Abstract
There are certain developments which are taking place almost all the time in the field of management, and sales management is no exception. The area, overall, is very dynamic and keeps on evolving at a very high speed. In the earlier chapters, the discussions veered around the organization (mainly the sales team) and its interaction with the marketplace. The focus of the discussion maintained throughout the book was on the existing paradigms of sales and distribution management and what really works in the marketplace. In this chapter, the objective is to familiarize the reader with some current research that is being undertaken in the field of sales management. There are certain areas in sales management which are classic in nature and their utilities and relevance has crossed the boundaries of time. Some of those concepts have also been included in this chapter. Overall, the broad objective of this chapter is to broaden the perspectives of students and managers as well as to open up their minds to the myriad possibilities that sales management has to offer.
TopGoal Orientation And Motivation
Sales persons are motivated primarily by three types of goal orientations. First is the learning goal orientation which leads to better and positive performance. Here, the sales person has a preference for challenges and learning new skills, and persists in the face of failure and comes up with renewed effort and better strategy. The second orientation a performance approach and also leads to better performance as the focus is more on demonstrating competence. This kind of positive approach helps in developing constructive processes which gets reflected in the behavioral patterns of the sales persons, thus leading to positive results. The third goal orientation is the performance avoidance approach. This approach focusses on avoidance of failure and thus has a negative connotation. This negative thought processes affect the behavior and attitude of the sales person negatively and thus produces negative results. The goal orientation of sales persons are often a function of situational variables like levels of competition, effort, evaluation standards, and self-worth valuation. So, sales managers can influence performance of individual sales persons also through the deployment of the right kind of cues in the feedback process. (Silver, Dwyer, & Alford, 2006).