LEAD QUALIFICATION SKILLS AND SALESPERSONS PERFORMANCE: A UGANDAN INSURANCE FIRM CONTEXT
Abstract
Despite extensive research on salesperson performance, insurance salespersons continue to report low performance; and this has called the attention of scholars, practitioners and policymakers. This study presents empirical data that promises to resolve the conundrum surrounding the choice between recruiting unskilled salesperson in need of training and hiring skilled salesperson who possesses analytical, categorization, and classification abilities. The study investigated the association between lead qualification skills and salesperson performance among salespeople in the insurance industry in Uganda, utilizing categorization and expectancy theories as theoretical foundations. The study employed a positivistic paradigm and an explanatory design. Primary data was collected through self-administered questionnaire from a sample of 328 licensed insurance salespersons. The sample was determined using proportionate stratified simple random technique. The study reveals a strong positive and statistically significant link between lead qualification skills and salesperson performance, and concludes that improved performance of salespeople is influenced by the possession of lead qualification skills. The study recommends that insurance firms should recruit skilled salespeople and conduct comprehensive interviews and assessments of their skills, and that future studies should test the proposed model in a different country using a mixed-methods approach with a longitudinal design to verify the results.
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The main objective of this study is to assess the effects of motivational strategies on sales force performance in the publishing industry: a study of select firms in the south-east. To achieve this, a survey research design was initiated and was based on a sample size of 83 sales people drawn from the publishing companies in southeast Nigeria. Questionnaire was used for data collection and data collected was analysed using multiple OLS regression. Before the regressions, factor analysis was used for reliability analysis and to check for the unidimensionality of the construct since the constructs used in the study were measured with multiple items. Four variables were used as the independent variables of which two: financial incentives, and meeting with managers were found to be statistically significant at.05 while the other two: participation in setting sales quotas and sales training were not significant. Based on these findings it was recommended among others that Management of publishing companies in the southeast should concentrate more on providing financial incentives to their Salesforce as this is a very strong construct that has very high impact on the Salesforce performance. This is necessary as it offers security to the personnel and gives them assurances of security and stability of income. The financial incentives must have a good blend/mix of direct pay or salary plus bonus to be truly motivating and to enhance Salesforce performance. Meeting with managers and the sales people is another construct that has significant and positive influenceon Salesforce performance. These meetings were highly regarded by sales managers in the motivation of their sales teams.
Salesperson is a part of a company who will always meet their customers. Salesperson should have the capability to respond to customers. This research aims at proving the importance of customer smart response capability in insurance industry in Indonesia. The respondents in this research are 317 salespersons in insurance industry. This research uses structural equation modeling to process its data. The results of this research show the importance of customer smart response capability in insurance industry. This customer smart response capability can improve salesperson performance. Additionally, customer smart response capability can mediate the influence of customer sensing on the salesperson performance and can mediate the influence of sales training effectiveness on salesperson performance. This research also has some contribution, both to knowledge and managerial contributions.
Purpose
This paper provides a comprehensive, yet concise, overview of the considerations and metrics required for PLS-SEM analysis and result reporting. Preliminary considerations are summarized first, including reasons for choosing PLS-SEM, recommended sample size in selected contexts, distributional assumptions, use of secondary data, statistical power, and the need for goodness-of-fit testing. Next, the metrics, as well as the rules of thumb, that should be applied to assess the PLS-SEM results are covered. Besides covering established PLS-SEM evaluation criteria, the overview includes new guidelines for applying (1) PLSpredict, a novel approach for assessing a model’s out-of-sample prediction, (2) metrics for model comparisons, and (3) several complementary methods for checking the results’ robustness.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper provides an overview of previously and recently proposed metrics, as well as rules of thumb, for evaluating the results of research, based on the application of PLS-SEM.
Findings
Most of the previously applied metrics for evaluating PLS-SEM results are still relevant, but scholars need to be knowledgeable about recently proposed metrics (e.g., model comparison criteria) and methods (e.g., endogeneity assessment, latent class analyses, PLSpredict) and when and how to apply them.
Research limitations/implications
Methodological developments associated with PLS-SEM are rapidly emerging. The metrics reported in this paper are useful for current applications, but scholars need to continuously seek the latest developments in the PLS-SEM method.
Originality/value
In light of more recent research and methodological developments in the PLS-SEM domain, guidelines for the method’s use need to be continuously extended and updated. This paper is the most current and comprehensive summary of the PLS-SEM method and the metrics applied to assess its solutions.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the mediating role of salespeople’s customer orientation on the relationship between sales manager personal characteristics, fellow salespeople’s characteristics, job satisfaction, and adaptive selling, and salespeople’s performance in the insurance industry in Jordan.
Design/methodology/approach
A structured and self-administered survey was employed targeting 500 insurance salespeople working at insurance companies operating in Jordan. The final sample size was 320 salespeople representing a response rate of 64%. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to assess the research constructs dimensions, unidimensionality, validity and composite reliability. Structural path analysis was also used to test the hypothesised relationships of the research model.
Findings
The empirical findings indicate that salespeople’s customer orientation fully mediates the effect of fellow salespeople’s characteristics and adaptive selling on salespeople’s performance. Sales managers’ personal characteristics have a direct effect on salespeople’s performance, contrary to job satisfaction that had no effect on salespeople’s performance.
Research limitations/implications
This paper has examined only five factors that affected directly and indirectly salespeople’s performance; meanwhile other factors may affect their performance such as salespeople experience, internal marketing and corporate image. Additionally, the fact that paper's sample consisted only of insurance salespeople working at insurance companies limits its generalisation potential to other industries.
Practical implications
The findings emphasize the importance of fostering good relationships among fellow salespeople’s characteristics and adaptive selling strategies. Further, sales managers’ personal characteristics directly affecting salespeople’s performance signifies the importance to hire managers with the right personal approach.
Originality/value
This paper represents one of the early attempts that investigate factors affecting salespeople’s performance through the mediating role of customer orientation. Accordingly, the findings shed more light into the strategic role of this construct in enhancing salespeople’s performance. Also, the paper is the first of its kind to build and examine an integrated model of salespeople’s performance in the insurance market of Jordan, which provides valuable empirical evidence concerning the drivers of salespeople’s performance in the insurance industry in Jordan.
The QSR industry in Nigeria has witnessed the emergence and disappearance of several actors. Some stride the industry for a couple of years; others fade away as quickly as they surfaced. Yet there are QSRs that have thrived and endured in the industry. Several factors could be responsible for this phenomenon. However, the current study investigated the extent to which employee empowerment can account for resilience of QSRs. ECD, DoA and EPDM are used as indicators of employee empowerment. The study adopted an explanatory research design and used a questionnaire to collect primary data; while the Spearman's rank order correlation (rho) was employed as the test statistic. The study relied on SPSS version 20.0 for data analyses. The study observed that employee empowerment associates strongly with resilience of QSRs as all the dimensions of employee empowerment posted strong, positive and statistically significant relationship with resilience of QSRs. The study concludes that employee empowerment informs resilience of QSRs, or that resilience of QSRs depends on DoA, EPDM, and ECD; and recommends that QSRs that desires resilience in the business-scape must continually update the competencies of their customer-contact employees, involve them in decision-making and give them adequate powers to perform tasks and discharge duties assigned to them.
This study aims to identify the impact of internal marketing on the performance of employees in Jordanian private hospitals sector. This study was conducted on all employees of several administrative levels in this sector. The study also aims to find out the impact of independent variables namely, in-house training, incentives, rewards, internal communication, empowerment and culture of the organization, on the dependent variable, which is the performance of employees. To achieve the study objectives, data were collected through the selection of a random sample of workers in private Jordanian hospital sector from various levels. 450 copies of the designed questionnaire were distributed over the targeted sample group. However, only 333 copies of the questionnaire were recovered, and this is 74% of the total number of the distributed copies. The results show that the organization culture has strong impact on the employee’s performance. This variable came first among other variables, followed by the variables about incentives and rewards regarding the impact on the dependent variable employees. On the other hand, the rest of variables showed weak impact on the dependent variable either due to lack of employee’s interest, or the lack of their awareness regarding the importance of these variables and the need to apply them in order to improve the performance of employees and increase their efficiency and effectiveness at work.
Purpose
This study aims to draw on the categorization theory to explore the mediating role of customer qualification skills in explaining how social media use in sales contributes to salespeople’s adaptive selling behaviors to achieve high sales performance in export selling. The study also integrates network effect theory and social linguistics theory to identify the specific social media platform (Facebook versus non-Facebook) and the characteristics of salespeople in terms of English language proficiency, which play a facilitating role in promoting the effectiveness of social media use in export sales.
Design/methodology/approach
The sampling frame of the research is a list of Chinese export salespersons obtained on the FOB Business Forum website. Survey data were obtained from 873 Chinese export salespeople. Partial least squares structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data.
Findings
Social media use in sales is associated positively with customer qualification skills and adaptive selling behaviors. Moreover, the results revealed a partial mediating effect of customer qualification skills on the positive impact of social media use in sales on adaptive selling behaviors. The moderating effect analysis found that the positive association between social media use in sales and customer qualification skills was stronger in export salespeople who used Facebook and had mastered a high level of English language proficiency.
Originality/value
This study provides new findings, based on data collected from salespeople in Mainland China, that support the effectiveness of social media use in an export sales context. Moreover, the study advances prior research by showing that the effectiveness of social media use still depends on the type of social media used and the English language proficiency of the salespeople.
Understanding how the use of IT influences the performance of inside sales is imperative, yet there is a lack of research in this area. This study empirically validates a conceptual model based on the Technology-Task-Fit theory, capturing the impact of lead management systems (LMS) on inside sales performance through the following mediators: task characteristics (call quantity and lead follow-up intensity), selling behavior (adaptive selling), and salesperson characteristics (technical and salesmanship skills). Using PLS-SEM on 108 responses collected from sales professionals, our analysis shows that the use of LMS in inside sales affects performance via improving salespeople's adaptive selling and lead follow-up intensity, technical and salesmanship skills; together these variables explain over a half (55%) of the variance of sales performance. Our findings aim to inform academics and practitioners on the key enablers of inside sales performance and IT usage approaches that can optimize marketing output in the inside sales industry.
Learning and performance goal orientations, two motivational orientations that guide salespeople's behavior, are related to working smart and hard. Working smart is defined as the engagement in activities that serve to develop knowledge of sales situations and utilize this knowledge in selling behavior. It is found that a learning goal orientation motivates working both smart and hard, whereas a performance goal orientation motivates only working hard. The goal orientations also are found to be alterable through supervisory feedback. Furthermore, self-efficacy, salespeople's confidence in their overall selling abilities, is found to moderate some of the relationships with the goal orientations.
To understand better the determinants of selling effectiveness, the author proposes a framework for investigating the impact of declarative knowledge on the salesperson's ability to identify customers' product- and selling-related needs. The ability to identify properly the total set of customer needs is viewed as critical to the correct classification of sales leads into selling categories at the prospecting, sales call, sales presentation, and sale closing stages of the selling process. Differences in classification accuracy are proposed as key to explaining variations in sales performance. The differences in accuracy are posited to result from (1) the attributes believed to identify customer requirements, (2) the quantitative levels associated with the attributes, and (3) the degree of emphasis given to attributes in ascertaining client needs. Implications for sales managers are discussed and suggestions for future research are presented.