Why sales reps should welcome information technology: Measuring the impact of CRM-based IT on sales effectiveness

Ahearne, Michael; Hughes, Douglas E.; Schillewaert, Niels

doi:10.1016/j.ijresmar.2007.09.003

Cited by 140 publications

(81 citation statements)

References 89 publications

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“…Content-analytic approaches are commonly used to advance qualitative insight in the marketing domain (e.g. Ahearne, Hughes, and Schillewaert 2007;Ahearne, Jelinek, and Jones 2007;Blazevic and Lievens 2008). In the inductive category development variant, themes and categories are allowed to emerge from the data to better understand the perspectives of the participants; in contrast to deductive category development where data are classified into a priori categories (Mayring 2000).…”

Section: Content Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed interpretations of sales proposal signals

Johnson

Friend

Malshe

2016

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

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Long-term relationships with customers are critical determinants of a sales organization's success. However, research tends to assess relational approaches from the salesperson or sales organization's perspective and often neglects to capture customers' perspectives which lead to the evaluative success or failure of buyer-seller relationships. This study assesses the seller's bidrelated signals from the buyer's perspective following their selection or rejection of a business-to-business sales proposal. The authors adopt a theories-in-use approach, utilizing 54 depth-interviews with decision-makers from 33 buyer organizations. Within this data set, findings reveal three bid signals that are represented across both selection and rejection outcomes (i.e. mixed interpretations by buyers). These signals are the seller's usage of price concessions, sales proposal specificity, and comparative customer examples. To better understand the mechanisms which influence buyers' mixed interpretations of these signals, the authors utilize the newly-advanced qualitative pivoting technique to identify contextual variables across cases that influence the buyer's positive or negative signal interpretation.Keywords: sales proposal selection; signaling theory; price concessions; proposal specificity; comparative customer examples; qualitative Buyer-seller relationships are complex and interdependent (Autry, Williams, and Moncrief 2013;Beverland 2001;Chakrabarty, Brown, and Widing 2013;Dwyer, Schurr, and Oh 1987;Guenzi and Troilo 2006) and relationshipbuilding efforts are an ongoing endeavor. As business-tobusiness (B2B) firms widely embrace relational strategies (Gonzalez, Douglas Hoffman, and Ingram 2005;Morgan and Hunt 1994), sellers attempt to initiate, build, and maintain long-term buyer-seller relationships with existing and/ or potential customers (Berry 1983). In this endeavor, the continuous engagement sellers have with buyers serve as forward-looking signals to buyers about the direction of their relationship (Palmatier et al. 2013). An important juncture in the buyer-seller relationship is when the account comes up for renewal and the buyer invites proposals from their incumbent provider, along with other prospective sellers. While incumbent sellers look to leverage their existing relationship and send desirable signals to buyers during the renewal stage, buyers have a large number of data-points to glean from, interpret, and base their decisions upon during this stage.From the buyer's perspective, these data-points include the following factors that influence their decision: (a) experience working with the incumbent seller to date, (b) recent interactions with the incumbent seller during the account renewal initiation, (c) characteristics of the final proposal put forward by the incumbent seller, (d) credibility of outside sellers calling on the buyers and seeking their business, (e) interactions with outside sellers during the account renewal stage, (f) characteristics of the proposals submitted by outside sellers, and/or ...

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Section: Content Analysismentioning

confidence: 99%

Mixed interpretations of sales proposal signals

Johnson

Friend

Malshe

2016

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

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“…The eCRM is defined by Lee-Kelley et al (2003) as the marketing activities, tools, and techniques, delivered over the internet using technologies such as web sites and e-mail, data-capture, warehousing, and mining with a specific aim to locate, build and improve longterm customer relationships to enhance their individual potential. More recently, researchers have also explained that eCRM usage can improve firm revenues, internal processes, learning and overall performance (Wu & Hung, 2009;Coltman, 2007;Richard et al, 2007) as well as salespeople's productivity and call center agents' job performance (McNally, 2007;Ahearne et al, 2007;Jelinek et al, 2006).…”

Section: Tablementioning

confidence: 99%

Detecting success factors of electronic customer relationship management (e_CRM) system to establish an appropriate model in police call centre of Iran

Yazdanpanah¹,

Gazor²

2012

MSL

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The present research aims to describe and explain factors affecting the success of eCRM system in police telephone-contact centers as a part of their interactive and relationship-oriented programs. In this study, one of the most famous models implemented in several industries such as insurance industry has been evaluated; the results then have been modified for application. The results, in fact, corroborate the main hypothesis, which points to the existence of a relationship between an establishment and its institutional success. In other words, having established an eCRM system, institutions will witness an increase in efficiency, staff satisfaction, and eventually customer satisfaction. The results may also explain the failure of some huge investments in implementing modern technology to disseminate information and establish communication by indicating that large investments in technology do not necessarily bring about required improvement in efficiency. It has also been demonstrated that expanding types of services to include ones such as providing counseling via telephone and placing accurate and relevant information on the website needs to be considered as part of an eCRM system agenda.

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“…Since the late 1970s, companies have substantially improved their information systems. Most sales forces are now equipped with sales automation technology that enables salespeople to make more qualified autonomous decisions (Ahearne, Hughes, & Schillewaert, 2007;Ahearne, Jones, Rapp, & Mathieu, 2008). There has also been an increase in customized marketing and sales activities, including individualized pricing, that call for salespeople to have more pricing flexibility.…”

Section: Summary Of Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Agency-Theoretic Factors Affect the Delegation of Pricing Authority to the Sales Force: An Empirical Study

Fazlzadeh¹,

Mohammadi²,

Sepehrfar³

2011

IJMS

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Here we (1) empirically test a framework of important drivers of price delegation based on agency-theoretic (2) investigate the impact of price delegation on firm performance. The study data's collected from a sample of 180 companies from the industrial home appliances and structural equipment industry in Iran. Result show that, risk-aversion of salespeople is negatively and customer heterogeneity positively related to the degree of price delegation. Also we find that information asymmetry has no relationship with price delegation. Furthermore, we find a positive effect of price delegation on firm performance, which is amplified when market-related uncertainty is high and when salespeople possess better customer-related information than their managers. Hence, our results clearly show that rigid, "one price fits all" policies are inappropriate in many B2B market situations. sales managers should grant their salespeople sufficient leeway to adapt prices to changing customer requirements.

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Why sales reps should welcome information technology: Measuring the impact of CRM-based IT on sales effectiveness

Cited by 140 publications

References 89 publications

Mixed interpretations of sales proposal signals

Mixed interpretations of sales proposal signals

Detecting success factors of electronic customer relationship management (e_CRM) system to establish an appropriate model in police call centre of Iran

How Agency-Theoretic Factors Affect the Delegation of Pricing Authority to the Sales Force: An Empirical Study

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