Literature Review: How to Build Salesperson’s Loyalty for the 787 Dreamliner
According to the Canadian Professional Sales Association (2012), building salesperson's loyalty requires one to understand his or her salespersons. The primary qualities that a manager needs to understand in salespersons include empathy, responsibility, optimism, ego-drive, and focus. It is by understanding the above qualities that a manager will be able to know the ability of a sales person to react accurately to the behavior and emotions of customers. Additionally, the manager will be able to know the ability of a sales person to identify other people's feelings and frustrations, listening skills, curiosity, and the establishment of good rapport.
Palmatier, Scheer, & Steenkamp (2007), after conducting a study involving 362 buyer-salesperson dyads, found out that salesperson-owned loyalty directly influences the most tangible seller financial results of sales development and selling efficiency. According to the authors, both salesperson loyalty and loyalty to the selling company corroborates the willingness of the customer to pay a price premium. The authors suggest that managers should strike a benefit-risk tradeoff, whereby they raise link-supporting activities and value received by customer. This helps in building the loyalty of the salesperson to the selling company.
Tony & Smith (2001) argue that creating the right environment for the nourishment of talented sales representatives does not come by chance. Managers need to input the right training of employees. In the recruitment of new salespersons, the authors, purport the exercise does not start and stop at measurement. Instead, managers should step outside their normal recruitment patterns in the identification of new hires. Managers can spend more time evaluating talent and become less admissible of poor performers if they have the assurance of replacing them with better sales-persons. Additionally, the authors say that the engagement works hand in hand with productivity, turnover, and profitability. Attention should be focused on the key engagement factors by salespersons to produce drastic improvements in their operations.
References
Canadian Professional Sales Association. (2012). 5 characteristics of Successful Sales People
(part 1 to 6).Canadian Professional Sales Association.
Palmatier, R. W., Scheer, L. K., & Steenkamp, J. E. (2007). Customer Loyalty to Whom?
Managing the Benefits and Risks of Salesperson-Owned Loyalty. Journal of Marketing Research, XLIV, 185-199.
Smith, B. & Rutigliano, T. (2001). Building a World-Class Sales Force. Gallup Business
