Building customer relationships while achieving sales performance results: Is listening the holy grail of sales?

Omar Itani, Emily A. Goad and Fernando Jaramillo

Journal of Business Research, 2019, vol. 102, issue C, 120-130

Abstract: Despite its importance in sales, listening is an overlooked concept in research with limited empirical studies examining the construct since the work conducted by Castleberry and Shepherd (1993) and Ramsey and Sohi (1997). Knowledge of the role listening plays in sales and the processes involved in explaining listening in relationship performance is limited with many discrepancies identified between studies. Using meta-analytical techniques, this study summarizes approximately 20 years of research on salesperson listening. The study developed a meta-analytical model based on the marketing and psychology literature to build an underlying framework for listening theory, advance research in listening, and provide theoretical and managerial implications. The obtained results show that customer-oriented salespeople express their care toward customers through listening, which helps them adapt their selling behaviors to fit customers' demands. Salesperson relational and sales outcomes are driven by listening through direct and mediated mechanisms.

Keywords: Listening; Relational performance; Satisfaction & trust; Sales performance; Customer orientation; Adaptive selling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (10)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0148296319303017
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:jbrese:v:102:y:2019:i:c:p:120-130

DOI: 10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.04.048

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Business Research is currently edited by A. G. Woodside

More articles in Journal of Business Research from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().