JOURNAL REVIEW

A QUALITATIVE
STUDY OF LEADER
BEHAVIORS
PERCEIVED
TO ENABLE
SALESPERSON
PERFORMANCE

GUNDALA
GROUP -2019
Karen M. Peesker, Lynette J.
Ryals, Gregory A. Rich & Susan E.
Boehnke
INTRODUCTION
Background
 Sales leadership has been recognized as a
crucial factor in global sales success
(Deeter-Schmelz, Goebel, and Kennedy
2008; Dixon and Tanner 2012; Ingram,
LaForge, and Leigh 2002; Ingram et al.
2005; Schwepker and Good 2010)
 There is a strong and growing interest
among sales organizations to engage in
sales enablement activities (Dickie 2017),
which involve a broad set of sales leader
practices focused on providing new
information, content, and tools to help
salespeople sell more effectively (Albro
2018)
Purpose of study
Develop a conceptual model of effective
leadership in modern sales organizations
identify the key leader behaviors that sales
professionals perceive as enabling sales
performance through a qualitative study
using in-depth interviews with both sales
leaders and sales people from 12 countries
across Asia, Europe, and the Commonwealth
analyzed through the lens of leadership
theory
REVIEW OF LEADERSHIP RESEARCH
IN SALES MANAGEMENT LITERATURE
KEY HISTORIC AND RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
IN SALES LEADERSHIP RESEARCH (1):

Identify two gaps :

Sales leadership has not previously been considered

from the perspective of the sales professionals
themselves

The connection between sales leadership and

sales performance has not always been explicit
in previous research
KEY HISTORIC AND RECENT DEVELOPMENTS
IN SALES LEADERSHIP RESEARCH:
• Supervisory Feed-
TRANSACTIONAL Back in earlier
APPROACH “command and
control” environment
• Before the 1990s
• Reward, punishment and is THEORY IS USED
projected to result in TO ANALYZE DATA
SUPERVISORY FEED- subordinates meeting the
BACK LEADERSHIP expectations of sales manager
• Disappointing in terms of key
outcome

• After 1990s
TRANSFORMATIONA • Lead to performance that
L LEADERSHIP is beyond expectations
• Most common theory

• Most recent theory

• the most extensively studied
SERVANT
LEADERSHIP leadership theory in the sales
• management literature

AUTHENTIC
LEADERSHIP & • Early stage of
ADAPTIVE development
LEADERSHIP
 METHODOLOGY

1 2

Research question, “What leader In-depth interviews with

behaviors are perceived to enable both sales leaders and
salesperson performance?” salespeople
4 3

Identify mechanisms through Identify specific leader behaviors

which the influence on sales that were mentioned by either
performance occurs group as being important

5 6

Examining to understand the dynamics of leader–

follower relationship and to explore the sales Analysis
management/salesperson interactions
SAMPLE
Respondent Country
RESPONDENTS Midl
Sale le
s East
Asia 6%
Lead 14%
er Euro
12 pe
50%
peop
Com
le mon
weal
th
(UK,
Can
Sale ada
&
speo Aust
ple ralia
)
24 [PE
peop RCE
le NTA
GE]

Note:
o The majority of these sales leaders (9 out of 12) were delegates of a master’s program at
a global business school, and all had experience directly managing salespeople
o 95% were male and 100% had a bachelor’s or master’s degree
o All respondents were over 30 years old; more than half were between the ages of 40 and
50, reflecting the seniority of this type of sales role
o Respondents had significant work experience, with none having fewer than 5 years and
39% having over 21 years
 QUALITATIVE DATA
COLLECTION
Semistructured interviews
were selected as the Each semistructured
method for data collection interview lasted
between 50 and 110
minutes

Summary checks to
ensure that the
interviewer was
not just
interpreting and
had received the
The Interviews were
message correctly
conducted in English (the
working language of the
company) by a single
interviewer
MEASURES AND METHOD OF
ANALYSIS
Codes in the start
Identified 133 list were categorized
open codes for by reordering
sales leaders and themes identified
135 open codes for
salespersons
Statements of the “data reduction”
transcripts were coded stage
into categories of
leader behaviors

Using the Nvivo

software tool to Using Cohen’s
organize data and kappa coefficient
assist with data to measure the
analysis and degree of
interpretation Measure agreement
between coders
&
Analysis
RESULTS OF QUALITATIVE STUDY
(4 LEADER BEHAVIORS THAT IMPROVE SALESPERSON
PERFORMANCE)

COACHING
• Providing individualized hands-on assistance and instruction to help

COLLABORATING
• Organizing, facilitating, and leading group activities in which salespeople are encouraged to
interact with and learn from each other as they solve problems as a team to realize both shared
and individual sales goals

CHAMPIONING
• Intervening on behalf of salespeople in a way that protects them from tangential and/or
nonessential work tasks so that they can better focus on activities that are directly related to
enhancing sales performance

CUSTOMER ENGGAGING
• Researching and/or interacting with customers to help progress sales deals, develop executive–
customer relationships, and demonstrate to salespeople how to effectively provide value to
customers
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION – COACHING
BEHAVIOR
Coaching was the most Trust was identified as a
potential mediator by
01 cited behavior that could
enable salesperson 04 which coaching influences
salesperson performance
performance

Coaching for individual It is best to schedule

02 development
05 coaching sessions on a
regular basis

Coaching of the sales

process, including both
03 the art and science
(leading and lagging
metrics) of sales
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION –
COLLABORATING BEHAVIOR
Collaboration (or Role modeling
collaborative behavior
01 collaborating) was a main
theme and represented the
second-most popular leader
04
behavior

Facilitating collaboration by
providing conference calls
02 and meetings in which their
salespeople could share
information and ideas

Encouraging collaborative
behavior verbally
03
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION –
CHAMPIONING BEHAVIOR
Championing consists of sales
leader behaviors that protect “Protect” salespeople
then they can spend
01 salespeople from corporate
“noise” such as questions from
other divisions, unnecessary
04 maximum time with the
customer
reporting

Provide training and tools

so that they can focus all
02 attention on
relevant to selling
activities

Sales leaders can enable

performance by solving
03 internal problems for
their salespeople
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION – CUSTOMER
ENGAGEMENT BEHAVIOR
Salespeople valued
customer-centric leaders Too much customer
engagement by the
01 who work closely with
them throughout the
sales process
04 leader can be perceived
as micromanagement

Help salespeople form and

leverage close relationships
02 with clients

Sales leaders understood

that it is important to
03 engage with customers in
an appropriate manner,
adding value to the process
to help enable salesperson
performance
MEDIATING VARIABLES (1)
Four potential mediators that link sales leadership with sales
performance emerged: trust, confidence, optimism, and
resilience

Individual psychological traits

All variables are partly trait-like, but also

15
have state-like qualities (Northouse 2016)
 MEDIATING VARIABLES (2)

Trust Confidence Optimism Resilience

 Trust your guys, you Equated with the Optimism is central  Similar to
hired them, so you construct of self-efficacy
to authentic perseverance
know they’re a good Leaders should also
salesperson, and have confidence as it leadership and/or grit
they’re trustworthy, makes them more Talk optimistically  Feeding the
and they are not in motivated to succeed, about the future
more persistent, and will boost the
energy to people,
this role because they
cannot do anything. more likely to welcome followers’ optimism so that they are
Give a little bit of trust a challenge (Avolio and and make them convinced they
…. That’s why Gardner 2005; more engaged in are doing the
everyone is willing to Northouse 2016)
their work (Tims, right things.
step up a little bit having a good sales
more, because they leader with a lot of Bakker, and
feel secure. confidence and give Xanthopoulou 2011)
(Salesperson/Europe) that confidence saying
will make a salesperson
doing a great job.
SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN SALES
LEADER AND
SALESPERSON PERCEPTIONS
01 The four leader behaviors represented 84% of total
salesperson references and 79% of total sales
leader references (Figure 2)
Sales leaders spent substantially more of their
interview time discussing coaching than did
salespeople
02
They experience it as helpful and
valuable
03
SUMMARY AND MANAGERIAL
IMPLICATIONS
Summary
1) This study provides a model
of sales leadership involving
four key sales leader
behaviors (coaching,
collaborating, championing,
and customer engaging)
2) These behaviors are
recognized as producing
superior sales results
Manager Implications
i. Sales leaders could be trained or coached to
use behaviors
ii. Organizations develop leadership
development programs based on this
framework and utilization of these
behaviors
iii.Promote top salespeople to management
and assume that they have the skills to lead
the sales team
iv. Organizations should monitor the levels of
trust, confidence, optimism, and resilience
experienced by their salespeople
v. Sales leaders should not only be trained in
these leader behaviors, but also be given
the time and incentives to apply them
LIMITATIONS AND OPPORTUNITIES FOR
FUTURE RESEARCH
LIMITATIONS
 Caution should be used in applying these results
to other sales situations and companies
 This study did not measure actual performance
 This study was conducted in the distinctive
context highly relational IT/software sales
business, all respondents worked at the same
company
 The sample comes from 12 countries and four
regions of the world. However, this study use of
qualitative data
 This study did not specifically examine whether
the frequency of the key behaviors had an
impact on sales performance
FUTURE RESEARCH
 Using a wider context and larger sample could
draw definitive conclusions about the precise
impact of sales leader behaviors
 A logical next step would be a quantitative
analysis that assesses the relationships in the
model especially actual performance
 Examine other sales environments, companies,
and industries with different work pressures,
turnover rates, competition
 Focus on quantitative analysis
 It may be that there is an optimal place in the
middle where a modest amount of these
behaviors is conducive to good performance
CONCLUSION This research uses a social constructionist
1 approach

1 2 The analysis identified trust, confidence,

optimism, and resilience as potential mediating
variables in the relationship between
leadership and sales performance

2 3 The results contribute both to managerial

practice and to the academic literature on
sales leadership and identify a number of
opportunities for further research