Sales force social exchange in problem resolution situations, by Nick Lee and John W. Cadogan,  Industrial Marketing Management 38 (2009), p.355 – 372.

Sales managers spend much of their time on resolving problems related to their salespeople, such as poor performance, lack of target attainment, unethical selling, or other inappropriate behaviors. Yet until recently academics had provided little guidance in how to most appropriately deal with this process. Using a study of multiple sales organizations – including a participant observation and in-depth interviews – we uncovered a number of key social factors which sales managers incorporate in their problem resolution activities. First, ‘responsiveness’ is essentially the amount of effort or energy that sales managers were willing to invest in resolving any given problem. ‘Caring’ was the amount of emotional resources the sales manager was willing to invest in resolving a problem, which included aspects like empathy, sympathy, and a concern for issues other than solely organizational performance. Finally, ‘aggressiveness’ is the amount of what could be considered as noxious stimuli into the sales manager-salesperson relationship. Such stimuli included physical and verbal hostility, intimidation, bullying, and the like, all aimed in some way at solving the problem.

Sales managers could vary on all three of these factors at the same time, and together these factors appeared to explain many of the differences which salespeople perceived between the way their managers dealt with problems. The findings also provided some evidence to suggest that increased responsiveness was effective in resolving problems. However, the influence of the other two factors was not so clear-cut. Specifically, while caring appeared to be perceived positively by sales managers, salespeople tended to consider that too much caring essentially led to a kind of managerial paralysis, with the manager being unable to actually resolve important problems. The situation with aggressiveness was similar; almost all managers considered such management styles to be anachronistic and negative, while many salespeople argued that some amount of aggressiveness could result in the message being put across more clearly, and thus an enhanced ability to understand what to do differently in future.

The Moderating Effect of Control Systems on the Relationship Between Commission and Salesperson Intrinsic Motivation in a Customer Oriented Environment, by Michael Mallin Ellen Bolman Pullins (forthcoming), Industrial Marketing Management.

Authors show how commission compensation can be viewed as a performance contingent reward.  How much commission is used to reward performance will combine with the sales control system to directly impacts salesperson intrinsic motivation. This occurs in a relationship selling environment.

In essence, how the sales manager controls his/her salespeople will modify the impact of the commission. This will depend on whether the sales manager’s control is perceived as controlling or informative. When the manager is perceived to be controlling then higher levels of commission do not enhance intrinsic motivation, and may hurt it. However, when the manager is seen as providing feedback and information, rather than as controlling, then higher levels of commission may even positively impact motivation.

This is an important thing for sales executives to be aware of as they design compensation systems. More intrinsically motivated individuals may work better in more complex, relationship types of sales. Commission in itself does not necessarily mean that salespeople will be more extrinsically focused. How managers control must be considered in this equation. Sales managers should also think about what type of motivation they are trying to encourage as they decide on control behaviors.

In the IMM article, this is empirically tested using a sample of business-to-business salespeople. Partial support for three hypothesized relationships is shown.