Contributors

Due to its prevalence, depression has been called the “common cold” of mental health. Depression has direct negative effects on employees such as increased deviant workplace behavior and decreased productivity, and this relationship extends to the salesperson role. We studied how certain personal resources—work adaptability and family work support—along with supervisor support can mitigate the consequences of depression on salesperson performance.

Competitive salespeople are driven to achieve their goals, which is associated with high sales performance. However, competition can also be a threat to cohesion as salespeople may become more focused on individual success than the success of the team. We examine the challenge sales managers face of creating a work environment that fosters both competitiveness and cohesion in order to improve both performance and sales force retention.

What do you prioritize on a job candidate resume? Prior selling experience or a formal sales education? Our research examines the effects of both on newly hired salespeople's performance trajectories over time, along with the impact of manager coaching behaviors. Our results provide insights into the benefits and drawbacks of each hiring heuristic along with recommendations for how to coach new salespeople depending on which heuristic led to their hire.

With tight deadlines and sales goals to meet, agents often face temptations to behave unethically in order to get ahead. Our research suggests that unethical behavior actually decreases overall sales performance and that emotional exhaustion increases the likelihood of those unethical behaviors.

Your clients are more informed now than ever when making purchase decisions. Our research offers insights on applicable adaptive sales techniques based on the consumers’ perceived informedness about high-involvement purchases.

The modern real estate agent's business relationships today transcend obvious interactions with customers and now also include the internal business team and external business partners. The successful agent must skillfully manage these three relationships to complete the transaction.