Making Sense of the Customer’s Role in the Personal Selling Process: A Theory of Organizing and Sensemaking Perspective

Abstract

This paper argues for the adoption of the theory of organizing and sensemaking framework as the theoreticalunderpinning of the personal selling process in a relational selling context. For relational selling, one should not think of the selling process as a normative series of steps that a salesperson passes through with the help of a sales manager. Instead, by expanding our notion of sales organization members beyond salespeople and sales managers to include the customers with whom salespeople interact, we argue that one should recognize the personal selling process as a more prescriptive customer-involved interpretation system concerned with uncertainty reduction during and between every customer– salesperson interaction.

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