Role Perceptions

The role of a salesperson is the set of activities or behaviors to be performed by any person occupying that position. This role is defined largely through the expectations, demands, and pressures communicated to the salesperson by his or her role partners. These partners include people both outside and within the firm who have a vested interest in how the salesperson performs the job—top management, the salesperson’s sales manager, customers, and family members. Salespeople’s perceptions of these expectations strongly influence their definition of their role in the company and behavior on the job.

Defining Role Perceptions. The role perceptions component of the model for salesperson performance has three dimensions: perceived role conflict, perceived role ambiguity, and role inaccuracy. Perceived role conflict arises when a salesperson believes the role demands by two or more of his or her role partners are incompatible. Thus, he or she cannot possibly satisfy them all at the same time. A salesperson suffers from perceptions of conflict, for example, when a customer demands a delivery schedule or credit terms the salesperson believes will be unacceptable to company superiors. In reality good salespeople with a strong customer orientation can struggle to balance their focus on the customer with the expectations of internal stakeholders. These situations often lead to conflict and ambiguity as the salesperson determines the appropriate course of action.²,³

Perceived role ambiguity occurs when a salesperson believes he or she does not have the information necessary to perform the job adequately. The salesperson may be uncertain about what some role partners expect in certain situations, how he or she should satisfy those expectations, or how his or her performance will be evaluated and rewarded.

Role inaccuracy is the degree to which the salesperson’s perceptions of demands from his or her role partners—particularly company superiors—are not accurate and is different from role ambiguity in that the salesperson feels certain about what should be done. However, the salesperson’s belief is wrong. It differs from role conflict in that the salesperson does not see any inconsistencies because the rep does not realize his or her perceptions are inaccurate.

Why Are Role Perceptions Important? How salespeople perceive their roles will have significant consequences for them. Role perceptions can produce dissatisfaction with the job. They can also affect a salesperson’s motivation.⁴ These effects can increase sales force turnover and hurt performance. However, role stress (role conflict and ambiguity) does not necessarily imply a negative job outcome (quitting). Believe it or not, a certain degree of role conflict and ambiguity enables salespeople to make creative decisions that can be beneficial to the customer and the organization. Research suggests that polychronicity—an employee's preference for switching between multiple tasks within the same block of time—has a positive impact on performance and a negative impact on role ambiguity. This suggests that hiring salespeople who are flexible and able to adapt to concurrent multiple tasks may improve sales performance.⁵

Because they spend so much time out of the office and with customers, B2B salespeople are particularly vulnerable to role conflict, ambiguity and inaccuracy. Several personal factors (such as traveling, work demands) and organizational factors (such as infrequent meetings with their supervisor) can affect salespeople’s role perceptions. Fortunately, many of these factors can be controlled or influenced by sales management policies and methods, so sales managers can help their salespeople perform better.⁶

Sales Aptitude: Are Good Salespeople Born or Made?

Stable, self-sufficient, self-confident, goal-directed, decisive, intellectually curious, accurate—these are personal traits one major personnel testing company says a successful salesperson should have. Sales ability has sometimes been thought to be a function of (1) physical factors such as age and physical attractiveness, (2) aptitude factors such as verbal intelligence and sales expertise, and (3) personality characteristics such as empathy and sociability. However, there is no proof that these types of broad aptitude measures, by themselves, affect sales performance. It’s an open question whether the presence or absence of such traits is determined by a person’s genetic makeup and early life experiences or whether they can be developed through training, supervision, and experience after the person is hired for a sales position. In other words, the question is: Are good salespeople born or made?

Many sales executives seem unsure about what it takes to become a successful salesperson. When forced to choose, a majority of managers say they believe good salespeople are made rather than born. By a margin of seven to one, the respondents in a survey of sales and marketing executives said training and supervision are more critical determinants of selling success than the rep’s inherent personal characteristics.⁷ But many of those respondents also described someone they knew as “a born salesperson,” and a minority argued that personal traits are critical determinants of good sales performance.

Thus, while most managers believe the things a firm does to train and develop its salespeople are the most critical determinants of their success, many also believe that certain basic personal traits—such as a strong ego, self-confidence, decisiveness, and a drive to achieve—are requirements. Most likely both sets of factors play crucial roles in shaping a salesperson’s performance. Exhibit 11.3 highlights five traits considered critical for sales success.

Sales Skill Levels

Role perceptions determine whether the salesperson knows what to do in performing a job, and aptitude determines whether the individual has the necessary native abilities. Skill levels are the individual’s learned proficiency at performing the necessary tasks.⁸ They include such learned abilities as interpersonal skills, leadership, technical knowledge, and presentation skills. The relative importance of each of these skills, and the need for other skills, depends on the selling situation. Different kinds of skills are needed for different types of selling tasks.

Aptitude and skill levels are thus related constructs. Aptitude consists of relatively enduring personal abilities, while skills are proficiencies that can improve rapidly with learning and experience. A salesperson for Cisco Systems selling multimillion-dollar network switching equipment needs different skill sets from someone selling BMWs to consumers.

The salesperson’s past selling experience and the extensiveness and content of the firm’s sales training programs influence skill level. While American companies spend large amounts of money on sales training, very little is known concerning the effects of these training programs on salespeople’s skills, behavior, and performance. We will discuss training the sales force in much greater detail in chapter 12.

Motivation

Motivation is how much the salesperson wants to expend effort on each activity or task associated with the job. These activities include calling on existing and potential new accounts, developing and delivering sales presentations, and filling out orders and reports.

Defining Motivation. The salesperson’s motivation to expend effort on any task seems to be a function of the person’s (1) expectancies and (2) valences for performance. Expectancies are the salesperson’s estimates that expending effort on a specific task will lead to improved performance on some specific dimension. For example, will increasing the number of calls made on potential new accounts lead to increased sales? Valences for performance are the salesperson’s perceptions of the desirability of attaining improved performance on some dimension(s). For example, does the salesperson find increased sales important?

A salesperson’s valence for performance on a specific dimension, in turn, seems to be a function of the salesperson’s (1) instrumentalities and (2) valences for rewards. Instrumentalities are the salesperson’s estimates that improved performance on that dimension will lead to increased attainment of particular rewards. For example, will increased sales lead to increased compensation? Valences for rewards are the salesperson’s perceptions of the desirability of receiving increased rewards as a result of improved performance. Does the salesperson find increased compensation attractive enough to put in the time calling on more prospects?

Many organizations connect performance with a great deal of positive/negative feedback and subsequently rewards/punishment in order to direct salespeople with specific expectations and detailed guidance on how to complete certain tasks. However, research suggests that may actually lower cross-selling performance. Indeed, a better approach may be to allow salespeople to address cross selling on their own. Empowering the salesperson to create their own solutions increases trust and creativity. Offering monetary rewards (extrinsic) may not be as valuable to the salesperson at finding their own success formula (intrinsic).⁹

Why Is Motivation Important? Sales managers constantly try to find the right mix of motivation elements to direct salespeople to do certain activities, but rewards that motivate one salesperson may not motivate another. The manager of a leading consulting company in Chicago gave his top performer a new mink coat. The only problem was that the individual was opposed to wearing fur. Rewarding the salesperson was a great idea, but the form of the reward led to problems for the sales manager.

A salesperson’s motivation is not directly under the sales manager’s control, but it can be influenced by things the sales manager does, such as how he or she supervises or rewards the individual. In addition it is influenced by a number of personal variables such as the individual’s career stage.¹⁰ Since motivation strongly influences performance, the sales manager must be sensitive to the way various factors affect each rep. Exhibit 11.4 explores ways to motivate and retain your star salespeople.

Organizational, Environmental, and Personal Factors

It is difficult to separate organizational, environmental, and personal variables. The sales performance model in Exhibit 11.1 suggests that they influence sales performance in two ways: (1) by directly facilitating or constraining performance and (2) by influencing and interacting with the other performance determinants, such as role perceptions and motivation. Many questions remain unanswered concerning the effects of these factors on sales performance.

Organizational and Environmental Variables. Organizational factors include the company marketing budget, current market share for products, and the degree of sales force supervision. There is an indirect and direct relationship between performance and environmental factors like territory potential, the salesperson’s workload, and the intensity of competition. Determining the right amount of organizational support is difficult. Too much support and the salesperson can become complacent, too little and the salesperson loses trust in the organization. Research also suggests a significant relationship between trust in the organization and job satisfaction making it even more important that the organization seek to provide the right support to the sales force.¹¹

When you look at sales territory design (remember the discussion from chapter 10), a salesperson’s performance increases as he or she becomes more satisfied with the territory’s design and structure. Including salespeople in the territory design process may seem intuitive, but managers sometimes find it difficult to balance the needs of the organization with the input of the salespeople. Sales managers have learned, however, that including them in the decision-making process on key issues such as territory design and technology decisions may increase their performance over time.¹² As we discussed in chapter 10, computer territory mapping software helps sales managers and salespeople work together to create the most profitable and efficient territory configurations.¹³ In the long term this can lead to less role ambiguity and more job satisfaction, as well as better performance. Companies are increasingly asking their employees to connect their work with “bigger issues” such as community and spirituality. Deloitte, Aetna and others want employees to consider the spirituality or meaningfulness of their work along three dimensions: inner life (spirituality), meaningful work, and sense of community.¹⁴

Personal Variables. Personal and organizational variables (such as job experience, the manager’s interaction style, and performance feedback) affect the amount of role conflict and ambiguity salespeople perceive. In addition, their desire for job-related rewards (such as higher pay or promotion) differs with demographic characteristics such as age, education, family size, career stage, and organizational climate and other characteristics such as coping strategies that can impact a wide range of salesperson attitudes and behaviors.¹⁵

As the role of salespeople has evolved into building and maintaining customer relationships, they have been asked to engage in a whole range of activities that can be described as being good corporate citizens. These behaviors are called organizational citizenship behaviors and encompass four basic types of activity: (1) sportsmanship, (2) civic virtue, (3) conscientiousness, and (4) altruism. Sportsmanship is a willingness on the salesperson’s part to endure less than optimum conditions (like slow reimbursement of expenses or reduced administrative support) without complaining to superiors or other salespeople. Civic virtue is a proactive behavior that includes making recommendations to management that will improve the overall performance of the organization (e.g., providing feedback from customers even when it is not complimentary). Conscientiousness is the willingness to work beyond the normal expectations of the job (late at night or on weekends). Altruism refers to helping others in the organization (for example, mentoring younger salespeople).

There is a growing understanding that salespeople who engage in these activities perform better on both outcome-based measures (sales volume) and behavior-based measures (customer satisfaction). Measuring and evaluating salesperson performance will be discussed in chapter 13. Engaging in activities that enhance the overall organization becomes even more important as the focus shifts to relationship selling.

Rewards

Exhibit 11.1 indicates that performance affects the salesperson’s rewards. However, the relationship between performance and rewards is very complex. For one thing, a firm may choose to evaluate and reward different dimensions of sales performance. A company might evaluate its salespeople on total sales volume, quota attainment, customer satisfaction, profitability of sales, new accounts generated, services provided to customers, or some combination of these. Different firms use different dimensions. Even firms that use the same performance criteria are likely to have different emphases.

A company can also bestow a variety of rewards for any given level of performance. There are two types of rewards—extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic rewards are those controlled and bestowed by people other than the salesperson, such as managers or customers. They include such things as pay, financial incentives, security, recognition, and promotion. Intrinsic rewards are those that salespeople primarily attain for themselves. They include such things as feelings of accomplishment, personal growth, and self-worth.

Satisfaction

The job satisfaction of salespeople refers to all the characteristics of the job that salespeople find rewarding, fulfilling, and satisfying—or frustrating and unsatisfying. Satisfaction is a complex job attitude, and salespeople can be satisfied or dissatisfied with many different aspects of the job. There are seven dimensions to sales job satisfaction: (1) the job itself, (2) pay, (3) company policies and support, (4) supervision, (5) co-workers, (6) promotion and advancement opportunities, and (7) customers (See Exhibit 11.5). Salespeople’s total satisfaction with their jobs is a reflection of their satisfaction with each element. For example, recent research suggests that salespeople’s satisfaction goes down if they perceive that new techonologies like Internet sales cannibalize their own sales efforts.¹⁶

Like rewards, the seven dimensions of satisfaction can be grouped, into intrinsic and extrinsic components. Extrinsic satisfaction is based on the extrinsic rewards bestowed on the salesperson, such as pay, company policies and support, supervision, fellow workers, chances for promotion, and customers. Intrinsic satisfaction is based on the intrinsic rewards the salesperson obtains from the job, such as satisfaction with the work itself.

Salespeople’s satisfaction is also influenced by their role perceptions.¹⁷ Salespeople who perceive a great deal of conflict in job demands tend to be less satisfied than those who do not. So do those who experience great uncertainty in what is expected from them on the job.

Finally, a salesperson’s job satisfaction is likely to affect his or her motivation to perform, as suggested by the feedback loop in Exhibit 11.1. The relationship between satisfaction and motivation is complex and varies by individual.

The Salesperson’s Role Perceptions

Role perceptions have important implications for sales managers and affect salesperson performance in many ways. For example, feelings of ambiguity, conflict, and inaccurate role perceptions can cause anxiety and stress, which can lead to lower performance. Fortunately, the sales manager can minimize the negative

consequences of role perceptions by the kind of salespeople that are hired, training methods, the incentives used to motivate them, criteria used to evaluate them, and the way they are supervised.

What makes understanding and managing role perceptions even more complicated is that not all the consequences of role ambiguity, role conflict, and role accuracy are negative. Eliminating all ambiguity and conflict would reduce thechallenge for a salesperson and can actually limit long-term performance. The sales manager’s job is to create an environment that will stimulate and motivate salespeople while reducing the negative effects of role stress that are a natural part of selling. The salesperson’s role is defined through a three-step process:¹⁸ role partners communicate expectations, salespeople develop perceptions, and salespeople convert these perceptions into behaviors.

Stage 1: Role Partners Communicate Expectations. First, expectations and demands concerning how the salesperson should behave, together with pressures to conform, are communicated to the salesperson by people with a vested interest in how he or she performs the job. These people include the rep’s immediate superior, other executives in the firm, customers and members of customers’ organizations, and the salesperson’s family. They all try to influence the person’s behavior, either formally through organizational policies, operating procedures, and training programs or informally through social pressures, rewards, and sanctions.

The salesperson’s family members can have a significant effect on job perceptions. Their demands are much more likely to differ from one salesperson to the next than the expectations of customers or management. So no matter what the company expects in hours of work, customer relationships, travel, and the like, a substantial number of salespeople are likely to be in conflict with their families’ expectations. That is becoming an increasingly serious problem for today’s workers, as Global Connection indicates.

Stage 2: Salespeople Develop Perceptions. The second part of the role definition process involves salespeople’s perception of the expectations and demands of those around them (sales manager, customers, loved ones). Salespeople perform according to what they think these individuals expect, even when their perceptions of those expectations are not accurate. To really understand why salespeople perform the way they do, it is necessary to understand what they think the members of the role set expect.

At this stage of the role definition process, three factors can wreak havoc with a salesperson’s job performance and mental well-being. As Exhibit 11.6 shows, the salesperson may suffer from role ambiguity, role conflict, or role inaccuracy.

Stage 3: Salespeople Convert Perceptions to Behaviors. The final step in the role definition process involves the salesperson’s conversion of role perceptions into actual behavior. Both job behavior and attitudes can be affected if there is role ambiguity or conflict, or if these perceptions are inaccurate. High levels of perceived ambiguity and conflict are directly related to high stress and tension and low job satisfaction. Also, feelings of uncertainty or conflict and the actions taken to resolve them can have a strong impact on job performance.¹⁹ At a minimum, the salesperson’s performance is less likely to meet management’s expectations when the rep is uncertain about what those expectations are or feels conflicting expectations from customers or family.

The Salesperson’s Role Is Affected by Many Factors

Several characteristics of the salesperson’s role make it susceptible to role conflict, role ambiguity, and the development of inaccurate role perceptions. Salespeople operate at the boundary of the firm, interact with many people, and are often considered innovators inside the organization.

Boundary Position. Salespeople are likely to experience more role conflict than other individuals in a company because they work at the boundary of their firms. Key members affecting the salesperson’s role—customers—are external to the organization, so salespeople receive demands from organizations that have diverse goals, policies, and problems. Since both the customer and the salesperson’s own organization want a salesperson’s behavior to be consistent with their different goals, the demands on the salesperson are often incompatible.

Exhibit 11.6 Sales Perception of the Job

Source: Mark W. Johnston and Greg W. Marshall, Sales Force Management, 12th ed. (London: Routledge, 2016).

For example, a customer may question the salesperson on the company’s long-term commitment to meet his or her needs. You may remember Blackberry’s (formerly Research in Motion) problems with their cell phones, at one time Blackberry was the most popular cell phone manufacturer in the world, however, Apple and Samsung (as well as other Android manufacturers) have made Blackberry a small, niche player in the cell phone market. Even now Blackberry salespeople get asked about the long-term viability of the company in light of the product’s problems. Management told them to be honest and explain to customers what the company was doing to unsuccessfully address product issues. They had to balance confidentiality with customers’ legitimate concerns about the future ability of the company to meet existing product and customer service pledges. Salespeople get caught in the middle. To satisfy the demands of one partner, they must deal with the concerns and demands of the other.

Another problem that arises from the salesperson’s boundary position is that the individuals in one organization (for example, the salesperson’s company) often don’t appreciate the expectations and demands made by others (customers or loved ones). A customer may not know company policies or the constraints under which the salesperson must operate. Or the sales rep’s superiors may formulate company policies without understanding the needs of certain customers. Even someone who is aware of the other’s demands may not understand the reasoning behind them and may consider them arbitrary or illegitimate.

The nature of selling also increases the likelihood salespeople will experience role ambiguity. Contact with customers, though regular, is probably infrequent and often brief. Under such conditions, it is easy for a salesperson to feel uncertain or to misjudge what the customers really expect in delivery, service, or how they really feel about the rep’s service.

The “Remote” Sales Force. Increasingly, salespeople operate from remote offices (often their home) and spend very little time in their company’s offices. This can increase role stress and lead to lower performance over time. Benefits of a remote sales force include lower costs and stronger relationships as salespeople get closer to their customers. But being separated from the organization may lead to alienation and isolation, which can lower satisfaction and performance.

Managers help salespeople feel less isolated by remaining in regular contact and assuring the reps that they are still a vital part of the organization. The Ethical Dilemma describes a problem that can arise when salespeople do not stay connected to the company. Salespeople also need feedback on their performance from managers and to learn how to improve their selling skills (training). Many companies, including Johnson & Johnson and HP, have salespeople who work remotely from their homes with great results.

Interaction with Many People. Salespeople interact with many diverse individuals. One salesperson may sell to hundreds of customers, and each expects his or her own particular needs and requirements to be satisfied. People within the firm rely on the salesperson to execute company policies with customers and increase the firm’s revenue. The specific design of a product and the delivery and credit terms quoted by the salesperson directly affects people in the engineering, production, and credit departments, for example. All these people may hold definite beliefs about how the salesperson should perform the job and may pressure the individual to conform to their expectations.

The large number of people from diverse departments and organizations who depend on the salesperson increases the probability that at least some demands will be incompatible. It also means the salesperson’s perceptions of some demands will be inaccurate and he or she will be uncertain about others.

Selling in a Team. The complex nature of the relationship between company and customer has created a need for salespeople to work in teams that include specialists from many parts of the company (technical, manufacturing, logistics, and others). As we have discussed, the role of the salesperson has evolved from selling to customers to managing the relationship between the company and customers. Companies as diverse as 3M, Siemens, and Sony have created sales teams managed by salespeople. Inside salespeople and customer service reps create additional contact with the customer that often requires greater coordination with the field representatives. This may create role conflict as salespeople deal with the expectations and demands of many individuals in the sales team and the organization as a whole.

Innovative Role. Salespeople are frequently called on to produce new, innovative solutions to nonroutine problems. This is particularly true when they are selling highly technical products or engineered systems designed to customer’s specifications. Even salespeople who sell standardized products must display some creativity in matching the company’s offerings to each customer’s particular needs. With potential new accounts, this is an extremely difficult but critical task.

As a result of their innovative roles, salespeople tend to experience more conflict than other employees because they must have flexibility to perform at a high level. They must also have the authority to develop and carry out innovative solutions. This need for flexibility often brings the salesperson into conflict with standard operating procedures of the firm and the expectations of co-workers who want to maintain the status quo. The production manager, for example, may frown on orders for nonstandard products because of the adverse effects on production costs and schedules—although marketing (especially the salespeople) desires flexible production schedules and the ability to sell custom-designed products.

Workers with innovative roles also tend to experience more role ambiguity and inaccurate role perceptions because they face unusual situations where they have no standard procedures or past experience to guide them. Consequently, they are often uncertain about how their role partners expect them to proceed. Their perceptions are more likely to be inaccurate because of the nonroutine nature of the task. The flexibility needed to fulfill an innovative role can have unforeseen negative consequences.

Role Perceptions

Given that role conflict and ambiguity produce mostly negative consequences for salespeople, the question is: Can sales management do anything to reduce conflicts and ambiguities or help salespeople deal with them when they occur? Yes. There are many things management can do to manage salesperson conflict and ambiguity.

Role Conflict. Experienced salespeople perceive less conflict than less experienced representatives. Perhaps salespeople who experience a great deal of conflict become dissatisfied and quit, whereas those who stay on the job do not perceive as much conflict.

Also, successful sales representatives also learn with experience how to deal with conflict. They learn that demands that initially appear to conflict can turn out to be compatible or perhaps they find out how to resolve conflicts so they are no longer stressful. They build up psychological defense mechanisms to screen out conflicts and ease tension. Sales training programs can prepare salespeople to deal with job-related conflicts and teach them to do their job better.

When their sales managers structure and define their jobs, salespeople seem to experience more conflict. Perhaps too close supervision decreases a salesperson’s flexibility in dealing with the diverse role expectations with which salespeople must contend (customers, management, and family). Another way to reduce role conflict, then, is to give salespeople a greater voice in what they do and how they do it.

Role Ambiguity. There are also things management can do to reduce role ambiguity. Since it too depends on experience, training should help salespeople cope with it. More importantly, it also depends on the manager’s supervisory style. Close supervision may actually reduce ambiguity, though salespeople should have some influence over the standards used to control and evaluate their performance. Closely supervised salespeople are more aware of their supervisors’ expectations and demands, and inconsistent behaviors can be brought to their attention more quickly.

Similarly, salespeople who have input in determining the standards by which they are evaluated are more familiar with these standards, which tends to reduce role ambiguity. Another way to reduce ambiguity is by reducing the number of people who report directly to the sales manager. An increase in the number of people who report to a manager also increases a salesperson’s perceived role ambiguity. Reducing it allows closer supervision, and tends to make job-related issues clearer to salespeople.²⁰

As you can see, close supervision can be a two-edged sword. While it can reduce ambiguity, it can increase role conflict and job dissatisfaction when salespeople feel they don’t have enough latitude to deal effectively with customers or enough creative input to service their accounts. The problem is particularly acute when sales managers use coercion and threats to direct their salespeople.²¹ Sales managers must walk a very fine line in how closely and by what means they supervise their sales force.

Motivation

Through company policies, the sales manager can directly facilitate or hinder a salesperson’s motivation. They may also influence salespeople’s performance indirectly, however, by affecting their interest in company rewards and the size and accuracy of their expectancies and instrumentalities. How do sales executives motivate their sales forces? Check out Exhibit 11.7.

Motivation and Managerial Leadership. One well-regarded theory of leadership suggests that managers can attain good performance by increasing salespeople’s personal rewards and making the path to those rewards easier to follow—by providing instructions and training, reducing roadblocks and pitfalls, and increasing the opportunities for personal satisfaction.²²

Effective leaders match their style and approach to the needs of their sales force and the kinds of tasks they must perform. When the salesperson’s task is well defined, routine, and repetitive, the leader should seek ways to increase the intrinsic rewards, perhaps by assigning a broader range of activities or giving the rep more flexibility to perform tasks. When the salesperson’s job is complex and ambiguous—as is the case in most selling situations—he or she is likely to be happier and more productive when the leader provides more guidance and structure. One of the challenges is critically examining the manager–salesperson relationship. In general salespeople respond well to managers who display a genuine concern for their salespeople (servant leadership).²³

The more accurate salespeople’s role perceptions are, the more motivated they’re likely to be. Salespeople work at the boundary of their companies, dealing with customers and other people who may make conflicting demands. Salespeople frequently face new, nonroutine problems. However, closely supervised salespeople can learn more quickly what is expected of them and how they should perform their job. On the other hand close supervision can increase role conflict, since it can reduce flexibility in accommodating and adapting to customers’ demands.

Another factor is how often salespeople communicate with their managers. The more frequent the communication, the less role ambiguity salespeople are likely to experience and the more accurate their expectancies and instrumentalities are. Again, too frequent contact with superiors may increase a representative’s feelings of role conflict.

Incentive and Compensation Policies

Management policies and programs concerning rewards, such as recognition and promotion, can influence the desirability of such rewards in the salesperson’s mind. If, for example, a large proportion of the sales force receives some formal recognition each year, salespeople may think such recognition is too common, too easy to obtain, and not worth much. If very few representatives receive formal recognition, however, recognition may not motivate simply because the odds of attaining it are so low. The same kind of relationship is likely to exist between the proportion of salespeople promoted into management each year (the opportunity rate) and the importance salespeople place on promotion. In addition, a critical issue is the question of fairness and how rewards are dispensed across the organization, if rewards are not perceived to be fair it can impact a wide range of employees attitudes and motivation.²⁴

Another issue is preferential treatment for stars. The goal of recognition and other forms of incentives is to motivate people to do better, but what happens when one star demands and receives much more than the average or even much more than the company’s other top performers? A company’s policies on the kinds and amounts of financial compensation paid to “star” salespeople are also likely to affect their motivation. When an individual is basically satisfied with his or her pay, money becomes less important and the value of that reward to that person is reduced. At the same time companies are increasingly interested in customer retention and loyalty making it important for incentive and compensation systems to drive salespeople to engage in those activities that foster increased customer loyalty.²⁵

Finally, the reward mix offered by the firm is a factor. Reward mix is the relative emphasis placed on salary versus commissions or other incentive pay and nonfinancial rewards. It is likely to influence a salesperson’s value estimates of certain rewards and help determine into which job activities and types of performance he or she will put the greatest effort. The question from a manager’s viewpoint is how to design an effective reward mix for directing the sales force’s efforts toward the activities most important to the overall success of the firm’s sales program. This leads to a discussion of the relative advantages and drawbacks of alternative compensation and incentive programs—the topic of chapter 13.