Managing and Leading the Sales Force for Short- and Long-Term Performance

Because of recent environmental evolutions, many authors have emphasized the new role of leadership in sales management. In spite of this newly recognized importance of leadership, the sales literature does not provide precise, unique, and consistent definitions of the activities covered by sales management and leadership. Consequently, important questions such as: “How does the choice of managers’ activities impact salespeople’s orientation and performance?” remain to be addressed. This conceptual paper makes a distinction between management and leadership activities, and investigates the relationships between managers’ activities, salespeople’s selling orientation, and transactional performance on one side, and between managers’ leadership activities, salespeople’s customer orientation, and relational performance on the other.

MARTIN, X.C. and DARMON, R. (2013). Managing and Leading the Sales Force for Short- and Long-Term Performance. In: Proceedings of the Global Sales Science Institute Conference. Global Sales Science Institute.