The impact of performance measurement diversity on customer-oriented selling behavior

• Published in: Industrial marketing management Vol. 110; pp. 56 - 67
• Main Authors: Kerr, Peter D., Franco-Santos, Monica
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc 01-04-2023
• Subjects: Customer-oriented selling behavior; Measurement diversity; Performance management; Sales control; Sales ethics; Selling complexity; Customer-oriented selling behavior; Selling complexity; Sales control; Sales ethics; Performance management; Measurement diversity
• ISSN: 0019-8501; 1873-2062
• DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2023.02.016

Motivated by recent high-profile cases of salespeople behaving ‘badly’ (i.e., unethically, aggressively, or misleading toward customers), we investigate traditional behavioral controls to examine the specific relationship between performance measurement choices and selling behavior with a survey of 207 business-to-business salespeople. Borrowing from attention-based theory and the theory of planned behavior, our findings suggest that sales management can encourage more pro-customer behavior by using a more diverse performance measurement schema to influence the underlying drivers of customer-oriented selling behavior, including salesperson attitudes and subjective norms. This is particularly important in transactional selling environments where the use of diverse measures has the strongest effect on pro-customer attitudes and customer-oriented selling behavior.
•Increased performance measurement diversity is linked to customer-oriented selling behavior.•Salesperson attitudes are chiefly responsible for higher levels of customer-oriented selling behavior.•The influence of attitudes on customer-oriented selling is most acute in less complex, transactional selling situations.