Sales managers’ motivation to coach salespeople : an exploration using expectancy theory

Abstract

Sales managers can supervise and help salespeople achieve their performance goals by using two types of behaviours: ‘coaching’ or ‘directive’ behaviour. As companies can be interested in promoting coaching in order to develop their human resources, they can find useful to understand which factors affect sales managers’ motivation to coach rather than to “direct”. Building on Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, we develop a theoretical model exploring sales managers’ motivation to show a coaching behaviour. Organizational implications are drawn from the model.