Is it navigation, networking, coordination … or what? A multidisciplinary review of influences on the intraorganizational dimension of the sales role and performance

Abstract

Despite much practical and empirical attention over five-plus decades, our understanding of the sales role remains limited. This is particularly true as it relates to the universe of behaviors and activities a salesperson must engage in to successfully perform his or her work. This article begins from the premise that a large part of the reason this problem persists is that, for far too long, the locus of sales research has been too overtly focused on the “customer” (i.e., the “externally directed”) and not enough on the “intraorganizational dimension of the sales role” (IDSR). Ten streams of research that stand to potentially deepen our understanding of the IDSR are reviewed in a compare-and-contrast, synthetic manner. Work reviewed includes research from the marketing and management literature, broadly defined. Nearly three dozen microlevel research ideas and discrete avenues for further exploration of the IDSR are offered as the manuscript progresses, including the development of a “Top 20, high priority” future research directions list. The article concludes by highlighting several limitations and shortcomings and offering several bold macrolevel ideas for high-upside, pressing directions for future work on the IDSR.

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