Insights for Optimizing Early-Tenure Sales Success

Michael C. Peasley, PhD and Bryan Hochstein, PhD 

The ramp-up period for new salespeople, typically spanning the first 18-24 months after hire, is crucial for building sales growth. It is important to understand whether salespeople aiming for sales growth during this period should focus more on prospecting new leads or converting prospects into customers. Our research utilizes choice theory and self-regulation research to propose and test four dimensions of sales effort within the sales process to impact sales growth. To achieve this, we collect survey data from 200 salespeople to analyze how each dimension of sales effort impacts annual sales growth. Specifically, we challenge the traditional view of one-dimensional salesperson effort, which often defines the generalist approach. Our goal is to provide insights that help sales managers guide early-tenure salespeople in prioritizing their efforts across different dimensions of the sales process. By doing so, we aim to optimize sales performance and drive year-over-year sales revenue growth.

Optimizing Effort During the Ramp-Up Period

The ramp-up period is when salespeople transition from onboarding to their sales role, requiring them to invest energy and perseverance into their tasks. Salespeople manage the entire sales process in a flexible environment where they decide how to allocate their time and effort. For early-tenure generalists, this often means navigating tradeoffs as they balance conflicting demands. To understand how early-tenure salespeople can optimize their efforts, we explore the choice of sales activity and self-regulation. Choice of sales activity highlights the ability to control one’s actions by evaluating options and selecting the best course. Self-regulation focuses on managing competing priorities and balancing time and resources effectively to achieve desired outcomes, typically sales growth. Together, these concepts explain how effort is shaped by direction (what tasks to focus on), duration (how long to stay committed), and intensity (the energy invested). This understanding provides a foundation for helping early-tenure salespeople prioritize effectively and maximize their growth potential.

Our Study 

Our study aims to identify what kind of efforts have the most significant impact on year-over-year sales growth by the end of a salesperson’s first full year. We suggest that early-tenure generalist salespeople, who handle all aspects of the sales process, face conflicting demands on their time and resources. Understanding which tasks drive sales performance can help them prioritize effectively. To test this, we surveyed 221 generalist salespeople hired 18–24 months before the study and matched 200 complete responses with year-over-year performance data. All participants shared the same training curriculum, compensation structure, and corporate culture, ensuring their careers developed under similar conditions. Using an intra-firm design allowed us to control for differences typically seen in inter-firm studies, giving us a clearer view of how effort impacts performance. Each salesperson completed a survey assessing their activities in the four key sales tasks and answered general questions about their demographics, education, and sales experience. We based our hypothesis on the distinct types of effort required during a 360-degree sales process:

• Pre-sale efforts: prospecting (cold calls, scheduling, and needs analysis) and conversion (presenting solutions, contract agreement, and handling objections and negotiation)
• Post-sale efforts: retention (contract fulfillment, managing service failures, and relationship management) and growth (expansion, cross-selling, and upselling)

This framework helps us explore how different types of effort contribute to year-over-year sales performance and overall growth for early-tenure salespeople.

The Results

We found that high levels of effort into prospecting can have a negative effect on the value of a salesperson’s accounts. This happens because new salespeople may be inexperienced with prospecting or focus so much on prospecting that they neglect closing deals, keeping customers, or growing existing accounts. However, when prospecting leads to better conversion opportunities, it becomes a powerful tool in the sales process. Retention efforts, on the other hand, focus on keeping current clients satisfied and perpetuating consistent revenue. While the results show that retention efforts don’t directly drive sales growth, they’re essential for maintaining sales and creating chances to strengthen relationships with existing customers, which can lead to more business. Overall, our findings reveal what type of efforts best support early-tenure salesperson growth. 

Salesperson Implications

Our findings offer valuable implications for both salespeople and managers. For salespeople, our research proposes a path to accelerated proficiency through specialization, allowing them to produce higher quality outcomes while maintaining a better work-life balance. For managers, these insights support the development of more effective onboarding strategies. By understanding realistic ramp-up trajectories, managers can offer targeted support during early tenure and guide resource allocation more efficiently. Identifying key activities across the sales cycle also enables managers to strategically structure their teams' efforts, directing new salespeople toward high-impact activities aligning with organizational sales goals.

Also, our findings support the implementation of specialized sales roles that leverage individual strengths. This approach recognizes that some salespeople excel in prospecting while others demonstrate greater conversion, retention, or account growth capacity. Managers can optimize their teams’ performance and dynamics by aligning roles with natural inclinations and strengths.

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Recommended Reading

Peasley, Michael C. and Bryan Hochstein (2024), “The Early-Tenure Salesperson: Sales Effort and Sales Growth During the Ramp-Up Period,” Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 44(3), 219-236. https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2024.2316383

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About the Authors

Michael C. Peasley, PhD
Associate Professor and Director, Consumer Research Institute, Middle Tennessee State University 
Dr. Michael Peasley’s (PhD – University of Memphis) research has been published in several journals, including the Journal of Business Research, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Consumer Marketing, and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. His industry experience includes a twenty-year career in sales and marketing, with training specialties in marketing strategy, professional sales and account management, sustainable customer experiences, and digital marketing strategy. In addition to his teaching and research roles, Dr. Peasley serves as the Director of the Consumer Research Institute at Middle Tennessee State University, which produces reports on economic conditions related to consumers, business leaders, and the housing market.

Bryan Hochstein, PhD
Associate Professor and Bromberg Family Endowed Professor of Marketing, University of Alabama
Dr. Bryan Hochstein’s (PhD – Florida State University) research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Business Research, Marketing Letters, and the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice. His industry experience includes a twenty-year career in the service/sales industry. Dr. Hochstein’s research experience is within the broad topic of sales. He is a thought leader in research and education on Customer Success Management (CSM), and his research and teaching on CSM are among the first on the subject. Recent research topics include the CSM and the sales-service interface, CSM ambidexterity & role, and the customer’s view of CSM.

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KCRR 2025 September  - KCRR 2025 Sept - Insights for Optimizing Early-Tenure Sales Success (Peasley).pdf