| The objective of this research was to ascertain and describe the latent structure of individual sales performance. In this research, individual sales performance was defined as the behaviors commission salespeople exhibit that are relevant to their organization's goals, and that are within their control. Academic researchers and management practitioners have long recognized the need to improve our understanding of the behavioral dimensions of salesperson's performance. Yet after more than 75 years of extensive research there does not exist a comprehensive model of individual sales performance. The absence of such a model may be at the root of the inconsistent research results regarding determinants of effective sales performance.; In achieving this objective, critical incidents describing effective and ineffective behaviors of commission sales people were collected from customers, H.O. personnel and salespersonnel. Next four different sorts were conducted. Judges sorted incidents into dimensions of individual sales performance based on an a priori model that was derived from existing literature or on their own intuitive model. Then principal component analyses were applied to reduce the sorting data to a manageable interpretable set of components. These results were considered and a revised taxonomy was constructed. A final set of four judges through a panel consensus sorted a new sample of 206 critical incidents into the revised dimensions.; Overall the results suggest that six middle-order dimensions can describe individual sales performance. The dimensions are: (a) Going the Extra Mile for the Customer, (b) Interpersonal Interaction with Customers, (c) Presenting Products to the Customer-Using Knowledge of Procedures and Practices, (d) Proactive Planning to Facilitate the Sales Process, (e) Counterproductive Activities, and (f) Working with the Home Office or Parent Organization to Resolve Customer Problems. |
