Controlling Salesperson Performance - Essay Example

A behavior-based perspective to evaluating and controlling salesperson performance incorporates complex and often ive assessments of salesperson characteristics Nobody dast blame this man. You don't understand; Willy was a salesman. And for a salesman, there is no rock bottom to the life. He don't put a bolt to a nut, he don't tell you the law or give you medicine. He's a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back-that's an earthquake. And then you get yourself a couple of spots on your hat, and you're finished. Nobody dast blame this man. A salesman is opt to dream, boy. It comes with the territory. (Arthur Miller cited in Van Staveren 2001, 170). Interpersonal expectancy effects research focuses on how one individual's expectations influence another individual's behavior. Also known as self-fulfilling prophecies, interpersonal expectancy effects have been shown to be a significant phenomenon in human interaction. Assessments of participants' behavior during the interaction (e.g., time spent talking) and perceptions (e.g., self-report items reflecting participants' liking for each other) revealed that prior expectations affected buyer-seller interactions. Thus, as Arthur Miller mentioned not smiling back means a real earthquake. During the course of daily lives, individuals encounter a multitude of objects. In fact, they are bombarded by a diverse array of stimuli and forced to make innumerable decisions about which to approach and which to avoid. These stimuli include not only such physical objects as foods, clothing, and toys but also other people, events, and activities (Furnham 1999, 44). Moreover, societal matters, as well as conversations with others, often require that individuals adopt a position regarding various social and political issues. Thus, merely proceeding through a day involves individuals making a continuous series of choices based on their appraisals of objects (Furnham 1999, 23). When considered in this way, daily existence appears to be astoundingly burdensome. One can readily imagine an individual who is paralyzed by the need to assess and then weigh the pros and cons of the choice alternatives for each successive decision. Yet, few people - at least not those who can be considered mentally healthy - experience day-to-day life as so phenomenologically troublesome. How do we manage We are extremely adaptive creatures who have the capacity to learn from experience. We have memory for these experiences. We develop and remember vast storehouses of knowledge regarding the attributes that characterize the objects, people, issues, and events that we either encounter directly or learn about indirectly from others. As helpful as this knowledge base might be, however, it represents only an initial step toward individuals' successful coping with the multitude of stimuli that impinge on them. Having knowledge regarding a given object available in memory provides a basis for choice, but still requires that individuals engage in extensive and effortful deliberation. They must retrieve the relevant stored information, consider its implications for approach or avoidance, and integrate those implications into a final judgment (Clarke 1998, 404). Although individuals unquestionably engage in such deliberation at times, even these processes do not seem to capture the ease with which individuals typically function in their daily lives. People do not simply acquire knowledge about the objects in their social world. Instead, individuals employ this knowledge - be it information about the positively and negatively valued attributes of the object, about their past behavioral experiences with the object, and/or about emotions that the object has evoked in the past--as the basis for forming for an attitude toward, or summary evaluation of, the object (Maio & Olson 2000, 359). In other words, individuals categorize objects along an evaluative dimension. It is such categorizations into likes and dislikes - objects that we wish to approach and those that we wish to avoid - that enable individuals to progress easily through daily life. By imposing an evaluative structure on their social world, individuals can more easily cope with the demands of the social environment. Their attitudes provide an indication of which objects to approach and which to avoid, all in the interest of maximizing positive outcomes and minimizing negative outcomes. In the study of personality, researchers have often had difficulty generating empirical support for propositions that seem, on the face of them, obviously true. Such has been the case, for example, in research on the relation of opinions to personality. Most researchers and laypeople alike would agree that personality is expressed, at least to some extent, in the opinions an individual holds. That is, we tend to view attitudes as significant expressions of the self: We assume that we have learned something about a person when we know his or her attitudes and assume further that these attitudes should relate, in some lawful way, to other aspects of the person (Kolb & Whishaw 1998, 44). At a general level, these claims are uncontroversial. But when we move to more specific research questions about how personality is manifested in people's opinions, which other aspects of the person should be consistent with his or her attitudes, and what the source of any observed consistency might be, answers are much more difficult to come by. An interpersonal expectancy effect occurs when one person's beliefs and expectations about another person lead the second person to behave in ways that confirm the first person's original expectations (Joiner, Leveson & Langfield 2002, 27). For instance, if a shopper expects that a certain cashier will be rude, and the shopper is therefore curt with the cashier, it is likely that the cashier will react impolitely, confirming the shopper's initial expectations. Defined as "a transfer of something tangible or intangible, actual or symbolic, between two or more social actors" (Bagozzi cited in Prus 1987, 72), exchange often involves buyer-seller interactions that are influenced by the characteristics of the social actors and the social influence that they exercise. Although researchers have begun to uncover the processes by which interpersonal expectations affect general interactions (Van Staveren 2001, 128), it is not clear if or how expectations operate amongst buyers and sellers. The present research explores interpersonal expectancy effects in an effort to understand the behavioral and psychological processes inherent in exchange relations as well as the effects of interpersonal expectations in the context of face-to-face meetings between buyers and sellers. Interpersonal expectancy effects relate to how one individual's expectations influence another individual's behavior (Reingen & Kernan 1993, 30). These effects have been studied by social scientists for almost three decades in many different social contexts and are a significant phenomenon in human interaction. Interpersonal expectancy effects are one form of the more common notion of self-fulfilling prophecy (Maynes 2003, 197) which is described as a three-stage process. First, a person(s) has an unsubstantiated belief that a certain event will occur in the future. Second, this belief, expectation, or prophecy leads to some new behavior consistent with the originally false conception and that would not have occurred were it not for the expectation. Third, the expected event occurs, fulfilling the prophecy. In the case of interpersonal expectancy effects, this "expected event" corresponds to another individual's actions or behavior. Although perceiver perceptions and cognitions are potentially critical elements of the selffulfilling prophecy process, the change in target behavior or self-concept is essential to demonstrating a self-fulfilling prophecy (Joiner, Leveson & Langfield-Smith 2002, 29). Robert, Klimoski, and Kanfer (2002) investigated the effects of the stereotyped expectancy that physically attractive people have socially appealing personalities. In their study of individual interactions between college-aged men and women, unacquainted pairs of male and female participants conversed with one another over the telephone. Before the conversations, however, the men were randomly assigned a photograph ostensibly of their female interaction partner portraying either a physically attractive or unattractive woman. Analyses of observer judges' ratings of participants' behavior revealed that men who believed they were interacting with a physically attractive woman behaved in a warmer and friendlier manner compared with men who believed they were interacting with an unattractive woman. Furthermore, as a result of favorable treatment, women thought to be attractive (despite their actual appearances) came to behave in a friendlier and more sociable way. Conversely, women believed to be unattractive became cool and aloof during the telephone conversations. Recent research on expectancy effects focuses on the process by which these effects operate. Specifically, the emphasis is on identifying moderators of interpersonal expectancy effects (antecedent individual and situational variables that influence the strength of an expectancy effect) as well as mediators of interpersonal expectancy effects (e.g., the behaviors by which expectancies are communicated between persons) (Furnham 1999, 25). Rosenthal (1989 cited in Robert, Klimoski & Kanfer 2002, 168) proposed the affect-effort (behavioral) theory of mediation which asserts that the differential behavior manifested by perceivers (those to whom expectations are given) and targets (those to whom the expectations pertain) can be described using the two orthogonal dimensions of affect and effort. Affect is communicated primarily (although not exclusively) through nonverbal channels or behaviors (e.g., smiling) and effort is communicated principally (although not exclusively) through verbal channels or behaviors (e.g., talking). Although the affect-effort theory was originally developed to explain teacher expectancy effects, a recent empirical test has shown that it generalizes to other domains (Clarke 1998, 405). Interpersonal expectancies have been discussed in various marketing contexts such as trust and relational norms in channels and the influence of expectations on customer evaluations of service encounters. Marketing researchers have also investigated the congruity of role expectations among buyers and sellers, and manipulated buyers' expectancies with respect to their similarity with a seller and the trustworthiness and expertise of a seller. Although self-fulfilling prophecy may conceivably involve either buyers' or sellers' expectations, this research has generally focused on buyers' expectations for sellers because the degree to which a seller exhibits appropriate behavior as determined by the buyer is considered the more critical variable in buyer-seller interactions (Miner 2002, 218). Despite their relevance to interpersonal expectancy effects, the above studies do not permit strong causal inferences regarding the self-fulfilling effects of expectancies. The limitations include the fact that in some studies there are no actual interactions between buyers and sellers. In other studies, expectancies are not manipulated and dependent variables are only self-report measures (i.e., no behavioral measures) or only assess perceiver (buyer) reactions but not target (seller) reactions (Maio & Olson 2000, 119). Sujan, Bettman, and Sujan (cited in Reingen & Kernan. 1993, 29) presented participants (buyers) with hypothetical vignettes of a selling encounter that included an interaction with a salesperson who either matched or did not match typical prior expectations (e.g., buyers' expectations of opening sales pitches). The researchers found that when the salesperson appeared typical (vs. atypical), the participants generated more salesperson-oriented thoughts, recalled more product features, and were affected more by the quality of arguments cited. Wiener, LaForge, and Goolsby (cited in Maynes 2003, 197) assessed the joint effects of opportunism (i.e., a seller's propensity to put his/her own interests ahead of the buyer's interest), argument strength, and expertise in a hypothetical scenario for the purchase of a used car. They found that when buyers expected a salesperson to be self-interested, communication effectiveness was enhanced when high expertise salespeople used strong arguments and when low expertise salespeople used weak arguments. In contrast, when buyers expected a salesperson not to be self-interested, communication effectiveness was enhanced when salespeople used strong arguments regardless of expertise level. Although these studies show that prior expectations influenced hypothetical buyer-seller interactions and subsequent salesperson evaluations, the use of hypothetical vignettes precluded examination of the nature of behavioral differences and how they might have affected the salesperson being labeled (i.e., expectancy effects). Schurr and Ozanne (cited in Maynes 2003, 198) investigated the effects of trust and bargaining stance on buying behavior and buyer-seller interactions. The researchers manipulated participants' (buyers') prior expectations about a seller's trustworthiness and bargaining toughness (e.g., yielding vs. aggressive). Similar to other bargaining experiments in marketing, buyers role-playing purchasing agents bargained with a programmed seller about the prices for each of three products in a computerized game. Buyers were told that the seller was either trustworthy or untrustworthy, and either a tough or a soft bargainer. The study showed that the combination of expectancies of trustworthiness and tough bargaining stance brought about more integrative message-sending and concession-making behavior on the part of a buyer toward a seller relative to expectancies of untrustworthiness and tough bargaining posture (Maynes 2003, 199). Although expectations were manipulated, the Schurr and Ozanne study did not directly test the expectancy confirmation hypothesis (i.e., self-fulfilling prophecy). There were no actual buyer-seller interactions and the dependent measures were collected only from the perceiver-buyer (Maynes 2003, 199). However, Schurr and Ozanne measured what may be conceived of as mediational behavior on the part of the perceiver-buyer. In other words, although the dependent variables included the usual bargaining outcome measures (e.g., total amount of concessions made and buyers' attitudes toward sellers), measures of buyer behavior (e.g., types of messages sent and concessions made during the bargaining task) were also included. Hence, had there been actual interactions, these behaviors may conceivably have mediated expectations between exchange partners (Maynes 2003, 200). Reingen and Kernan (1993, 26) conducted the only published marketing study that represents a full-fledged interpersonal expectancy effects investigation. Based on the Snyder et al. tested whether 28 male buyers (who were shown a preinteraction photograph of a physically attractive or unattractive salesman) and sellers would behave differently during a simulated sales call (actual 4-min telephone conversations between participants role-playing buyers and sellers). Unbeknownst to the buyer participants, the photograph was one of four photographs of a male stimulus person--two depicting an attractive person and two depicting an unattractive person. Before the interaction and after seeing what they believed was their selling partner's photograph, buyers indicated their initial impressions of their selling partner (e.g., tactfulness, friendliness, enthusiasm, etc.). After the sales call, both buyers and sellers indicated how likely they were to buy (sell) the product (a smoke detector) and grant (obtain) a demonstration appointment, and rated their partner's attitude toward them (e.g., warm/hostile). To measure behavioral confirmation, judges rated taped recordings of either buyers' or sellers' voices on these same dimensions (Van Staveren 2001, 186). Results of the study revealed that buyers tended to form initial impressions of their selling partner on the basis of general stereotypes that associate physical attractiveness with other positive traits. That is, buyers who expected to interact with a physically attractive seller considered the seller to be more enthusiastic and tactful compared to buyers expecting to interact with a relatively unattractive seller. Self-reports provided by buyers and sellers after the sales calls revealed that buyers' pre- and post-interaction evaluations were consistent. Thus, buyers who believed they were interacting with a physically attractive salesman were more likely to say that they would grant a demonstration appointment and buy the product compared to buyers interacting with an unattractive salesman. Furthermore, the sellers perceived that buyers were not as warm toward unattractive sellers compared to attractive sellers. Some evidence of expectancy mediation was obtained by analyzing buyer (perceiver) behavior (Reingen & Kernan 1993, 37). Thus, judges rated buyers in the attractive condition as more enthusiastic, warmer, and friendlier compared with buyers in the unattractive condition. Thus, a behavior-based perspective to evaluating salesperson performance is a highly complex one, which usually gives an opportunity for only a subjective assessment. WORKS CITED Clarke, Walter V. 1998. The Problem of Labeling: The Semantics of Behavior. ETC.: A Review of General Semantics 55, no. 4: 404. Dutton, Jane E., Janet M. Dukerich, and Celia V. Harquail. 1994. Organizational Images and Member Identification. Administrative Science Quarterly 39, no. 2: 239. Furnham, Adrian. 1999. Personality at Work: The Role of Individual Differences in the Workplace. London: Routledge. G., Robert, Richard J. Klimoski, and Ruth Kanfer, eds. 2002. Emotions in the Workplace: Understanding the Structure and Role of Emotions in Organizational Behavior. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Joiner, Therese A, Lynne Leveson, and Kim Langfield-Smith. 2002. Technical Language, Advice Understandability, and Perceptions of Expertise and Trustworthiness: The Case of the Financial Planner. Australian Journal of Management 27, no. 1: 25. Kolb, Bryan, and Ian Q. Whishaw. 1998. Brain Plasticity and Behavior. Annual Review of Psychology. Maio, Gregory R. and James M. Olson, eds. 2000. Why We Evaluate: Functions of Attitudes. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Maynes, E. Scott. 2003. Marketing-One Consumer Disaster. Journal of Consumer Affairs 37, no. 2: 196. Miner, John B. 2002. Organizational Behavior: Foundations, Theories, and Analyses. New York: Oxford University Press. Prus, Robert. 1987. It's on 'sale !': An Examination of Vendor Perspectives, Activities, and Dilemmas. Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology 23, no. 1: 72-96. Reingen, Peter H., and Jerome B. Kernan. 1993. Social Perception and Interpersonal Influence: Some Consequences of the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype in a Personal Selling Setting. Journal of Consumer Psychology 2, no. 1: 25-38. Van Staveren, Irene. 2001. The Values of Economics: An Aristotelian Perspective. London: Routledge. Read More