مقاله سال ۲۰۱۶

 مجله تحقیقات بازاریابی – Journal of Business Research

Business-to-business (B2B) sales managers face pressure to justify sales force management expenses in pursuit of revenue growth (Kumar, Sunder, & Leone, 2014). The burden is twofold — on one end is pressure to organically grow topline revenue; on the other is pressure to deliver bottom-line profitability and financial accountability (Kumar et al., 2014; Skiera & Albers, 2008). While an abundance of sales management literature on improving sales performance exists (e.g. Ahearne, Lam, Hayati, & Kraus, 2013; Mullins & Syam, 2014), the consequences of prioritizing cost control in sales management have not received research attention. For instance, what happens if a sales manager prioritizes managing costs over revenue expansion? The aforementioned question is addressed by conceptualizing the notion of cost prioritization and arguing that while cost prioritization may appear to be a sound approach for financial accountability, cost prioritization may also have unintended consequences for the sales force.

Sales force turnover is identified as a key consequence of cost prioritization given that turnover remains a serious problem with ensuing complications. Utilizing the job demands–resources (JD–R) theory and past research on control mechanisms (Jaworski, 1988), three moderating factors – output control, behavior control, and micromanagement – are hypothesized as impacting the relationship between cost prioritization and sales force turnover. Based on a survey of B2B sales managers, the results underscore three important contributions: (a) cost prioritization by sales managers increases sales force turnover, (b) output control attenuates, whereas micromanagement exacerbates, this effect on turnover, and (c) sales force functional and dysfunctional turnover are differentially influenced by managerial cost prioritization. As a result, academics and practitioners alike will have a better understanding of organizational outcomes that accompany bottom-line analyses typical of assessments of cost prioritization.