Salesforce performance and behaviour-based management processes in business-to-business sales organizations

Reports a study of sales management in UK companies, which explores the relationship between behaviour‐based control systems and outcome‐based control systems. Although conventional theory has suggested that behaviour performance and outcome performance result from different stimuli, we find that behaviour‐based control is positively associated with both behaviour performance and outcome performance. We find also that organizational commitment and sales territory design are significantly related to salesforce performance. This suggests a number of important avenues for improving salesforce performance. These findings and the growing emphasis on building long‐term, collaborative buyer‐seller relationships favour the use of behaviour‐based control systems in many sales management situations, and suggest a new agenda for management attention in improving salesforce effectiveness.