Managerial Approaches and Sales Rep Behavior Driving Efficiency in Direct Selling

摘要

Direct selling continues to grow globally as an essential go-to-market tactic for firms, sales globally from independent sales representatives(reps)have increased at an annual compound growth rate of 5.2% over the past three years and the number of sales reps increased globally to over 107 million, a 3% increase from the previous year(WFDA Report 2016).In addition, new formats like online transactions and physical retail locations are becoming more popular for reaching customers in emerging markets where direct selling predominated(DeVos 2013).These trends have lead to increased competition and complexity, which affects the management of a direct sales force in several key ways.Our research seeks to resolve tensions between key managerial actions that firms can take to increase the overall productivity of an independent direct sales force.Namely, a focus on retaining and developing sales reps versus recruiting new sales reps, and the influence of having physical retail locations operating in the same territory as a sales rep.Last, we identify key sales process activities that distinguish highly performing independent sales reps from their peers.