Iris Publishers_Journal of Textile Science & Fashion Technology (JTSFT)

A Conceptual Model of Listening Effectiveness and Agile Selling Behavior: Moderating Effect of E-Communication and Consumption Pattern

Abstract

This article examines the importance of the salespeople listening effectiveness in relation to sales performance and purchase intention. Subsequently, it also investigates how sales agility, decision making style, e-communication and types of consumption goals moderates the relationship between listening effectiveness and sales performance as well as purchase intention. A total of six hypotheses have been developed for empirical testing purpose. The result shows that salespeople listening skill is crucial for the organization success and gaining competitive advantages over others and indeed it is strongly and positively related to the sales performance and purchase intention. Finally, managerial implication and future research direction have been proposed.

Keywords: Sales agility; Hedonic; Utilitarian; Adaptive selling; E-communication

Introduction

“If speaking is silver, then listening is gold.” — Turkish Proverb

Effective communication is paramount in today’s complex, fastpaced, and high-intensity organizations. Listening is the foremost effective communication tool that is critical to success in business. Listening itself makes a difference between profit and loss, between success and failure, between a long career and a short one [1]. Clearly, “the value of listener engagement as a communicational ideal is of the highest necessity in our professional lives and for the leaders – executives, managers, supervisors, salespeople and others in highly visible and responsible role” [2]. Business with effective listeners are rewarded not only with more satisfied customers and increased sales but also with more satisfied personnel and increased productivity which in turn leads to increased profits [3]. Listening is one of the six major components of the interactivity dimension, along with responsiveness, didactics, understanding, personalization and psychological proximity [4]. Willingness to listen demonstrates that a person has a certain degree of attentiveness [5]. It is essential for the customer-oriented approach of a salesperson and is positively related to customer satisfaction [6]. The consumer’s perception of a salesperson’s listening behavior has an impact on the promotion of long-term relationships, building of trust and satisfaction, and anticipation of future interactions [7]. Human interaction has always been a key area of discussion in business environment especially for the organizations which are pre-dominantly sales orientated. Bitner, et al. [8]recognizes the role of the frontline employees since the behavior of contact employees can distinguish a highly satisfactory service encounter from a dissatisfactory service encounter. Previous researches have already found that the average salesperson shows a sign of poor listening skills as well as identified it as number one weaknesses for most sales representatives [9]. Moore, et al. [10] found that salespeople listening effectiveness is more important than identifying customer needs, time management skills and their ability to become close to the customers. Previous research also suggested that sales success is likely related to the salesperson’s ability to listen to a customer [7,11,12]. Bergeron J [13] mentioned that several bestselling business authors stressed the positive relationship between listening skills and success in business [14-16]. Peters T, et al. [17] define corporate excellence as being “built on bedrock of listening and hence distinguish excellent companies as those that value listening [18]. According to Ramsey RP, et al. [7] classified listening to the customer as a major source of selling effectiveness which has been under-researched behavioral phenomenon in the marketing literature.

Even though, few researches have been done in the area of salespeople listening skills and sales performance, those researches are very much limited to the relationship of how listening skills affect the sales performance of the company. Castleburry SB, et al. [19] addressed the need of more study designed to establish the link between effective listening and sales performance. Having understood that the interest of studying listening in the selling environment is growing as well as the current changes in business practice and environment, it is imperative to reestablish that link at the presence of more moderating variables. Therefore, the main purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between salespeople listening effectiveness and sales performance as well as purchase intention. Subsequently, it explores how four moderators (agility, e-communication, decision style, type of consumption goals) influence this relationship.

Contribution and incremental knowledge

None of research on salespeople listening effectiveness have taken into consideration the effect of e-communication and other technological touch points as well as the ever-changing business and selling environmental contexts and organizational/ workforce agility concept. This paper intends to fill out this literature gap by first readdressing the dyadic relationship of salespeople listening effectiveness in regard to purchase intention and sales performance. Secondly, it also examines the moderating effect of consumer decision making style and utilization of e-communication business practice. Finally, research question has been proposed in regard to moderating effect of two types of consumer consumption goals on salespeople listening

effectiveness and sales performance as well as purchase intention. Castleburry SB, et al. [19] demonstrated a relationship between salespeople listening and adaptive selling. Having understood the difference between the adaptive selling and sales agility, this paper is the first that use sales agility in relation to salespeople listening effectiveness. Previous research works only emphasize on the adaptive selling approach but very few researches actually see organization’s business practice style from the adaptive business standpoint. Therefore, the analysis of agile workforce as well as salespersons’ agility will shed some light in the current sales literature. Sales-people knowledge in technology touch point such as involving in an e-communication method and social media exposure is another key contribution of this paper. It is expected that high use of e-communication method will allow salespeople to engage more in a listening behavior. Also, moderating role of consumer’s decision style and consumption goals are some of the new areas that sales literature needs to explore in terms of salespeople listening effectiveness because understating of different consumers decision making styles will allow salespeople to analyze customer needs and wants and hence provide a better customer service.

Literature Review

Definition and importance of listening

The construct, listening has been defined by many researchers in a various different way. The very early definition of listening has been provided by Castleburry SB, et al. [19] as “the cognitive process of actively sensing, interpreting, evaluating, and responding to the verbal and nonverbal messages of present or potential customers”. Bergeron J, et al. [9] defined listening as a complex cognitive, affective and behavioral activity which is a selective act of physically sensing, mentally processing and responding to verbal and nonverbal messages. Harris [2]define listening as a thinking process and states that it is mental involvement process where people engage in to get information, interpret it, evaluate it and prioritize it. Bernard TF [20] states that listening is the front end of decision making as it provides a most efficient route to judgments.

Caudill, et al. [21] states that a salesperson needs good listening skills in order to identify customer needs and wants properly and hence they should learn to ask the customers right questions. Bitner et al. [22,23] defined frontline employees as a critical source of information about customers. The knowledge they acquired from customers not only help them to interact with customers in a better way but also allow firms to modify the important business decisions. Asking and gathering right questions often start from the effective listening habit. A study published in Wall Street Journal in 1990 [24] provided evidence that 80% of buyers felt salespeople did not know the right questions to ask and were too talky. Webster Jr, et al. [25] emphasis that sales interactions first identify the prospect’s needs and turn them into buying motives [26]. Therefore, he suggests that the salespeople must listen carefully to the prospect’s description of problems in order to uncover the prospect’s personal and social needs [26]. Comer, et al. [27] found a significant positive result between sales-people effective listening behavior and overall selling process and sales performance.

Bitner et al. [8] showed that customer satisfaction not always necessarily results from providing higher service quality rather it largely depends on how service employee reacts to unanticipated situation such as service failure circumstances. Moreover, higher degree of customer dissatisfaction observed when customers find out that the service worker cannot handle the service failure situation [28]. According to Boshoff C, et al. [29] frontline employees not only play crucial role during the service failure stage but also play an important role in service recovery stage. One study conducted in Bitner et al. [8] paper found out that one hundred percent of the participants recalled the “critical incidents” regardless of good or ill related directly to the salespeople reaction or responsiveness during the transaction in order to evaluate or recall the sales and service transaction [28]. According to Ferrari TF [20] effective listening not only increases individual performance but also shapes the reputation of your organization where that individual works. Listening to the customer shows that salespeople is actually putting efforts to understand and ensure the wellbeing of the customers and hence the salesperson is taking their first step towards building a healthy, strong-relationship with that customer [30]. Wolvin AD, et al. [3] states that “the salesperson is the most important communicator in the entire organization, since all other efforts are of no avail if the salespeople are unable to communicate in a manner than induce purchase”. Verret [30] states that salespeople can respond more appropriately and reduce selling time by evaluating exactly what the customer is saying and evaluating their own response before speaking. Richard TE [31] suggests that effective salespeople use the information gained by listening to “harmonize” the customers’ needs with appropriate products and benefits [32].

Conceptual framework

The theoretical framework of this paper is based on the process model of listening, adapting, and performance proposed by Castleberry SB, et al. [19] and the adapting selling model proposed by Weitz BA, et al. [33]. Both of those framework states that certain skills of a salesperson are antecedents to the practice of adapting selling which then leads to performance. The proposed framework of this paper makes a clear distinction from other models by proposing sales agility in lieu of adapting selling approach which in turn will lead to both sales’ performance and purchase intention.

Proposed Model

Theory and hypothesis

Purchase Intention: Marketers have long recognized the benefit of having a long-term loyal customer base. Thomas RW, et al. [34] empirically shows that cost of retaining a long-term existing customer group is less expensive than prospecting for a new customer. Purchase intention refers to “the degree of perceptual conviction of a customer to repurchase a particular product or to repurchase any product at a particular organization” [35].

According to Nugent WR [36], listening creates a positive impact on clients and practitioner-client relationship. A survey done by Ramsey RP, et al. [7] resulted that perceptions of salespeople listening had a significant positive effect on a customer’s anticipation of future interaction with the salespeople. When customer perceive that a salesperson is listening to what they are saying, they may feel cared for, understood and more inclined to interact with that salesperson again [7]. Hence, listening skill allows salespeople to do develop a friendly atmosphere with their customers and motivate them to come and buy the product from the same salespeople on the basis of that friendliness. Also, Luce MF [37] claims that the influence of prior customer loyalty is likely to be very strong because customers maintain the status quo to satisfy coping goals, thereby minimizing explicit confrontation of negative potential decision consequences. Therefore, based on these above analyses it is reasonable to believe that.

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