Linking effective listening with salesperson performance: an exploratory investigation

Abstract

Notes that researchers and practitioners recognize that listening is a crucial basic skill on a par with reading, writing, and speaking. Although effective listening is important in almost every profession, it seems particularly significant in business‐to‐business selling. Effective listening skills assist the salesperson in adapting to the prospect and to different sales situations. Successful application of these skills contributes to the added value of the personal selling exchange. Presents an initial attempt to explore the relationship between effective listening, adaptive selling behaviors and salesperson performance. In the past, very little has been done to measure the construct of effective salesperson listening and correlate it with key dimensions (adaptive selling and sales performance). Hopes to contribute to discovering a means of measuring the listening phenomena in a sales environment. The subjects for the study were salespeople representing a Fortune 100 international electronics manufacturer. The subjects were participating in a company‐sponsored training program at the time of the survey. Results of the study indicate support for a positive relationship between effective listening and adaptive selling, performance and job satisfaction.

Citation

Shepherd, C.D., Castleberry, S.B. and Ridnour, R.E. (1997), "Linking effective listening with salesperson performance: an exploratory investigation", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 12 No. 5, pp. 315-322. https://doi.org/10.1108/08858629710183284