Sales as entrepreneurship at Ewing Kauffman’s Marion Laboratories

Abstract

Purpose This paper aims to investigate how various sales personas interacted and played a role in the early growth of Ewing Kauffman’s Marion Laboratories in the 1950s. Design/methodology/approach The approach taken is a variation of “retrodiagnosis” – wherein modern psychographic personas are used to profile historical actors. After reviewing trends in both the academic and trade literatures related to professional and entrepreneurial selling in complex environments, the foundational sales force at Marion Laboratories active in the 1950s was assessed using the five sales personas proposed in a 2011 Corporate Executive Board (CEB) study: namely, hard-workers, relationship-builders, lone-wolfs, reactive-problem-solvers and challengers. Findings Individual members of the foundational sales force at Marion Laboratories displayed a number of dominant persona and subdominant persona traits. The relative success and managerial challenges evidenced by individual members of Marion’s foundational sales force are consistent with the CEB sales persona performance patterns. Specifically, those with dominant challenger and lone-wolf personas were especially crucial in driving sales success – to the point that Marion rapidly rose to become the most notable sales force in the American pharmaceutical vertical. Research limitations/implications Given that only a single firm was investigated, along with the interpretive and qualitative nature of the study, the findings are not generalizable. Additional studies in a similar vein with similar findings would add further support to the current findings. Theoretical implications related to customer development and effectuation are touched on. Practical implications The investigation lends qualitative historical support to the CEB study. The question of optimal-sales-team-persona-mix is worth founder’s consideration. Originality/value This is the first study to use contemporary sales personas to investigate a historically significant entrepreneurial sales force.

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