Drivers of salesperson’s customer orientation: A work value perspective

Abstract

Sales profession is characterised by high levels of role ambiguity, and role stress, given the boundary spanning nature of the sales job. In last one decade or so, sales literature has been more accommodative of the quest of sales professionals in finding more meaning in their work, and making their tasks more enjoyable. Since as employees, the salespersons cannot decide the tasks that form their job descriptions, they try to make their tasks more enjoyable, and enjoy the process while finding more meaning in their otherwise mundane work. In order to understand the changing face of selling profession, in this empirical article, we have attempted to model salesperson’s customer orientation, the practise of the marketing concept at individual salesperson-customer level, from work value perspective. We suggest two work value drivers of customer orientation of salespersons: (1) salesperson’s karma orientation, and (2) natural rewards strategy. We model these drivers and its dimensions to predict salesperson’s customer orientation as a work value. We also model customer-oriented salesperson to exhibit higher job satisfaction, and sales performance, and test the moderating impact of sales experience on sales performance of a customer-oriented salesperson. We conclude the paper with some managerial and research implications.