs in the field that represent the foundations of entrepreneurialism among individual employees, we chart a promising new research agenda that deepens understanding of how salespeople navigate uncertainty, initiate opportunity-driven interactions, and embody entrepreneurial behaviors and approaches in established firms.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the notion of thin crossing points from a social network perspective and to outline the concrete networking strategies that enable salespeople to foster mutually valuable resource exchange (i.e. to thin crossing points) across a selling ecosystem. Design/methodology/approach The authors integrate extant theoretical perspectives to advance a conceptual framework of sales-related networking across three key actors in a selling ecosystem: intraorganizational selling actors and actors in customers and external partner organizations. Findings Thin crossing points are defined as figurative transaction points at the boundary between organizations or organizational subunits at which actors engage in mutually valuable resource exchange in the process of value cocreation. To thin crossing points with key ecosystem actors, salespeople must adapt networking strategies considering the time and trust constraints inherent in a network relationship. Such constraints inform the most advantageous network centralities (degree, eigenvector and betweenness) and actions to impact key network properties (tie strength, contact diversity) that enable salespeople to efficiently develop social capital and thus to optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first social network-based exploration of salespeople’s role in thinning crossing points with key ecosystem actors. It advances a novel conceptual framework of sales-related networking strategies that foster social capital development and optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

Salespeople are increasingly required to navigate an international environment-having international customers or international peers. However, much remains to be learned about how salespeople are utilizing social media in an international context. This multimethod, multistudy design contributes to international sales research by showing how business-to-business (B2B) salespeople use social media whether they are in a multinational or local firm. With a social capital lens, the authors explore the importance of social media with regard to strengthening salespeople's internal and external connections in an international context. In Study 1, 131 B2B salespeople use social media to develop customer relations (i.e., external connections) to engage in positive publicity and social media advocacy, ultimately leading to better sales performance. Specifically, social media advocacy enhances sales performance only for salespeople in multinationals. In Study 2, with 23 qualitative interviews, the authors contextualize the findings of Study 1 by comparing social media use among salespeople in multinational and local firms. The basis of the exploration involves internal and external connections with the three dimensions of social capital: structural, relational, and cognitive. The authors demonstrate that internal connections with peers on social media allows for increased knowledge transfer and other benefits.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools have seen widespread adoption in the sales function. However, the pace of adoption means that sales researchers are often several steps behind the business world. A way to alleviate some of these concerns is to provide a practical, yet up-to-date understanding of AI in sales. Thus, the purpose of this manuscript is to clarify what AI is, the role of AI in sales, and its implications for multiple stakeholders in the sales organization (i.e. salespeople, sales managers, organizations, and customers). To achieve this objective, the authors provide an up-to-date examination of business practices that are interwoven with practitioner and academic literature. Next, based upon exploratory interviews with eighteen practitioners, the authors discuss challenges and opportunities that can arise due to AI adoption. Finally, the authors provide directions for future exploration of AI in the sales domain.

Bricolage - a term that implies resourcefulness - is a construct with a long history in anthropology, design, management, and entrepreneurship, among other fields. Our study is one of the first to apply the bricolage concept to better understand the behaviors of salespeople. Overall, findings from our multi-study, multi-method approach (combining survey methodology and a scenario-based experiment with video manipulations) indicate that salesperson bricolage behaviors are desirable and can be developed in a sales force. More specifically, in Study 1, we leverage Job Demands-Resources Theory and survey data from 405 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople and find that salesperson bricolage behaviors can effectively mitigate the predictably negative impacts of role ambiguity on sales performance. In Study 2, we leverage Self-Determination Theory and an experimental design with 181 B2B salespeople and provide initial evidence regarding salesperson bricolage behaviors' organizational determinants (i.e. sales force control system combinations). Study 2 indicates that capability control interacted synergistically with outcome control and antagonistically with activity control in predicting bricolage behaviors. Taken together, findings from the two studies indicate that bricolage behaviors are both beneficial and manageable, warranting continued study in the sales literature.

Closing is an essential part of selling. However, academic research related to closing has been quite limited and detailed observational research has not yet been conducted. This research analyzes the closing process in a series of 111 buyer-seller sales interactions using a combination of observational research and a follow-up survey about the customers' experience. The results of a qualitative analysis suggest that the closing process consists of three stages: (1) the preamble, the lead up or approach to the ask, (2) the closing moment, when the ask is made, and (3) post-sale assurance, the moments directly following the close in which the salesperson debriefs the sales encounter. The closing process impacts customers' assessment of salesperson responsiveness and empathy, which ultimately leads to relationship commitment. The findings indicate that sufficient post-sale assurance improves both perceived responsiveness and empathy. Meanwhile, the efficacy of the preamble and closing moment techniques depends on customer amicability. For amicable customers, a preamble tactic with a direct close improves perceived responsiveness, while for less amicable customers, indirect closing tactics improve responsiveness. In sum, this research provides a theoretical framework for the closing process and explains the underlying mechanisms by which the closing process impacts sales outcomes.

The sales management literature suggests that control-based management systems drive sales effectiveness. However, despite prior research on salesforce management systems, inquiry from an experimental perspective is lacking. Previous studies examining salesforce control and capability control have been primarily conducted utilizing cross-sectional data and methodologies that limit assessment of causality. Thus, the objective of our research is to establish causal links of control-based management systems. Specifically, our first study utilizes video-based scenarios to experimentally manipulate the use of an outcome versus activity control system and the use versus non-use of a capability control approach. Four-hundred and ten business-to-business salespeople provide responses for our experiment that demonstrates 1) outcome control systems enhance salesperson selling orientation, 2) activity-based control systems enhance salesperson customer orientation, as well as perceived organizational and supervisor support, and 3) capability control systems enhance adaptive selling and salesperson creativity. To support our experimental findings, a follow-up qualitative study of fourteen sales managers highlights the crucial importance of sales managers as a part of control system effectiveness. Overall, our research contributes by establishing causal links between control-based management systems and salesperson intentions to utilize selling behaviors that improve sales performance.

Purpose This paper examines emotion management through social exchange as an important aspect of coping with the emotional burden of person-career misfit. Person-career misfit, the degree to which the salesperson believes that the sales role is inconsistent with one's identity, carries a heavy emotional toll when one finds oneself in a poorly-fitting career. A heavy emotional toll can result in myriad negative outcomes and can be troubling for the salesperson who is experiencing the burden. Emotion management and misaligned career-fit are under-researched areas in the domain of professional selling. Moreover, emotion management strategies also warrant study because the world of professional selling is rapidly changing, and the emotional impact of these changes is not fully understood. Method A survey of 325 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople was conducted; the sample frame was a Qualtrics panel. Structural equation modeling with AMOS 27 was applied to examine the proposed framework. Findings When person-career fit is poor, salespeople report greater use of emotion, regulation of emotion, and interpersonal mentalizing. The effects of the emotion management strategies are mediated by emotional labor, which then influences diminished accomplishment and depersonalization. Depersonalization then leads to emotional exhaustion, but diminished accomplishment does not. Emotional work is a necessary and important part of any sales role and engaging in normal customer interactions can have a profound impact on the emotional health of the salesperson. Burnout is a long-standing and pernicious issue for salespeople, and we identify an important antecedent, a poor fit between the salesperson and the sales role. Research Implications Persevering in the face of lack of career fit carries emotional burdens that lead to emotional exhaustion through use and regulation of emotions, as well as interpersonal mentalizing. Burnout is a highly complex process that is unique for salespeople. For example, diminished accomplishment may be a form of coping and warrants further research. The sequencing of burnout also warrants future research. This is especially true as more salespeople are now in a hybrid or work-from-home (WFH) format and might not have as much contact with management or coworkers as in previous times. Organization-level role rejection is potentially very rich and nuanced theoretical outcome that warrants future study. Because of the sheer number of students that go into a sales role, it is highly likely that role rejection and poor career-person fit are common outcomes. This is evidenced by high levels of turnover in many sales roles. Yet, person-career misfit is an insidious form of role stress that remains understudied and under-understood. In addition, quit-while-succeeding is another theoretical extension that deserves future attention. Quit-while-succeeding means that a salesperson will do well and in spite of such success, suddenly leave the profession. It is likely that salespeople who quit-while-succeeding are doing so because of poor career person fit. Much like role rejection, this phenomenon also remains understudied, and we encourage future research into both topics. Practical Implications Companies should screen for career fit during the selection process. Our research also highlights the benefits of being involved with a collegiate sales program. For example, sharing job characteristics and expectations transparently and experientially, such as those common in many collegiate sales programs, may enable poor fits to avoid such positions. Our research also suggests that being fully transparent about the sales role will pay off in the long run, as it will help to curtail poor fit. Identifying misfit after hire is also important, as a valuable employee may be saved by a transfer to a more appropriate role. Finally, monitoring of salesperson depersonalization and diminished accomplishment can yield interventions that minimize emotional exhaustion. This means that management should take an active role in monitoring the emotional health of their salespeople. Salespeople with poor fit will leave hints and management should be prepared to intervene and help the salesperson. The sequential nature of our model indicates that there are possibilities for intervention prior to burnout. For example, managers can pay attention to how their salespeople are engaging in various forms of interpersonal mentalizing and emotional labor (i.e. deep and surface acting). This means that managers should be prepared to intervene when they see that something is amiss with their salespeople. Because of the complexity of human emotions, the number of potential clues is nearly infinite, but management should be prepared to intervene if they notice faked sincerity or see hints of cynicism. Our research suggests that diminished accomplishments are not a salient feature for salespeople who are experiencing poor career person fit. This means that greater attention should be paid to other aspects of the burnout process. Management should also foster a healthy informal culture where salespeople are encouraged to share their emotions and work through issues with colleagues. Contribution This paper adds to role theory by developing career misfit as a form of role stress with implications for burnout. Role stress and burnout are common occurrences in today's professional selling environment, and our research offers a glimpse into the emotional mechanisms that salespeople utilize to cope with role stress and burnout. The manuscript also extends the affect theory of social exchange by challenging the concept that a party must feel positive about a sales career. Through emotional intelligence and emotional labor, role-rejecting salespeople take on emotional baggage that is an untenable burden. Finally, we explore the implications of masking the toll of person-career misfit. Specifically, we find that masking the toll will lead to emotional exhaustion.

COVID-19 has proven to be a disruptive and world-altering event often forcing professional salespeople to rapidly change the manner in which they do business. Thereby, this pandemic illuminates the importance of understanding salesperson characteristics and behaviors that enable sales success in disruptive environments. This study identifies COVID-19 as a Critical Sales Event and introduces the concept of "bricolage" to the larger body of sales literature. Bricolage is a combination of "making do" under environmental conditions of resource constraint. Bricolage characterizes a salesperson's ability to utilize available resources effectively by assessing available resources and working to reconfigure them in order to meet new challenges and create opportunities. Drawing on qualitative and quantitative research from professional salespeople, this study identifies a salesperson's creativity, learning-orientation, and grit as three important antecedents to salesperson bricolage. Moreover, this study shows that salesperson bricolage relates positively to sales performance under conditions shaped by the COVID-19 disruption; with salesperson bricolage becoming more strongly related to sales performance when sales environments are more highly disrupted by the pandemic.

Purpose - This paper aims to explore the usage of selling influence tactics across prospective customers with differing information-related needs. Design/methodology/approach - The research study uses an exploratory critical incident technique (CIT) methodology to identify and examine salesperson influence tactics. Findings - This study identifies and explores the use of salesperson influence tactics across three information-based conditions often encountered by salespeople (i.e. information seeking customers, informed customers with information inaccuracies and informed customers making sub-optimal decisions). Regardless of condition, salespeople readily used non-coercive information exchange tactics. Whereas, recommendations and ingratiation tactics were applied by more effective salespeople when interacting with informed customers with information deficiencies. Furthermore, salespeople report executing less effectively with prospects with inaccurate preexisting information and with prospects making flawed or sub-optimal decisions. Research limitations/implications - Findings illustrate the need for a renewed focus on salesperson influence tactics, the conditions under which they are effective, and how salespeople adapt their influence tactics to various situations. The exploratory nature of this study limits the generalizability of findings. Practical implications - A framework of adaptive selling strategies is proposed to help tackle new challenges faced by B2B salespeople in today's information intensive market. When interacting with more informed customers, pre-existing information is often inaccurate and incomplete. Thus, salespeople must assess and address these flaws and gaps and can adapt their influence strategies to do so effectively. Originality/value - Industrial buyers today have virtually unlimited avenues to conduct extensive research and gain supplier information without the aid of interactions with salespeople. Thus, salespeople often enter sales interactions when their prospects have significantly more information than ever before. By examining salesperson influence techniques in selling situations that vary based on prospective customer preexisting knowledge, this research provides guidance on how selling may need to change in a more information intensive era.

This chapter’s central argument is that gender norms and geographic isolation discourage rural women in abusive relationships from seeking help. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Janea,” who murdered her oil worker husband after a lifetime of abuse ignored by her small-town community, and “Itzel,” who was pregnant when she traveled with her baby’s father to Wyoming and assaulted a man with a tire iron in a drug deal gone wrong, this chapter discusses how women situate their understandings of these violent dynamics within the physically harsh, geographically isolated terrain in which they almost always lived before coming to, and to which they generally plan to return after, prison. It explores how heteronormative frontier gender norms set a tone very early in life that can trap women in cycles of abuse and neglect that they can feel powerless to stop. The chapter analyzes intimate partner violence as part of struggles with addiction and substance abuse, a result of limited social capital, and the product of problem-solving strategies learned earlier in life. And it documents incarcerated women’s efforts to engage in relationship-related perspectival shifts, including the symbolic weight with which some women view mothering as a lifeline to the future.

This chapter explores the various forms of state, community, and interpersonal surveillance women experience during and after their incarceration to emphasize how women actively manage prison’s complex social world before transitioning to less intense, but still salient, forms of social scrutiny after their release. This chapter’s central argument is that rural life in remote areas offers women few opportunities to start over after their incarceration. Uniting the experiences of all five composite characters, this chapter discusses how women navigate gendered forms of rural social control and surveillance before, during, and after their time in prison. It documents the social organization of relationships among women in the prison, some of which present a chance for the women to critically examine or otherwise reconsider the competing narratives about their lives and choices. The chapter analyzes how the women’s caregiving obligations, particularly to their minor children, are both a source of motivation for making significant life changes and generators of financial and psychological stress prior to and after their incarceration. And it documents the parole and other stipulations the women confront following their release into the community and the special set of challenges facing women who have had multiple prison stays.

This chapter addresses the addiction and mental health trajectories that led a significant number of women to prison. It elucidates how, for some women, prison offered their first real opportunity to receive sustained medical and other therapeutic treatment for substance abuse and mental health issues. This situation complements the chapter’s central argument that rural social control mechanisms uniquely criminalize and stigmatize women’s substance abuse and mental health issues while discouraging help seeking. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Tammi,” a nineteen-year-old serving a relatively short drug-related sentence and whose “outlaw family” includes many individuals incarcerated in Wyoming jails and prisons, the chapter details the socio-conceptual organization of available addictions treatment within and outside the prison’s extremely isolated Wyoming context. The chapter explores the social and interpersonal organization of the prison’s Intensive Treatment Unit, a separate housing unit that adheres to the therapeutic community model. It examines the social and conceptual organization of other prison therapeutic groups organized by prison staff, volunteers, and the women themselves. This chapter also documents “Nedrah’s” journey through one of the many approaches to reentry taken by the women in their attempts to maintain sobriety and avoid individuals and places that contributed to their addictions.

This chapter reviews recent developments in sustainability regarding cities of the world. Using the approach of a literature review, this chapter highlights sustainability innovations in the context of cities. The chapter identifies several indexes which assess quality of life (QOL) or prosperity in cities of the world. One web-based index which relies heavily on the inputs of citizens around the world is Numbeo. The literature review identifies ways cities have pursued climate change mitigation through encouragement of electrical vehicles and alternative modes of transportation. Innovations that have become controversial in cities are also identified. Analysis of Numbeo suggests this index shows promise of future value for researchers interested in city QOL—specifically its pollution perceptions index. As urbanization continues with more than half of the world's population now residing in cities, interest in the sustainability of cities will intensify. Sustainability indexes for cities are now being developed. Analysis of Numbeo's novel approach to gauging the pollution of cities through the reports of hundreds of thousands of individuals living around the world suggests that this approach holds promise for future development. While other disciplines have taken focus on city sustainability, this is the first study within the domain of marketing research to provide an overview of city sustainability for marketing researchers and to analyze a new way of measuring a component of city QOL—perceptions of city pollution. Results suggest that valuable results will likely be forthcoming as researches continue developing city sustainability measures and indexes in the future.

This chapter argues that the women must navigate socio-institutional and moral beliefs that deny their everyday realities. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Dakota,” a thirty-four-year-old convicted of a financial crime she committed while struggling to save her family’s ranch, it elaborates the socioeconomic challenges rural women face before and after going to prison, with newly intensified versions of these struggles often following their release. It narrates how the women describe their attempts, successes, and failures at meeting their individually valued ways of working, living, and finding meaning in the world. It explores the women’s economic situations prior to prison, which often involved significant debt, childcare responsibilities, and restricted or nonexistent possibilities for earning a living wage. It then follows women through their everyday routines in prison as they work, participate in programming and classes, and begin to formulate plans for their futures. And it analyzes how women attempt to navigate reentry, when felony conviction–related stigma adds to the challenges they face as women in rural areas where male-dominated jobs in the resource-extraction fields generally exclude them and service-sector work does not pay a living wage.

This chapter’s central argument is that gender norms and geographic isolation discourage rural women in abusive relationships from seeking help. Focusing particularly on the experiences of “Janea,” who murdered her oil worker husband after a lifetime of abuse ignored by her small-town community, and “Itzel,” who was pregnant when she traveled with her baby’s father to Wyoming and assaulted a man with a tire iron in a drug deal gone wrong, this chapter discusses how women situate their understandings of these violent dynamics within the physically harsh, geographically isolated terrain in which they almost always lived before coming to, and to which they generally plan to return after, prison. It explores how heteronormative frontier gender norms set a tone very early in life that can trap women in cycles of abuse and neglect that they can feel powerless to stop. The chapter analyzes intimate partner violence as part of struggles with addiction and substance abuse, a result of limited social capital, and the product of problem-solving strategies learned earlier in life. And it documents incarcerated women’s efforts to engage in relationship-related perspectival shifts, including the symbolic weight with which some women view mothering as a lifeline to the future.

This book argues that unique rural cultural dynamics shape women’s experiences of incarceration and release from prison in the remote, predominantly white communities that many Americans still think of as “the Western frontier.” Together, these dynamics comprise an architecture of gendered violence, a theoretical lens applicable to women’s experiences of prison throughout the United States in its focus on how the synchronous operations of addiction and compromised mental health, poverty, fraught relationships, and felony-related discrimination undergird women’s lives. The architecture of gendered violence that comprises the primary pathway to incarceration among the Wyoming women in this study reflects the way the suite of concerns facing currently and formerly incarcerated women throughout the United States manifests in a remote rural context far from the coastal metropolises that dominate the production of criminal justice discourse and scholarship.