sales management research paper

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The Oxford Handbook of Strategic Sales and Sales Management

David W. Cravens is Emeritus Professor of Marketing in the Neeley School of Business at Texas Christian University. He previously held the Eunice and James L. West Chair of American Enterprise Studies and was Professor of Marketing. Formerly, he was the Alcoa Foundation Professor at the University of Tennessee, where he chaired the Department of Marketing and Transportation and the Management Science Program. He has a Doctorate in Business Administration and MBA from Indiana University. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from MIT. Before becoming an educator Dave held various industry and government management positions. He is internationally recognized for his research on marketing strategy and sales management and has contributed over 150 articles and 25 books.

Kenneth Le Meunier-FitzHugh is a Lecturer in Marketing at the University of East Anglia UK and obtained a PhD in Marketing and Strategic Management from Warwick Business School, The University of Warwick. Prior to undertaking an academic career, he spent 20 years working in sales and marketing at senior levels for a range of organizations. His research interests focus on exploring the interface between sales and marketing. He has a number of publications in academic journals and won the Marvin Jolson award for the best contribution to sales management practice by the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management 2008.

Nigel F. Piercy is Professor of Marketing & Strategy and Associate Dean at Warwick Business School, The University of Warwick, UK. Hw worked earlier of business and in his academic career has published articles in such journal of the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Journal of World Business, and the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. His most recent books are: Market-Led Strategic Change: Transforming the Process of Going to Market, 4th ed. (Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 2009) and with Nikala Lane, Strategic Customer Management: Strategizing the Sales Organization (OUP, 2009). He is also co-author to David Cravens of Strategic Marketing, 9th ed. (Irwin/McGraw-Hill, 2009).

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The Oxford Handbook of Strategic Sales and Sales Management is an overview of the current academic research in the sales area. The authors are all leading academics in the field of sales and marketing management. Sales theory is experiencing a renaissance driven by a number of factors, including building profitable relationships, creating/delivering brand value, strategic customer management, sales and marketing relationships, global selling, and the change from transactional to customer relationship marketing. Escalating sales and selling costs require organizations to be more focused on results and highlight the shifting of resources from marketing to sales. Further, the growth in customer power now requires a strategic sales response, and not just a tactical one. The positioning of sales within the organization, the sales function and sales management are all discussed in this text, which is structured around four key topics. The first section explores the strategic positioning of the sales function within the modern organization. The second considers sales management and recent developments. The third section examines the sales relationship with the customer and highlights how sales is responding to the modern environment. Finally, the fourth section reviews the internal composition of sales within the organization.

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The impact of sales management changes on new product success

• Research Notes
• Published: June 1996
• Volume 24 , pages 263–270, ( 1996 )

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• Linda Rochford 1 &
• Thomas R. Wotruba 2  

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Although the role of the sales force and sales management mix can be significant in influencing successful new product launch, the impact of specific sales management programs and tactics has not been examined in detail. This study explores whether firms that introduce new products were more successful in achieving their objectives when the new product introduction was accompanied by associated changes in sales management mix variables. Firms that were more successful in achieving their new product objectives accompanied their new product launches with significantly more changes in sales force quotas than did firms whose achievement of new product objectives was less successful. However, no significant differences in the number of changes in sales force structure, training, or sales support were found between firms with more successful versus less successful new products.

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Authors and affiliations.

the University of Minnesota, Duluth

Linda Rochford ( associate professor of marketing )

San Diego State University, USA

Thomas R. Wotruba ( professor of marketing )

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She received her Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. She began her career as a chemist and has held research, sales, product management, and marketing management positions prior to entering academia. The major focus of her research is on the process of developing and marketing new products. Her articles have appeared in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing , and Industrial Marketing Management .

He has written numerous books and articles in professional journals and is the former editor of Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management . He serves on the editorial review boards of the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management , and Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing and has been a consultant to many business and government organizations.

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Rochford, L., Wotruba, T.R. The impact of sales management changes on new product success. JAMS 24 , 263–270 (1996). https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070396243007

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Issue Date : June 1996

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070396243007

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