Key Drivers of Salesperson Performance: The Role of Sales Antecedents and Moderating Effect of Customer Directed Extra Role Behavior

Abstract

The salespersons are considered as one of the important sources while interacting between the company and its prospective customers. The purpose is to develop and test the model that involves salespersons performance in the pharmaceutical sector of Pakistan. Specifically, the study demonstrates the effects of salesperson creativity, adaptive selling behaviour, selling experience and customer directed extra-role behavior on salesperson performance. Adaptive selling behaviour has been taken as a mediator in this study. Individual salespersons in different pharmaceutical companies are the population of this study. Total 500 questionnaires were distributed among the salespersons, 367 useful responses were analyzed through structural education modeling (SEM). The results revealed that salesperson creativity has a positive and significant impact on adaptive selling behavior and performance. Furthermore, salespersons experience has significant impact on salesperson’s performance. Moreover, the adaptive selling behavior has positive and significant impact on salesperson’s performance. The research finding shows that the moderating role is stronger on the relationship among creativity, adaptive selling behaviour and salesperson performance but it is weaker on the relationship between salesperson experience and salesperson performance. This study is helpful to understand some indicators that could be highly influential on salesperson’s performance. The findings of this paper have some managerial implications for improvising sales team performance.