Are conservative approaches to new product selling a blessing in disguise?

Michel Borgh; Jeroen Schepers

doi:10.1007/s11747-017-0521-1

Are conservative approaches to new product selling a blessing in disguise?

Borgh, Michel; Schepers, Jeroen 2017-04-06 00:00:00 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 DOI 10.1007/s11747-017-0521-1 ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH Are conservative approaches to new product selling a blessing in disguise? 1 1 Michel van der Borgh & Jeroen Schepers Received: 12 November 2015 /Accepted: 26 January 2017 /Published online: 6 April 2017 The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com . . Abstract A new product’s success in the marketplace largely Keywords Sales management Salesperson performance . . depends on salesforce actions. Many B2B salespeople display New products Conservative selling behavior conservatism when confronted with new products in their Business-to-business Perceived risk processing theory portfolio, such that they maximize their efforts to sell existing products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product. So far, it is unclear whether this conservative selling behavior Many business-to-business firms use their existing salesforce (CSB) is harmful to new product selling performance, and to sell new products. Given the increasingly rapid introduction how this behavior can be managed. Building on perceived risk of next generation products, salespeople face a complex prod- processing theory, and employing multi-level structural equa- uct portfolio in which new products compete with proven tion modeling on a multi-source dataset, the authors empiri- sellers (Moore 2006). This requires salespeople to constantly cally substantiate that salespeople’s CSB makes their effort to make choices on whether to sell a well-established product or sell new products more effective. Remarkably, such effort is one that is new to the market and the salesperson, and thus then valued less by sales managers. The authors also find that bears some risk and outcome uncertainty. CSB is a result of a risk assessment and evaluation Managers generally attribute the lack of product success— process, in which internal marketing efforts (i.e., provid- 40 to 90% of all new products fail in the marketplace—to ing salespeople with information on the new product) salespeople’s choices for proven sellers, rather than trying to determine the weight of perceived performance risk sell new products (Ahearne et al. 2010; Wieseke et al. 2008). (i.e., new product radicalness), social risk (i.e., manage- Companies thus invest millions of dollars annually to make rial new product orientation), and financial risk (i.e., new products look more attractive to salespeople (Fu et al. long-term rewards). Managers looking to control the 2010). Particularly, they try to alter a salesperson’srisk per- levels of CSB in their salesforce should carefully align ceptions by providing information that makes the benefits of their information support activities with the perceived the new product more salient and accessible in the individual’s risk dimensions of the new product selling situation. decision process. Unfortunately, this strategy seems unsuc- cessful. Only 11% of B2B salespeople see product in- formation as an enabler of closing profitable deals John Hulland served as Area Editor for this article. (Corporate Visions 2015), and 85% to 90% of product training has no lasting impact, which amounts to $4.25 * Michel van der Borgh billion of unproductive training in the U.S. alone (Stein w.v.d.borgh@tue.nl 2011). Research by Accenture thus concludes that com- panies Bhave been investing in programs that yield little Jeroen Schepers value^ (Angelos et al. 2017,p.6). J.J.L.Schepers@tue.nl Although managers consider the risk-averse stance of 1 salespeople toward new products to be dysfunctional Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, (Atuahene-Gima 1997), salesperson conservatism may not Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands be bad at all (Rackham 1998). Presenting customers with a 858 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 proven seller before trying to sell the new product may help product information as the extent to which salespeople the salesperson accentuate the benefits of the latter because within a unit are collectively provided with timely, rel- customers evaluate innovations vis-à-vis market-conform evant, and accurate information on how the new product product functionality and performance. In fact, some firms addresses customer needs. While Atuahene-Gima (1997) have found that a careful exposure of customers to a new proposed that providing information to the salesforce product increases sales effectiveness compared to an approach enhances new product selling effort, Anderson and where customers hear all of the new product’s benefits but Robertson (1995) and Hughes (2013) wereunableto lack a point of reference. For instance, when Sonoco, a U.S.- substantiate such effects. To resolve this ambiguity, we based international packaging supplier, launched an innova- conceptualize new product information as a contingency tive packaging, its salesforce first explained existing packag- factor and argue for its effects through the logic of ing to customers to provide them with a reference price. They priming (Mandel 2003; Scheufele and Tewksbury then promoted the new packaging, which had the same price 2007). Priming is providing an employee with a cue but an increased efficiency and a more distinctive look. This that activates particular associations in memory prior conservative approach proved very effective (Anderson et al. to executing a sales task. We posit that priming sales- 2006). Thus if salespeople’s conservatism is not as harmful as people with new product information alters the weights managers think, firms’ investments to push salespeople to- of the perceived risks in salespeople’s behavioral deci- ward selling new products may be an unnecessary resource sions under uncertainty. We find that organizations can drain or even counterproductive. only effectively control the level of their salespeople’s While the conservatism of salespeople stands virtual- CSB if they align the level of information provision ly unexplored, there is clearly a strong need to know with the different dimensions of perceived risk in a how it relates to sales performance and what factors new product selling situation. stimulate or discourage salespeople’s conservatism. In Finally, we bridge new product selling literature and per- response we introduce the concept of conservative sell- sonnel evaluation studies in the human resource domain. The ing behavior (CSB) and build on perceived risk process- majority of new product selling studies consider sales perfor- ing theory (Conchar et al. 2004; Jacoby and Kaplan mance as the number of products sold (e.g., Fu et al. 2009; 1972) to investigate its antecedents and consequences. Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000). However, less objective Because the process of dealing with perceived risk is elements such as the level of effort a manager perceives from a inextricably linked with information processing (e.g., salesperson also play an important role in promotion decisions Conchar et al. 2004; Dowling and Staelin 1994), we (Harris et al. 2014). We consider an objective measure of new pay particular attention to the role of new product in- product selling performance as well as the managerial evalu- formation provided to salespeople. We empirically sub- ation of a salesperson’s performance and show that CSB stantiate that managers do not appreciate salespeople’s makes the effort to sell new products a stronger driver of conservatism, despite the fact that it proves to be an objective performance, but a weaker driver of the managerial effective strategy to sell new products. We then provide overall evaluation of the salesperson. clear insights into how sales managers may control We build and test a conceptual model by employing CSB. More specifically, we make at least three substan- a multi-step approach, drawing on multiple data sources. tive contributions to existing literature. First, we conducted exploratory research with 32 em- First, by introducing CSB we extend research on salesper- ployees from 15 high-tech companies to ground our son behavior in the new product selling domain. More specif- hypothesized relationships and to help develop CSB’s ically, we define CSB as the extent to which a salesperson operationalization. Second, we tested the CSB scale maximizes selling efforts for existing products before engag- using survey data from 172 salespeople (Sample 1) ing in efforts to sell the new product. CSB does not imply working for a global ICT company. Third, we confirmed rejection of the new product; the salesperson may appreciate the psychometric properties of CSB relative to related the new offer and put in much effort to sell it (i.e., display a concepts using data from 191 salespeople (Sample 2) of high persistence or intensity), but only after the options to sell a commercially available panel of B2B salespeople. existing products have been explored. This also sets CSB Fourth, we tested our hypotheses using survey data apart from dysfunctional selling behavior (Atuahene-Gima from Sample 1. Fifth, we demonstrated the suitability 1997), or new product resistance or rejection (Kauppila et al. of Sample 1 and the generalizability of our findings 2010). We contrast CSB with these behaviors and show that through descriptive meta-analytic triangulation. Finally, CSB interacts with effort to positively affect new product sell- we augmented the data from Sample 1 with secondary ing performance. market data to demonstrate the robustness of our find- Second, we add to literature on internal marketing of ings across different market contexts and conditions. new products toward salespeople. We define new Next, we describe our conceptual framework and model. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 859 Theoretical background precede effortful behavior and capture a salesperson’s willingness to try hard in selling new products (Fu Theoretical foundations of conservative selling behavior et al. 2010). CSB differs from these concepts in that it specifically accounts for the temporal ordering of selling Central to our study is the concept of conservatism, which new and existing products. Salespeople may invest finds its roots in the Greek word conservare, meaning Bto much effort in selling the new product, but only after keep,^ Bto preserve,^ or Bto retain.^ Psychology, sociology, they have explored the options to sell the existing prod- economics, and political science research presents conserva- uct. CSB also accounts for the fact that salespeople do tism in various ways, including as an individual behav- not need to be positive or negative about the new prod- ior, a personality trait, an attitude, a business strategy, uct. This is an implicit premise of studies on effort- or a social/cultural norm (Jost et al. 2003;Wilson related concepts though. 2013). Individuals’ conservatism associates with avoid- Adaptive (or smart) selling is another related concept. This ance of cognitive complexity, a lower willingness to reflects a salesperson’s capacity to plan and execute a wide deviate from social convention, and a desire for stable range of selling behaviors and activities based on situational beliefs as opposed to uncertainty (Jost et al. 2003). considerations (Sujan et al. 1994). Unfortunately, most studies We focus on conservative behavior, which entails on adaptive selling consider the skill of adaptation but do not conducting known courses of action before engaging in new focus on specific alterations in selling behaviors or activities. and unknown activities when making decisions under risk. A CSB specifically suggests that the order of new and existing useful lens for studying such behavior is provided by literature product selling may be such an adaptation. on perceived risk processing, which describes how individuals Finally, two concepts in the new product selling litera- perceive risk and consequently make behavioral decisions ture specifically account for the trade-offs or complemen- (Conchar et al. 2004). Risk reflects the extent to which there tarities between new and existing product selling. First, is uncertainty about realizing potentially significant and/or product selling ambidexterity holds that selling new and disappointing outcomes of decisions. existing products can be balanced over time through al- An important assumption in perceived risk processing lit- teration of activities (Van der Borgh et al. 2015). Studies erature is that human decision makers are risk averse. The on ambidexterity do not discuss the order of selling that more outcome uncertainty surrounding a behavioral choice, leads to this balance. Because salespeople have to decide the more likely individuals prefer less uncertain options. in each encounter which product to present to customers Although most sales studies also assume salespersons to be first, CSB provides a more informative lens on salespeo- risk averse, risk aversion is seldom operationalized. We pro- ple’s trade-offs than product selling ambidexterity. vide a more detailed and practical perspective. Second, cross- and up-selling behaviors reflect selling ad- ditional items to customers who have previously pur- CSB and related concepts chased one or more item(s) (Kamakura 2008). Such sales behaviors are usually successful because salespeople have CSB represents a sales domain–specific behavioral represen- a foot-in-the-door with these customers. CSB may influ- tation of risk aversion and is defined as the extent to which a ence sales outcomes through similar principles but does salesperson maximizes selling efforts for existing products not require a history of purchase to take effect. before engaging in efforts to sell the new product. CSB de- Later, we continue to distinguish CSB from these scribes the order in which salespeople sell products from their concepts in our empirical analysis. Next, we build our portfolio. Rather than making a one-time choice in selling an conceptual model. existing or a new product, salespeople may change their prod- uct preference (and accompanying pitch) along the sales pro- cess. CSB may even act as a deliberate strategy to reduce Conceptual development customer objections. CSB shares conceptual territory with related con- Perceived risk processing theory cepts; Table 1 provides a comprehensive overview. Extant research on salesperson behavior during the sale We build on perceived risk processing theory to derive CSB’s of new products mainly focuses on effort or its varia- antecedents. The theory posits that individuals go through tions. For instance, selling (or working) hard reflects the three phases when they have to make product choices that amount of time spent in trying to achieve sales goals involve risk: risk assessment, risk framing, and risk evalua- (Rapp et al. 2006). New product adoption is an interac- tion. In the first phase individuals perceive five dimensions of tion of selling effort and commitment to the new prod- risk that ultimately influence their product choice: perfor- uct(Kuesteretal. 2016). New product selling intentions mance risk (i.e., chance that product does not produce desired 860 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 1 Concepts related to conservative selling behavior Effort to sell new products / New product adoption Adaptive / Smart selling Hard selling Definition BThe amount of time, activity or BThe interaction between the degree BEngaging in planning to determine persistence of the salesperson in to which [salespeople] accept and the suitability of sales behaviors and selling the focal new product^ internalize the goals of a new activities that will be undertaken, the (Atuahene-Gima and Micheal product (i.e., commitment) and the capacity to engage in a wide range 1998,p. 906) extent to which they work smart and of selling behaviors and activities, hard (i.e., effort) to achieve these and the alteration of sales behaviors goals^(Atuahene-Gima 1997,p. 500) and activities in keeping with situational considerations^ (Sujan et al. 1994,p. 40) Antecedents Salesperson’s perception of the new Expected customer demand, sales Experience, knowledge, empowering (selected product (Ahearne et al. 2010); manager adoption (brand adoption; leader behaviors (Rapp et al. 2006) studies) Assigned goals, self-set goals, Wieseke et al. 2008); Salesforce self-efficacy (Fu et al. 2009); integration (Kuester et al. 2016) Salesperson motivation and ability (Johnson and Sohi 2016) Outcomes Customer’s perception of the new Selling performance (Hultink and Customer service, performance (selected product (Ahearne et al. 2010); Atuahene-Gima 2000); (Rapp et al. 2006) studies) Satisfaction in selling new product, New product success performance in selling new product (Kuester et al. 2016) (Atuahene-Gima and Micheal 1998); New product sales (Fu et al. 2009); Implementation success (of new product selling strategy) (Johnson and Sohi 2016) How it Effort does not consider the order of Adoption combines an attitude and a Smart and adaptive selling suggest that differs selling new and existing products behavioral construct, thereby assuming the degree to which salespeople alter from CSB during and across sales encounters. that a salesperson both needs to accept the their sales presentation to the nature Although salespeople may invest a new product and put effort in its sales of the sales situation increases overall lot of effort to sell new products, they processes to be successful in selling the sales performance, but these concepts may do that only after they have product. CSB does not require a positive do not show how salespeople (should) explored the options to sell existing attitude toward the new product. Adoption adapt their presentation. CSB specifically products, i.e., after displaying CSB. also disregards the aspect of timing, i.e., suggests that the order of new and existing when to exert effort? CSB covers this product selling may be such an adaptation. aspect. New product selling intentions Product selling ambidexterity Cross- and up-selling Definition B[I]ntentions serve as an indicator of BSalesperson ambidextrous selling behaviour Cross-selling is Bsales of additional how hard people are willing to try as consisting of two items related (or sometimes and how much effort they are separate constructs [selling new unrelated) to a previously purchased willing to exert over time to and selling existing products] that probably item, while up-selling involves the perform a specific behavior (Ajzen trade off […]and […] increase of order volume either by the sales 1991)^ (Fu et al. 2010,p. 64) pursued alternately (i.e. through of more units of the same temporal separation)^ purchased item, or the upgrading into (Van der Borgh et al. 2015) a more expensive version of the purchased item^ (Kamakura 2008,p. 42) Antecedents Self-efficacy, attitude toward selling Manager orientation, organizational Cross-selling motivation (selected the new product, subjective norms identification (Van der Borgh et al. (Schmitz 2013) studies) (Fu et al. 2010); Product 2015); locomotion orientation innovativeness, customer newness (sales-service ambidexterity; Jasmand (Fu et al. 2008) et al. 2012); expected hunting success, acquisition-based compensation plan, prevention focus, promotion focus (hunting- farming ambidexterity; DeCarlo and Lam 2016) Outcomes Growth rate of new product sales Selling performance (Van der Borgh et al. Cross-selling performance (selected (Fu et al. 2010); New product 2015); Customer satisfaction, sales (Schmitz 2013; Schmitz et al. 2014) studies) performance (Fu et al. 2008) performance, efficiency (Jasmand et al. 2012); profit margins (DeCarlo and Lam 2016) J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 861 Table 1 (continued) How it Intention is a psychological state that Salesperson product-selling ambidexterity Cross- and up-selling literature holds that the differs from indicates that a salesperson is willing and CSB are related but different concepts. successive sale of an additional product after CSB to sell the new product. However, it While both reflect situations in which new an initial successful sale is easier because does not necessarily translate into and existing products are sold, product of an increased commitment through a actual behavior. In addition, intentions selling ambidexterity focuses on the foot-in-the-door with the customer. CSB’s may capture a willingness to try and degree of balancing both types of products in effect on sales performance partially relies on exerteffortovertimeto perform a selling activities, while CSB focuses on the the same logic but CSB does not require a specific behavior (Ajzen 1991), but it order of presentation. CSB is thus a more past sale to be effective. does not capture the temporal ordering fine-grained perspective on product selling of (selling) activities. CSB does. ambidexterity. outcomes), social risk (i.e., chance that product affects the way organizational context and outline managerially-relevant fac- others think of individual), financial risk (i.e., chance that tors that make up individual’s perceived risk dimensions in product involves losing money), psychological risk (i.e., organizational settings (e.g., Sitkin and Pablo 1992; chance that product does not fit well with self-concept), and Wiseman and Gomez-Mejia 1998). We build on these studies physical risk (i.e., chance that product causes health injury) to define the elements in the perceived risk processing frame- (Jacoby and Kaplan 1972;Mitchell 1999). In contrast to the work and employ a qualitative study to ground our concepts first three risk dimensions, psychological risk and physical and hypothesized relationships. Specifically, we interviewed risk may be salient for some products (e.g., popular brands, 32 employees from 15 high-tech companies. All employees luxury goods, food or health products), but are absent for most had a role in new product development and launch within their other products (Labrecque et al. 2016). respective companies. Functions included salespeople and In the risk framing phase, individuals Bsort and filter infor- their managers, R&D managers, product engineers, and mational cues that will enable them to handle or reduce per- marketers. ceived risk^ (Conchar et al. 2004, p. 427). Such information We first consider the perceived risk dimensions that sales- processing determines the relative importance of each risk people rely on during risk assessment: performance, social, dimension in an individual’s choice process. Mass media, and financial risks. In our study context, psychological and managers, friends, or researchers may (de)emphasize one or physical risk dimensions are less of a concern because the more risk dimensions in individuals’ decisions through acti- newly introduced products do not pose risk to a salesperson’s vating particular connections or associations in their health or self-identity (cf. Labrecque et al. 2016). cognitions―a process called priming. For instance, Mandel Asalesperson’s uncertainty to what extent effort spent in (2003) shows that instructing individuals to think about family the sales process will result in closing deals is largely a func- and friends makes social risk more salient than financial risk tion of the (un)familiarity of the product to the decision maker in behavioral decisions. and other stakeholders (Sitkin and Pablo 1992). One of the In the last phase, risk evaluation, individuals decide on fundamental challenges in new product selling is new product whether to make a risky choice or not. Individuals Bmanage radicalness: the extent to which the new product is perceived the consequences of perceived risk through a process of men- to be inconsistent with the systems, needs, and norms already tal accounting […] that constitutes perceived-risk evaluation^ adopted by the business customer (Micheal et al. 2003). As an (Conchar et al. 2004, p. 431). In general, the larger the per- R&D manager from an automotive company said: BOur sales- ceived risk, the larger the threat to extant wealth and the less people are really good in selling simple vehicles […] But likely individuals make the risky choice. However, individ- when they have to explain an innovative vehicle with four uals also weigh the risk dimensions as potential losses against independent axes and all configurational options, the pitch evaluation standards, specifically their initial asset levels (e.g., becomes more complex because the customer does not under- past investments) and trait-based personality characteristics stand the product.^ New product radicalness directly affects such as self-confidence (Mitchell 1999; Wiseman and the chance that a salesperson can attain the desired perfor- Gomez-Mejia 1998). mance outcomes and thus embodies the performance risk a salesperson perceives. In addition, managers model risk behavior and lend Perceived risks in new product selling their personal legitimacy to the taking or avoiding of risks Although perceived risk processing theory originates in con- More information about the design and descriptives of the qualitative study is sumer research, several works extend the theory to an available from the first author upon request. 862 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 of their subordinates (Sitkin and Pablo 1992) through and is centrally coordinated, as described by a manufacturing their selling orientations. A sales manager from an origi- company product manager: BOur salespeople really need to be nal equipment manufacturer indicated: BIn contrast to convinced about the added value of new products, how they more transactional selling situations where sales priorities address the problems and needs of their customers. We invest are communicated company-wide, our complex B2B sell- a lot of resources and time in away days, workshops, training, ing environment requires that I assume an important role information meetings, drinks, exclusive trips, et cetera.^ in guiding salespeople on how to proceed with the selling Managers expect that salespeople become less conservative task.^ We thus focus on managerial new product because information lowers perceived risk through clarifying orientation, which reflects to what extent salespeople per- how the new product benefits customers and Bsignaling^ the ceive managerial practices, actions, and directives that company’s commitment to the new product (Erdem and Swait guide employees’ attention, time, and effort toward the 1998). However, in accordance with perceived risk processing sale of new products in the firm’s product portfolio. theory, we do not posit a direct but a moderating effect of new Employees align their behavior with leader orientations to product information as it influences how employees act on minimize potential risks while maximizing benefits with re- their perceived risk dimensions (Conchar et al. 2004). spect to pay, promotions, and job assignments (e.g., Detert and Finally, we account for three categories of evaluation Burris 2007). Not surprisingly, a salesperson who acts in line standards that previous perceived risk processing studies with managerial preferences generally is evaluated favorably have outlined. First, individual preferences toward risk are by his/her manager (Podsakoff and Mackenzie 1994). In con- captured in self-confidence (Conchar et al. 2004;Mitchell trast, a salesperson who does not follow the dominant selling 1999), company tenure (Wang 2015), and past orientation generally is evaluated critically by his/her manag- performance (Sitkin and Pablo 1992). These factors pro- er. The stronger a manager’s new product selling orientation, vide an individual with evidence from past or enduring the more clearly employees perceive a strategic prioritization abilities to overcome obstacles and therefore drive indi- of selling goals, and the more convinced they become that viduals to accept risks that others would avoid (Wiseman deviating from working toward these goals changes the way and Gomez-Mejia 1998). Second, people are more or less their manager thinks about and evaluates them. We thus see likely to take risk as a function of their past investments managerial new product orientation as the key indicator of and resultant current asset levels; individuals with more social risk. favorable current assets are more likely to avoid risky Organizations also channel employees’ risk assess- choices (Conchar et al. 2004). We thus consider a ments through monitoring and rewards (Sitkin and Pablo salesperson’s pay scale and customer relationship quality 1992). In B2B settings managers typically find them- (i.e., the salesperson’s perceptions of his/her customers’ selves unable to set specific rewards for new products trust in, satisfaction with, and commitment to him/her) because they cannot make an accurate estimation of the to represent past investments and achievements within true customer demand for new offerings (Schöttner 2016). the company and its customer base, respectively. Third, Moreover, installing new product-specific incentives in- individual risk taking depends on whether problems are creases the chance that salespeople push new products presented as gains or losses (Kahneman and Tversky that customers do not need or want. Rather than linking 1979). In our context, a radically new product may also salary and bonuses to new product sales volume, firms offer much value to customers. We define new product typically install long-term reward systems,asput by an advantage as the salesperson’s perception of product su- R&D manager from a logistics company: BWe motivate periority relative to existing products with respect to qual- our salespeople to take a long-term perspective that aligns ity, cost-benefit ratio, or technological innovativeness, and with our strategic objectives.^ Long-term rewards lower account for the possibility that such perceptions may af- the perceived financial risks associated with selling new fect risk behavior. products because they provide more leeway for salespeo- In sum, Fig. 1 presents our conceptual model. We describe ple to obtain their targets (Wei and Atuahene-Gima 2009). our hypotheses next. We thus regard long-term rewards as the key indicator of perceived financial risk and define them as incentives that aim to facilitate the achievement of various long-term ob- Hypotheses jectives and specified strategic goals in a time frame of longer than one year. Perceived risk dimensions in risk assessment We also examine the important role of external information during salespeople’s risks processing. New product Perceived performance risk Compared to new products that information typically comes to salespeople in aggregated form contain familiar features and benefits, radically new products J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 863 that associate with changes in a customer’s established usage inputs, acting upon demands, and adjusting their behavior patterns and habits carry a high performance risk for salespeo- due to the feedback received (Schneider et al. 2003). The ple. There is more uncertainty as to whether the customer will stronger a manager’s new product orientation, the more clear- adopt the new product (Atuahene-Gima 1997), and standard- ly employees perceive strong expectations to explore new ized sales procedures do not suit radically new products; these sales routines and to accept the chance of failure. In fact, require intense, tailored sales efforts (Song and Montoya- salespeople know that not engaging in the risky choice of Weiss 1998). The selling process of radically new products selling new products will change how a sales manager thinks will thus be perceived as more complex than the selling pro- about them. To avoid this high social risk, salespeople are cess of less radically new products. As salespeople strive to more likely to first explore new product selling options rather maximize their performance through the path of least resis- than trying to sell customers an existing product. We therefore tance (Allcott and Sweeney 2016), new product radicalness hypothesize: makes salespeople more likely to delay their engagement in risky sales choices and first expend effort to sell an existing H2: Managerial new product orientation is negatively product. We therefore hypothesize: related to CSB. H1: New product radicalness is positively related to CSB. Perceived financial risk Long-term rewards communicate to salespeople the importance of realizing the firm’s long- Perceived social risk For salespeople, their sales manager is term revenue growth and taking a long-term perspective influential because of his or her formal status, personal con- in responding to customers’ needs and wants (Wei and tact, and pivotal role in individuals’ overall performance eval- Atuahene-Gima 2009). Compared to short-term rewards uations (Wieseke et al. 2008). Salespeople interpret manage- such as order intake targets, long-term rewards carry less rial orientations through an iterative process of receiving perceived financial risk because even after a time period SALESPERSON RISK ASSESSMENT RISK FRAMING H4a: + PERFORMANCE H4b: + H4c: + New product Managerial information overall New product performance radicalness H1: + evaluation H6a: – H5b: + RISK EVALUATION Managerial Conservative Effort H5a: – new product selling to sell H2: – orientation behavior new products H5c: + H6b: + • Self-confidence � Company tenure New product Long-term � Past performance � Pay scale selling rewards H3: – � Customer relationship quality performance � New product advantage EVALUATION STANDARDS (COVARIATES) Data sources Sales representative (t = 1) Sales manager (t = 1) Company records (t = 2) Fig. 1 Hypothesized model PERCEIVED PERCEIVED PERCEIVED FINANCIAL RISK SOCIAL RISK PERFORMANCE RISK 864 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 of personal underperforming, a sales rep has many occa- rewards become less important antecedents of CSB. sions to restore his or her contribution to revenue growth Formally: and receive the sales reward. The lower perceived finan- cial risk makes it more likely that salespeople make sell- H4: New product information (a) strengthens the relation- ing the new product their first choice in sales cycles, es- ship between new product radicalness and CSB, and pecially because they understand that Bnew products con- weakens the relationships (b) between managerial new stitute the lifeblood of long-term firm success^ (Mullins product orientation and CSB and (c) between long-term et al. 1999, p. 282). In contrast, short-term rewards pres- rewards and CSB. surize salespeople to pursue immediate outcomes, which are perceived to be more easily attained by prioritizing proven sellers over complex new offerings (Ahearne Risk evaluation outcomes: CSB’s performance et al. 2010). We therefore hypothesize: consequences H3: Long-term rewards are negatively related to CSB. Previous research has convincingly demonstrated that higher levels of salesperson’s effort to sell new products leads to positive performance outcomes (Johnson and New product information as risk-framing mechanism Sohi 2016). Reasons include that a high level of effort conveys to customers the value of the product and the An individual’s risk perceptions, information processing, salesperson’s confidence in the product (Ahearne et al. and risky choice are inextricably linked (e.g., Conchar 2010) and being more persistent helps overcome occa- et al. 2004; Dowling and Staelin 1994). In this nomolog- sional setbacks and thus closing deals (Fu et al. 2009). ical network the information available to decision makers Effort to sell new products also positively relates to a determines the relative weight of the perceived risk di- manager’s overall performance evaluation, as it signifies mensions through a process of cognitive priming that salespeople are willing to go the extra mile and do (Mandel 2003). Priming an individual with a specific in- not refrain from engaging in difficult selling tasks. formation cue creates cognitive activation tags. When in- Harris et al. (2014) even report that sales managers dividuals assess risky choice situations, the perceived risk may prefer hard work and productivity over a dimensions have to Bmake contact with one of the tags salesperson’s intentions to satisfy customer needs. left earlier and find an intersection^ (Collins and Loftus Although disconcerting from a marketing point of view, 1975, p. 409). These intersections are easily available it shows the importance of salesperson effort in mana- and retrievable at the time a risky decision has to be gerial evaluations of their subordinates’ performance. made and thereby affect the weight of perceived risk When salespeople display CSB and thus delay their dimensions in an individual’s choice (Mandel 2003; efforts to sell the new product during and across customer Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007). encounters, the resources remaining for intensively selling The dimension that most closely corresponds to the the new productinthe endaremore limitedbecauseof primed information becomes more important relative to the shorter time period available. In addition, people re- other dimensions. New product information specifically vising their initial choice from a set of options need some addresses how the new product and its features satisfy time to recalibrate because of cognitive processes such as customer needs. Rather than stressing social or financial dissonance, rationalization, anticipated regret, or inertia elements in risky situations, managers provide new prod- (Hoch 2002). Salespeople who (have to) switch their sell- uct information in an effort to reassure salespeople that ing efforts from existing to new products may therefore the product will perform well in the market (Atuahene- only grudgingly accept their new strategy. Their overall Gima 1997). It therefore appeals to the salesperson’sper- effort to sell new products will therefore be lower. In sum, ception of performance risk. Providing new product infor- we expect that effort to sell new products will mediate mation to salespeople will strengthen the relationship be- between CSB and performance outcomes. Formally: tween perceived performance risk and CSB and weaken the relationships of perceived social risk and perceived H5: Effort mediates the relationship between CSB and per- financial risk with CSB. Hence, we expect that new prod- formance outcomes such that (a) CSB negatively relates uct radicalness will become a more important antecedent to effort to sell new products, and effort to sell new and managerial new product orientation and long-term products positively relates to (b) managerial overall J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 865 performance evaluation and (c) new product selling that employees may have reached their cognitive and performance. physical limits and now go the extra mile. Second, we expect that CSB strengthens the positive rela- Salespeople are rational actors who allocate their cognitive tionship between effort to sell new products and new product and physical resources across a portfolio of products in a way selling performance. Because CSB indicates the extent to that maximizes overall performance (Ahearne et al. 2010). which a salesperson maximizes selling efforts for existing This implies that they may plan and organize their selling products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product, activities in a way that makes sales efforts more effective customers likely experience a sequential presentation of prod- (Allcott and Sweeney 2016;Rapp et al. 2006). One approach ucts in a sales cycle with a salesperson who acts conservative- for salespeople to structure their selling activities is to ly. Literature supports the notion that new products become change the order in which different products from the more attractive when presented following existing products. product portfolio are presented to the customer. We thus For instance, sales literature in consumer settings suggests that posit that conservative selling can be a strategy that foot-in-the-door techniques can help lower initial resistance to combines with effort to sell new products to affect a adopt because in their strive for consistent responses, cus- salesperson’s performance outcomes. tomers agreeing to a small initial request are more likely to First, we expect that CSB dampens the positive rela- comply with a larger or riskier request (Cialdini and tionship between effort to sell new products and overall Guadagno 2004). Sequential presentation also makes a new managerial performance evaluation. Managers assess product look more attractive to a customer; compared to an their subordinates by judging the degree to which a existing product, each additional feature of a new product may salesperson matches their ideal of a Bgood salesperson.^ add desired capabilities and thus provide the customer with This is typically reflected in high effort and productivity another reason to purchase (Thompson et al. 2005). This (Harris et al. 2014). When launching new products, makes the effort spent on selling the new product more effec- managers expect this effort to be enduring because tive. In sum, we posit: salespeopleneedtoopenupanewmarketbyinforming and educating customers about how the new product H6: CSB moderates the relationship between effort to sell may address customer needs and problems (Fu et al. new products and performance outcomes, such that 2010). When salespeople first focus on selling existing CSB (a) weakens the positive effect of effort to sell products and delay their effort to sell the new product new products on managerial overall performance eval- till the late stages of sales cycles, managers will feel uation and (b) strengthens the positive effect of effort to that their employees had the chance to put in more sell new products on new product selling performance. effort to sell the new product but did not take this opportunity. Additional effort that employees put into selling new products after a period of conservatism thus translates less strongly into managerial evaluations. In Method contrast, when salespeople expend effort in selling new products throughout the sales cycle, managers may feel Research context and data collection that employees constantly took initiative and were com- petitive in selling new products (Pettijohn et al. 2001). Following our qualitative grounding discussed earlier, Because the sales activities of such employees lack a for Sample 1 we gathered data from a global ICT com- period where no effort was expended on selling the pany that operates in 90 countries and is representative new product, managers are less likely to think that more of B2B selling contexts as (1) new products are intro- effort could have been put in. Each additional unit of duced annually, (2) new products are complex and break effort is then appreciated more because managers feel from existing offerings, (3) the salesforce organization is unit-based, and (4) selling is a relational rather than a 2 transactional activity. The company’s product portfolio From a methodological perspective, we note that previous research points consists of workspace management systems, connectivi- out that the independent variable can also act as a moderator of the mediating effect (Preacher et al. 2007). In such cases the independent variable produces ty solutions, and datacenters, among others. Such prod- its effect in part by changing the mediating process that normally produces the ucts have a relatively short life cycle. outcome (Judd and Kenny 1981). In our case it is expected that CSB changes The company’s sales force focuses on a set of approximate- the way in which other stakeholders (i.e., managers and customers) perceive high levels of effort, thereby leading to different outcomes. ly 500 business customers in industries such as finance, 866 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 government, education, transport, and retail. At the time of four items adapted from Low and Mohr (2001) to indicate the study, the company had just introduced several new solutions extent to which the salespeople in their unit received timely, that required significant changes in customers’ work process- relevant, and accurate information on how new products ad- es. The radicalness of these solutions differed across sectors; dress customer needs. It is therefore a unit-level measure. not every sector faced equally substantial changes to their The salesperson questionnaire included managerial new work processes. The new products immediately entered product orientation, measured with five items from Van der the salespeople’s product portfolios and accounted for a Borgh and Schepers (2014). Long-term rewards was substantial portion of the company’s total annual reve- measured with three items adopted from Wei and nue (28%). Sales units received collective briefings and Atuahene-Gima (2009) such that a low score on these training about the new product’s features, value propo- items indicate a focus on short-term rewards. New prod- sition, and link with customer needs. uct radicalness was measured using a four-item scale We collected data from three sources at different points in developed by Langerak et al. (2008), and effort to sell time. We asked all 244 salespeople and their 31 managers, new products was based on work by Sujan et al. (1994) organized in 31 sales units, to complete a questionnaire. and Hultink and Atuahene-Gima (2000). After two reminders, sent over a three-week period, we re- New product selling performance was taken from company ceived 172 responses from salespeople (70.5% response rate) records and reflects for each salesperson the sales volume and 31 responses from managers (100% response rate). All generated from the sale of new products as a percentage of units sampled featured at least 3 responding salespeople. Six his/her overall sales volume. Managerial overall performance months after collecting the questionnaire data, we obtained evaluation was also collected from company records as we performance data from company records. were given access to an aggregate measure of managers’ for- mal evaluations of each salesperson’s overall functioning. Sub Measures dimensions tapped into individual performance in terms of output and behavior and included questions as BThis salesper- With minor wording adjustments to enhance the applicability son obtained revenue targets for his or her customers,^ BThis of some items, most of our constructs could be operationalized salesperson sticks to the company’s formal rules and with scales validated in previous work. However, because regulations,^ and BThis salesperson contributes to the CSB is a new concept, we carefully considered its company’ssuccess.^ For each employee, the aggregated score operationalization. Following our review of relevant literature indicated a Bpoor^ (1) to Bexcellent^ (5) evaluation. and general qualitative grounding, we interviewed four sales We controlled for the evaluation standards that salespeople managers of our focal company and asked them to reflect on may use in their risk evaluation phase. Specifically, we mea- their experiences with new product launches in the salesforce sured self-confidence with one item from Riggs and Knight and what actions they typically associate with salesperson (1994). In addition, company tenure (i.e., years with the firm), conservatism. The managers consistently mentioned elements past performance (i.e., order intake target obtained on all such as being cautious, sticking to existing sales routines, and products in previous year), and pay scale (i.e., a market- preferring to maximize the potential of proven sellers first. based salary structure dividing sales people in different Based on the managers’ input and studies on political (e.g., levels of salary relative to the market) were obtained from Jost et al. 2003) and accounting (e.g., Watts 2003)conserva- company databases. Customer relationship quality was tism, we developed an item pool. We conducted industry- measured with four items from Palmatier (2008), and specific investigations to define the average product life cycle new product advantage was measured using a four-item and sales process duration. As a result, items referred to Bnew scale developed by Langerak et al. (2008). products^ when those were introduced in the 12 months pre- ceding the questionnaire. The initial pool of items was then refined based on further in-depth interviews with the sales Analyses managers, their salespeople, and their sales support staff. Next, we constructed a draft questionnaire and pretested it Analytical approach with six company employees and two industry experts. Following the pretests, we made minor wording adjustments Because salespeople were nested within sales units, responses to enhance the applicability of the items. The resulting scale from salespeople of the same unit may be interdependent. To consists of three items. determine whether we should explicitly account for multiple Table 2 contains the scale items for our measures. All re- levels in our analyses, we examined the intraclass correlation sponses were recorded on five-point Likert scales with 1 coefficients (ICC) for the variables in our model; ICCs ranged (Bstrongly disagree^) and 5 (Bstrongly agree^) as anchors. from .025 to .176. Even small ICC values (e.g., .05) indicate To assess new product information, sales managers completed that researchers should control for dependence of observations J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 867 to prevent considerable bias in the results (Cohen et al. 2003, .93 and composite reliabilities varying between .82 and .94. p. 538). We thus accounted for the multilevel structure of our Average variances extracted (AVE) exceeded .50 for each data and estimated a multilevel structural equation model construct, in support of convergent validity. The con- (MSEM) with Mplus 7.11 software (Muthén and Muthén structs also displayed discriminant validity because the 2012). Compared to regression-based multilevel approaches, AVE of each construct exceeded the average variance MSEM has the advantage not to conflate within- and between- shared with any other construct. group effects. MSEM separates the effects using latent vari- We evaluated the validity of our CSB concept and scale in ables at both levels and thereby accounts for measurement Sample 1 using a second dataset (Sample 2) obtained from a error (Preacher et al. 2010). commercially available panel of 191 B2B salespeople. The Finally, we obtained a relatively small sample and set out to CSB scale again displayed desirable psychometric properties test moderated and mediated effects that are non-normally and satisfied the criteria for discriminant validity versus relat- distributed. Given these conditions we employed Bayesian ed concepts. Appendix A provides more detail. methods because these provide more reliable estimations on small samples (Muthén and Asparouhov 2012) and do not assume or require normal distributions for the model parame- Structural model analysis ters (Zhang et al. 2009). We tested our hypothesized model using Sample 1 and took a stepwise approach. In the first step, we included the control Measurement model analysis variables and our hypothesized direct effects (Model 1). In the second step, we specified and added the interaction effects of To test whether the data fit the hypothesized measurement unit-level new product information (Model 2). We standard- model, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) ized all independent variables before creating the product that accounted for the non-identification problem that may terms to enable model convergence and facilitate the interpre- occur with small sample sizes (i.e., the CFA is Bayesian) tation of the coefficients without altering the underlying data. and that considered the nested nature of our data (i.e., the Thus, we obtained the following multilevel equations: CFA is multi-level). Table 2 reports the results. To determine the Bayesian CFA model fit, we examined CSB ¼ γ þ γ NPO þ γ LTR þ γ NPR þ γ NPI ij ij ij ij j 00 10 20 30 01 the posterior predictive p (ppp) value. Our BCFA showed a þ γ NPO NPI þ γ LTR NPI ppp-value of .862, which indicated a good fit between the ij j ij j 40 50 ij ij model and the data. One cross-loading (λ = .198) NPA, npr_1 þ γ NPR NPI þ γ TEN þ γ PP ð1Þ 60 ij j 70 ij 80 ij and four residual covariances (σ = −.129; ij npo_3,npo_4 σ = −.149; σ =.055; σ = .075) were ltr_1,ltr_3 eff_2,eff_3 eff_4,eff_5 þ γ PAY þ γ CRQ þ γ NPA þ γ SCF ij ij ij 90 100 ij 110 120 found significant, which warrants the use of Bayesian estima- tion techniques (i.e., subscript capitals indicate latent þ u þ e 0j ij constructs, lower case indicates items. Please refer to EFF ¼ α þ α NPO þ α LTR þ α NPR Tables 2 and 3 for details on the acronyms). ij 00 10 ij 20 ij 30 ij All items loaded on their respective factors with substantial þ α CSB þ α NPI þ α TEN þ α PP 40 ij 01 j 80 ij 90 ij values, and no serious cross-loadings (i.e., > .3) were ob- ð2Þ served. Table 3 shows that the scales also achieved sufficient þ α PAY þ α CRQ þ α NPA 100 ij 110 120 ij ij reliability, with Cronbach’s alphas varying between .73 and þ γ SCF þ π þ ε ij 0j ij Consistent with Muthén and Asparouhov (2012), our CFA employed an SPO ¼ θ þ θ CSB þ θ EFF ð3Þ ij 00 10 ij 20 ij inverse-Wishart prior, IW(I, df) with df = p + 6 = 35, which corresponds to prior means and standard deviations for residual covariances of 0 and .01, þ θ CSB EFF þ θ TEN þ θ PP 40 ij j 70 ij 80 ij respectively. Thus, we specified informative priors for cross-loadings with ij the prior distributions N(0, .01). To reduce any auto-correlation problems among Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) iterations, we used a thinning þ θ PAY þ θ CRQ þ θ NPA 90 ij 100 110 ij ij of 10 with a total of 100,000 iterations to describe the posterior distributions. We relied on a burn-in of 50,000 draws to reach a stationary posterior distri- þ γ SCF þ μ þ ϵ ij hij 120 0hj bution. We confirmed the convergence of the Gibbs sampling by examining the trace plot of the Markov chains and the Gelman-Rubin potential scale reduction statistic (PSR). The posterior parameter draws indicated conver- SPO indicates salesperson performance outcome for salesper- ij gence and stability after hundreds of draws (i.e., PSR < 1.002). To assess son i of unit j, other acronyms are explained in Table 3. whether our Bayesian procedure affected the outcomes of the CFA, we ran Furthermore, γ , α ,and θ are intercepts; γ ... θ are 00 00 00 10 110 an alternative maximum likelihood CFA. Results indicated a consistent pattern of items loadings. regression coefficients; e , ε ,and ϵ , are individual-level error ij ij ij 868 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 2 Main construct scale measures and factor loadings Construct /item Factor loading New product information (adopted from Low and Mohr 2001) [Manager rated] Please consider the new products X, Y, and Z that were introduced in the product portfolio of the sales team you supervised during the past 12 months and answer the following statements. 1 The new product information communicated about customer needs was very reliable. (npi_1) .85 2 The provided new product information included important details about customer needs. (npi_2) .90 3 The new product information provided was accurate. (npi_3) .94 4 The new product information was provided in a timely manner. (npi_4) .86 New product radicalness (adopted from Langerak et al. 2008) The new products of [company]… 1 involve high change over costs for my customers. (npr_1) .56 2 are difficult for my customers to understand or evaluate. (npr_2) .75 3 take my customers time to really understand their advantages. (npr_3) .81 4 require advance planning by my customers. (npr_4) .74 Managerial new product orientation (adopted from Van der Borgh and Schepers 2014) My sales manager wants us to devote our time and attention primarily to. . . 1 the selling of new products and services in our assortment. (npo_1) .81 2 the development of a sales argument for the new products and services. (npo_2) .89 3 experimenting with the selling tactics for the new products and services. (npo_3) .80 4 the utilization of new selling opportunities for new products. (npo_4) .71 5 spot new, rising needs of customers. (npo_5) .55 Long-term rewards (adopted from Wei and Atuahene-Gima 2009) 1 I am strongly motivated by the pay system to take a long-term orientation (e.g., revenue growth). (ltr_1) .87 2 Our pay policies make it possible to achieve long-term (1 or more years) goals. (ltr_2) .90 3 Our pay policies make me keenly aware that long-term results (e.g., revenue growth) are more important than short-term results (e.g., .84 order intake). (ltr_3) Effort to sell new products (based on Sujan et al. 1994 and Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000) When I engage in the activity of new product selling, I… 1 always take the initiative. (eff_1) .90 2 do not give up easily when encountering a customer to whom it is difficult to sell new products. (eff_2) .86 3 always anticipate and act upon potential problems. (eff_3) .83 4 am constantly on the lookout to identify opportunities. (eff_4) .87 5 actively scan emerging needs. (eff_5) .83 Conservative selling behavior (new scale) Please consider the new products that were introduced in your product portfolio during the past 12 months and answer the following statements. Over the past 12 months, I… 1 always tried to maximize my selling efforts for existing products before considering the new products. (csb_1) .85 2 preferred selling existing products above selling new products. (csb_2) .89 3 behaved cautiously in selling new products. (csb_3) .81 terms; and u , π ,and μ are unique variations of unit j from the Results oj oj oj intercept (i.e., γ , α ,and θ ), after partialling out the effects of 00 00 00 all unit-level regression coefficients (i.e., γ , α ). We then Antecedents of CSB 01 01 proceeded with our Bayesian estimation procedure. 4 Tables 4a and 4b displays the results of the estimations of our For the Bayesian estimator we assumed normal N(0, 10 ) prior distributions −3 −3 for all regression coefficients and inverse gamma IG(10 ,10 ) prior distri- two models. Model 2 explained significantly more variation butions for the variance parameters. Similar to the Bayesian CFA procedure, than Model 1. In support of H1, we found a direct positive we used a total of 100,000 iterations, a burn-in of 50,000 draws, a thinning of effect of new product radicalness on CSB (CI = [.02; .31]). 95% 10, and confirmed the convergence and stability of the iterations by examining The results also confirm H2, as the effect of managerial new trace plots and potential scale reduction (PSR) statistics. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 869 Table 3 Construct reliabilities and correlations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 1. Company tenure (TEN) 1.00 2. Past performance (PP) -.04 1.00 3. Pay scale (PAY) -.06 .11 1.00 4. Self-confidence (SCF) -.07 .01 .13 1.00 5. Customer rel. quality (CRQ) -.11 .04 .14 .10 1.00 6. New product advantage (NPA) .03 -.09 -.08 .08 .14 1.00 7. Managerial new product orient. (NPO) -.08 .07 -.13 .01 .11 .21** 1.00 8. Long-term rewards (LTR) .02 .01 -.03 .05 .22** .10 .30** 1.00 9. New product radicalness (NPR) -.06 .02 .11 .05 .09 -.03 -.08 -.12 1.00 10. New product information (NPI) -.17* -.12 .01 .16* .03 .04 -.02 -.06 .10 1.00 11. Conservative selling behavior (CSB) .13 .09 .08 -.15** .04 -.07 -.16* .03 .20* .06 1.00 12. Effort to sell new products (EFF) -.13 .03 -.01 .30** .22** .08 .18* -.01 -.08 .10 -.26** 1.00 13. Managerial overall perf. evaluation .08 .27** .05 .05 .03 -.08 .02 .14 .00 -.06 .03 .24** 1.00 14. % Sales volume obtained -.04 .05 -.03 .02 .07 .23** .19* .11 -.09 -.26** -.04 .20** .13 1.00 Mean 3.3 178.3 11.7 4.2 4.1 3.5 3.7 2.8 3.4 3.0 2.4 4.2 3.1 23.8 Std. Deviation 5.3 99.2 1.0 .7 .7 .7 .8 1.1 .7 1.0 .9 .8 .6 23.4 α .87 .79 .83 .86 .73 .92 .83 .93 ρ .90 .84 .88 .91 .82 .94 .89 .94 AVE .68 .57 .59 .76 .54 .79 .73 .75 n = 172 salespeople in N = 31 sales units ** p <.01 (two-tailed).* p <.05 (two-tailed) Group-level variables; N = 31 observations product orientation on CSB is significant and negative Panels A, B, and C in Fig. 2 plot the results of the (CI =[−.33; −.01]). The main effect of long-term rewards interaction effects to facilitate interpretation. The plots 95% on CSB is significant and positive (CI = [.03; .29]), while provide the results for values 1 standard deviation below 95% the hypothesized effect was negative. This is an interesting and above the mean of the independent variable and the finding; we return to this result and discuss potential explana- moderator. Panel A reveals that new product radicalness tions below. Hence, despite the significant relationship have to leads to more CSB when new product information is high. reject H3. Remarkably, when little new product information is pro- We now turn to the moderating effects of new product vided to salespeople, there seems to be no effect of new information. The results show a positive interaction effect product radicalness on CSB. Panel B shows that under of new product information and new product radicalness conditions of low new product information the salesper- (CI = [.04; .34]) toward CSB. In addition, the positive son follows managerial guidance and lowers his/her CSB, 95% interaction effect of new product information and mana- presumably because being conservative entails a (too) gerial new product orientation toward CSB was supported large perceived social risk. However, when a salesperson by the data (CI = [.01; .32]). This confirms H4a and receives new product information, the effect of manage- 95% H4b. The interaction term of new product information and rial orientation on CSB is neutralized because the per- long-term rewards was significant and negative ceived performance risk becomes more salient in lieu of (CI =[−.31; −.01]). Because the main effect of long- perceived social risk. 95% term rewards on CSB turned out positive, this negative Finally, Panel C shows that a similar logic applies to interaction effect aligns with our overall argument that financial risk: when new product information is available, long-term rewards would become a less important driver long-term rewards have little effect on CSB because per- of CSB following the provision of new product informa- ceived financial risk becomes less salient in individual’s tion to the salesforce. Therefore, although we formally risk assessment. Remarkably though, under low informa- reject H4c, we do find empirical support for the dampen- tion conditions, the effect of long-term rewards is posi- ing effect of new product information expected in the tive. Long-term rewards motivate employees to care about hypothesis. We interpret this effect below. realizing the firm’s long-term revenue growth (Wei and 870 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 4a Unstandardized Bayesian estimated coefficients for antecedents and outcomes of CSB Mediator Salesperson performance outcomes Conservative selling behavior Effort to sell new products Model 1: Model 2: Model 2 Direct effects only With interactions B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. Intercept 1.40 (1.06) [−.69; 3.48] 1.54 (1.03) [−.49; 3.57] -1.625 (1.07) [−3.75; .50] Controls Company tenure (TEN) .16 * (.08) [−.01; .31] .17 * (.08) [.02; .32] -.07 (.08) [−.22; .08] Past performance (PER) .09 (.08) [−.07; .25] .05 (.08) [−.10; .21] .05 (.08) [−.11; .20] Pay scale (PAY) .10 (.10) [−.09; .30] .08 (.10) [−.11; .28] -.05 (.09) [−.23; .13] Self-confidence (SCF) -.27** (.11) [−.48; −.07] -.29** (.10) [−.49; −.08] .38** (.11) [.17; .59] Customer rel. Quality (CRQ) .05 (.08) [−.11; .21] .08 (.08) [−.07; .23] .22 ** (.08) [.07; .38] New product advantage (NPA) -.07 (.08) [−.23; .10] -.05 (.08) [−.21; .11] .04 (.08) [−.12; .20] Simple effects New product radicalness (NPR) .21** (.08) [.05; .37] .18* (.08) [.02; .31] -.08 (.08) [−.24; .08] Managerial new product orientation (NPO) -.09 (.08) [−.26; .08] -.16* (.09) [−.33;.-01] .12 (.08) [−.04; .28] Long-term rewards (LTR) .12 (.08) [−.05; .28] .14* (.07) [.03; .29] -.08 (.08) [−.24; .08] New product information (NPI) .15 (.12) [−.09; .37] .14 (.11) [−.09; .36] .11 (.47) [−.45; .63] Conservative selling behavior (CSB) -.17* (.08) [−.33; −.01] Cross-level interaction NPR x NPI .19** (.08) [.04; .34] NPO x NPI .16* (.08) [.01; .32] LTR x NPI -.16* (.08) [−.31; −.01] R 19.1% 28.5% 25.7% Boldface type indicates that the 95% posterior credibility interval (C.I.) does not include zero. S.D. = Posterior standard deviation *= p < .05 (one-tailed); ** = p < .01 (one-tailed) We conducted robustness checks to rule out alternative explanations. However, inclusion of either group-level CSB (as an additional motivation to exert CSB) or structural market elements (see section on Robustness of results) did not alter our initial findings. For reasons of parsimony, we decided not to report them here. More information about the robustness checks is available from the first author upon request For effort to sell new products, we only report the results of Model 2. They are similar to those of Model 1 because we did not hypothesize cross-level interaction effects with effort to sell new products as a dependent variable. However, as an exploratory analysis, we estimated a model regressing effort on all interaction effects. This did not change results Unit level measure Atuahene-Gima 2009). This goal can be accomplished other: when salespeople have sufficient information, through the sales of any product in a salesperson’sport- there is no need for long-term rewards since salespeople folio. Because salespeople more easily see how to realize are able to make well-informed decisions. revenue growth through proven sellers than through Overall, Fig. 2 shows three distinct moderating effects (cf. difficult-to-sell new products (Wieseke et al. 2008), Cohen et al. 2003). Paired with new product radicalness, new long-term rewards could perhaps de-emphasize salespeo- product information has a synergetic (or enhancing) effect on ple’s concerns about a new product’s success in the CSB, paired with managerial new product orientation it has a market. An alternative explanation is that long-term re- buffering effect, and paired with long-term rewards it has a wards and new product information substitute each substitution (or antagonistic) effect. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 871 Table 4b Unstandardized Bayesian estimated coefficients for antecedents and outcomes of CSB Salesperson performance outcomes Managerial overall performance evaluation % Sales volume obtained Model 1: Model 2: Model 1: Model 2: Direct effects only With interactions Direct effects only With interactions B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. Intercept 3.32** (.63) [2.08; 4.57] 3.23** (.63) [1.98; 4.48] 43.44* (26.45) [8.79; 95.68] 50.31* (26.16) [1.35; 98.97] Controls Company tenure (TEN) .05 (.05) [−.04; .15] .04 (.05) [−.05; .14] -1.16 (1.94) [−5.42; 2.21] -1.18 (1.94) [−5.00; 2.63] Past performance (PER) .15* (.05) [.05; .24] .14** (.05) [.04; .23] -.99 (1.98) [−4.89; 2.87] -.57 (1.97) [−4.45; 3.28] Pay scale (PAY) .04 (.06) [−.07; .16] .04 (.06) [−.07; .16] .49 (2.31) [−4.02; 5.07] .57 (2.30) [−3.92; 5.12] Self-confidence (SCF) .01 (.07) [−.12; .14] .02 (.07) [−.11; .16] 1.17 (2.77) [−4.27; 6.59] .47 (2.77) [−4.95; 5.91] Simple effects Effort to sell new products (EFF) .16** (.05) [.06; .26] .15** (.05) [.05; .25] 5.39** (2.02) [1.43; 9.35] 5.82** (2.01) [1.87; 9.77] Conservative selling behavior .04 (.05) [−.06; .14] .05 (.05) [−.05; .14] 1.57 (2.03) [−2.41; 5.54] 1.30 (2.01) [−2.66; 5.25] (CSB) Within-level interaction CSB x EFF -.07* (.03) [−.15; −.02] 3.15* (1.47) [.27; 6.58] 2 2 2 2 2 R R =16.9% R =17.7% R =9.8% R =12.5% Boldface type indicates that the 95% posterior credibility interval (C.I.) does not include zero. S.D. = Posterior standard deviation *= p < .05 (one-tailed); ** = p < .01 (one-tailed) We conducted robustness checks to rule out alternative explanations. However, inclusion of either group-level CSB (as an additional motivation to exert CSB) or structural market elements (see section on Robustness of results) did not alter our initial findings. For reasons of parsimony, we decided not to report them here. More information about the robustness checks is available from the first author upon request Consequences of CSB of CSB on SPO through EFF is the product of the effect of CSB from Eq. 2 and the conditional effect of EFF on SPO With regard to CSB’s consequences, the results show a negative from Eq. 3 (see Preacher et al. 2007 for a detailed discussion). effect of CSB on effort to sell new products (CI =[−.33; Formally: 95% −.01]). This supports H5a. Furthermore, new product selling effort was positively related to both performance measures, i.e., ω ¼ α θ þ θ CSB ; ð4Þ 40 20 40 ij managerial overall performance evaluation (CI = [.05; .25]) 95% which equals: and new product selling performance (CI = [1.87; 9.77]). This 95% provides support for H5b and H5c, respectively. Finally, CSB ω ¼ α θ þ α θ CSB ð5Þ 40 20 40 40 ij weakened the positive relationship between effort and manager’s evaluations (CI =[−.15; −.02]), providing support for H6a. In with intercept α θ and slope α θ CSB .Inthis model 95% 40 20 40 40 ij contrast, CSB strengthened the positive relationship between ef- α θ CSB is the index of moderated mediation. Using 40 40 ij fort and new product selling performance (CI = [.27; 6.58]) in Bayesian estimation, we obtained 95% credible intervals. 95% support of H6b. This provides evidence for the thought that The moderated mediation indices for CSB on a manager’s although managers see CSB as an undesirable behavior, it may overall performance evaluation and new product selling per- in fact benefit sales performance. Figure 3’s panels A and B formance are both significantly different from zero present a more detailed account of the interaction effects of effort (CI = [.01; .04] and [−1.92; −.05], respectively). This sup- 95% and CSB, again for values of 1 standard deviation below and ports the moderated mediation effect of CSB and demon- above the mean of the independent variable and the moderator. strates that the negative indirect effect of CSB on managerial To test whether effort, in its relationship with performance, overall performance evaluation increases with higher values both mediates and interacts with CSB, we calculated the index of CSB, as the slope of the line (or the index of moderated of moderated mediation for CSB (Hayes 2015). In our mediation) is positive, while the negative indirect effect of Bindependent variable as moderator^ model, the indirect effect CSB on new product selling performance decreases with 872 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 a New product radicalness a Managerial overall performance evaluation Low New product information Low Conservative selling behavior High New product information High Conservative selling behavior 3.3 3.5 3.1 3.4 3.3 2.9 3.2 2.7 3.1 2.5 2.3 2.9 2.1 2.8 1.9 2.7 1.7 2.6 1.5 2.5 Low New product radicalness High New product radicalness Low Effort to sell new High Effort to sell new products products Managerial new product orientation b % Sales volume obtained Low New product information Low Conservative selling behavior High New product information High Conservative selling behavior 3.3 24.4 3.1 24.2 2.9 2.7 2.5 23.8 2.3 23.6 2.1 1.9 23.4 1.7 23.2 1.5 Low Managerial new product High Managerial new product orientation orientation Low Effort to sell new High Effort to sell new products products c Long-term rewards Fig. 3 Two-way Interactions of Consequences of CSB. a Managerial Low New product information overall performance evaluation. b % Sales volume obtained High New product information 3.3 higher values of CSB. In sum, the findings further corroborate 3.1 our expectations. 2.9 Of our control variables, company tenure positively as- sociated with CSB (CI = [.02; .32]). Probably, more 2.7 95% tenured employees have gained more status and are reluc- 2.5 tant to incur any damage by making risky choices. 2.3 Alternatively, more tenured employees may be older and 2.1 therefore more likely to resist change and be more conser- vative in their decision making. As expected, self- 1.9 confidence associated negatively with CSB 1.7 (CI =[−.49; −.08]) and positively with effort to sell 95% 1.5 new products (CI = [.17; .59]). Next, customer relation- 95% Low Long-term rewards High Long-term rewards ship quality positively associated with effort to sell new Fig. 2 Two-way interactions of antecedents on CSB. a New product products (CI = [.07; .38]). This suggests that trusted 95% radicalness. b Managerial new product orientation. c Long-term rewards relations make salespeople more willing to increase their Conservative selling behavior Conservative selling behavior Conservative selling behavior % Sales Volume Obtained Managerial Evaluation J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 873 effort allocated to that account. An alternative explanation These results support our rationale for adopting a perceptual could be that these accounts demand more from the sales- view on salesperson behavior and corroborate the robustness person (Mullins et al. 2014). Finally, in line with previous of our findings. studies we find that past performance positively associates with managerial overall performance evaluations (CI = [.04; .23]). All of these results are intuitive and Discussion 95% thus offer face validity to our data and increase the confi- dence in our outcomes. Many B2B salespeople display conservatism when confronted with new products in their portfolio, such that they Robustness of results maximize their efforts to sell existing products before engag- ing in efforts to sell the new product. This article provides an Adequacy of sample To further demonstrate the suitability answer to the question of whether such conservative ap- of our Sample 1 and hence the generalizability of our proaches to new product selling are a blessing in disguise. findings, we triangulated our outcomes with results of Although anecdotal evidence existed and patches of argumen- previous studies on new product selling. Specifically, we tation could be found in literature to argue that CSB could compiled a descriptive meta-analytic overview on the re- benefit rather than harm the sales of new products, conserva- lationship between new product selling effort and perfor- tive selling approaches have remained unstudied. In response, mance and then contrasted past findings with our results. building on perceived risk processing theory, we established Table 5 shows that our results closely mirror and replicate and tested a conceptual model of antecedents and conse- the stream of related work. This provides additional evi- quences of CSB. We outline our findings and implications dence of the suitability of our data and the generalizability next. of our findings. Theoretical implications Market context and conditions Using perceived risk pro- cessing theory as the theoretical lens for understanding CSB, Our work has several important theoretical implications. our conceptual model focuses on the role of risk perceptions First, we add to existing work in new product selling by of individual salespeople. However, it could be that CSB is conceptualizing, operationalizing, and validating the con- more a function of the market context and conditions into cept of CSB. We conceptualize CSB as a sales domain– which salespeople are selling. To rule out this alternative line specific behavioral representation of risk aversion. The of thinking and to further demonstrate the robustness of our latter has been a central assumption in the sales domain findings we conducted some additional tests. and in new product selling in particular (Atuahene-Gima First, consistent with the company’s targeting approach we 1997). We show that CSB differs from related constructs dummy-coded four clusters of industries: (1) finance, (2) gov- such as new product selling effort. ernment & education, (3) industry & transport, and (4) ser- Remarkably, we find that when salespeople first try to vices, retail, & media. This particular coding scheme was sell existing products before they engage in new product motivated by leading classifications of industries such as the selling, their effort to sell new products more strongly North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), translates into percentage of sales volume obtained with Eurostat, and Statistics Netherlands’ StatLine. Second, we new products. Explanations for this effect can be found in collected secondary data for the industries defined at a more how customers strive for consistent responses to sales granular level (i.e., two-digit industry codes). Specifically, we requests (Cialdini and Guadagno 2004), creeping commit- collected for each industry: size (i.e., number of companies ment in B2B sales cycles, and salespeople’s potential to with more than 250 employees), production volume change better communicate the new product’s attractiveness (production index), and innovation expenditures (in millions through highlighting new features vis-à-vis old (or miss- of Euros). These data are considered as proxies for each ing) features (Thompson et al. 2005). Previous literature industry’s market potential, growth rate, and investments in has shown that adapting sales presentations to the nature new technology (e.g., our Sample 1 company’s ICT solutions) of the sales situation benefits overall sales performance respectively. Third, we added the dummy-coded industries to (Franke and Park 2006) but has remained silent on the our conceptual model as covariates for CSB, effort, and per- specific alterations needed in new product selling. We formance outcomes. Adding these dummies did not change show that the order of presenting the customer with new our initial findings, and none of the dummy variables turned and existing products is a key factor in such adaptive out to be significant. Finally, we replaced the dummies with strategies. the three market conditions per industry. Adding these factors Second, we add to recent work on internal marketing of did not alter the findings of our hypothesized model either. new products (e.g., Wieseke et al. 2008). In contrast to the 874 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 5 Descriptive meta-analytic triangulation of previous new product selling research Study Effort measure Performance measure Effect size Sample size Industry (Fisher’sZr) Atuahene-Gima and Self-reported Self-reported .2895 118 Electrical; electronic and information Micheal (1998) technology, industrial equipment and systems, instruments, fabricated metals and motor parts, chemical and pharmaceuticals and building products Hultink and Self-reported Self-reported .0902 97 Technology firms. Atuahene-Gima (2000) Atuahene-Gima Hours worked Self-reported .1409 157 Electronics, information technology, &Li(2002) per week (HR) (sample 1) software development, biotechnology, .1206 190 and other high-technology sectors (sample 2) Fu et al. (2009) Self-reported Actual number of units sold .3316 143 Tooling industry Ahearne et al. Total number Percentage of sales quota .1996 226 Pharmaceutical industry (2010) of sales calls made Aggregated effect size: .1954 931 The present study Sample 1 Self-reported Percentage of sales volume .2027 172 Information and communication technology industry traditional view that internal marketing efforts motivate sales- are less appreciative of effort to sell new products when people to sell new products (Atuahene-Gima 1997; Johnson this effort follows a period of salesperson conservatism. and Sohi 2016), we show that this relationship is not straight- Although this practice does not honor the associated forward. Salespeople perceive different risk dimensions sur- sales performance, it does suggest that sales managers rounding the sale of new products. Providing new product take into account a longer time-frame in their appraisals information changes the relative weight of the dimensions in anddonot sufferfrom Brecency bias^ (Brown and salespeople’s decisions to act conservatively. More specifical- Heywood 2005) such that recent events have more in- ly, product radicalness (performance risk) becomes a more fluence on appraisals than less recent events. Our find- important driver of CSB, while managerial orientations (social ings suggest that sales managers can oversee the entire risk) and long-term rewards (financial risk) become less im- length of the sales cycle and that they factor in the portant. Especially the latter finding is interesting because timing of their subordinates’ effort. without information, long-term rewards tend to increase rather than decrease CSB. Long-term rewards may focus salespeople Managerial implications on selling existing products, while short-term rewards pro- voke risk taking. Our work offers important insights for managers. First, we Finally, we add toworkon(sales) personnelevalua- urge sales managers to get a better understanding of the con- tion. Previous studies have showed that sales managers servative behavior of their salespeople. Many managers worry are sensitive to subordinates exerting high levels of ef- that salespeople maximize their selling efforts for existing fort (Harris et al. 2014). Early work also indicates that products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product sales managers often fail to account for the task diffi- and that this practice makes them less effective in selling culty facing their employees (Mowen et al. 1985)and new products. However, a conservative selling approach that more tactical elements such as planning ability, may help salespeople to provide a better pitch to customers judgment, and time management are of lesser impor- who are then more likely to agree to risky value propositions. tance in performance appraisals (Hawes et al. 1995; This is especially likely in B2B settings, where sales cycles Pettijohn et al. 2001). Our findings align with and add extend over time and adopting a new product means that the more detail to these insights. We show that managers customer faces significant changes to its workflows. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 875 Second, managers’ better understanding of conservatism products. A problem here, though, is that a lower qual- should go hand-in-hand with rethinking salespeople’sperfor- ity of customer relationships limits the knowledge ex- mance appraisals. Many managers use criteria such as product change between salesperson and customer. This may knowledge, attitude, effort, initiative, and aggressiveness in hamper the transfer of customer feedback into the their performance evaluations of salespeople. Specifically, company’s development department and thus block bug they correlate observed lack of effort to sell new products to fixing and product quality improvement. a salesperson’s attitude and work motivation, consequently attribute negative traits to him or her, and adjust their evalua- Limitations and future research tion of this person’s work performance downward. This may be unfair in markets where conservative selling behavior is a smart selling strategy. Although we believe our study has clear merits, there are some limitations too. Some of them provide fruitful ave- Third, managers have routinely tried to control the levels of conservatism in their salesforce by using in- nues for future research. First, we relied on salesperson perceptions of new product radicalness, managerial new centive systems, being an advocate of selling new prod- product orientation, and long-term rewards. Although this ucts, and ramping up internal marketing on new prod- fits with our perceived risk processing framework, recent ucts toward their employees. Rather than doing all at studies indicate that employeeperceptions maybediffer- once, we urge managers to consider the interrelation- ent from customer-side perceptions or manager percep- ships between these control mechanisms (see Fig. 2). tions and relate differently to performance outcomes Our results point to three possible control scenarios: (e.g., Mullins et al. 2014). Including customers as a data (1) Managers responsible for launching radically new source would provide further evidence for the validity of products can enhance CSB by setting up intensive in- ternal marketing efforts via the provision of new prod- our findings, but collecting a sample of representative respondents is hard in B2B settings. uct information. In this scenario, managers are advised to save their scarce resources of personally motivating In addition, we demonstrated the robustness of our findings through triangulation with previous results and sales staff and installing long-term rewards systems be- controlling for market context and conditions. We hold cause providing new product information makes these that our sample profile is typical for firms with field mechanisms less suitable to regulate CSB. (2) salesforces and frequent introductions of new products Managers responsible for launching less radically new in many industries, such as machinery, chemicals, plas- products can enhance CSB by rewarding the obtainment tic materials, equipment and supplies, and pharmaceuti- of objectives and goals in a time frame for longer than cals. Assuming that with increasing frequency of new one year. Importantly, this strategy only works when product introductions salespeople get more used to sell- providing no or very limited new product information to salespeople. (3) Managers who are looking to ing new and unfamiliar products, we expect that any CSB-related effects also hold for (or may even be stron- decrease CSB―perhaps because of a more transactional selling context or because CSB does not fit the organi- ger in) industries with a lower frequency of new prod- uct introductions. However, in industries where compe- zation’simage―aremostsuccessfulwhentheydonot tition offers similar products, salespeople have limited provide new product information and set short-term time to convince customers, or where fad products are (rather than long-term) goals. This runs counter to concerned, CSB may have different effects. Future re- present-day management practices and explains why search should hence substantiate the effects across in- companies are often unsuccessful in managing CSB. dustries to see in which situations CSB is most Personally motivating subordinates to sell new products beneficial. without providing new product information is likely to further decrease CSB. Finally, there are many trade-offs that sales em- ployees and their managers have to make because new products are added to a portfolio of existing products. B2B managers could think about allocating a specific Acknowledgements The authors thank Ko de Ruyter, Frank Germann, part of their salesforce to sell new products and the Bart Larivière, Maik Hammerschmidt, Ed Nijssen, Ad de Jong, and remaining part to sell existing products. An alternative Néomie Raassens for their constructive comments on previous versions to this solution is to hire new salespeople to sell new of this manuscript. 876 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Appendix A Table 6 Psychometric properties of conservative selling behavior scale Construct / item Sample 1 Sample 2 (n = 172) (n = 191) FL AVE CR CA FL AVE CR CA Conservative selling behavior (new scale) .73 .89 .83 .64 .84 .73 Over the past 12 months, 1 I always tried to maximize my selling efforts for existing products .85 .82 before considering the new products. 2 I preferred selling existing products above selling new products. .89 .86 3 I behaved cautiously in selling new products. .81 .71 Effort to sell new products (Adapted from Sujan et al. 1994 and .75 .94 .93 .61 .89 .85 Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000) When I engage in the activity of new product selling, I… 1 always take the initiative. .90 .82 2 do not give up easily when encountering a customer to whom it .86 .82 is difficult to sell new products. 3 always anticipate and act upon potential problems. .83 .79 4 am constantly on the lookout to identify opportunities. .87 .79 5 actively scan emerging needs. .83 .61 Adaptive selling (Fang et al. 2004; Román and Iacobucci 2010) –– – .65 .90 .90 1 I use different sales strategies with different customers. – .80 2 I vary my sales style from situation to situation. – .80 3 I change my sales approach from one customer to another. – .82 4 I am very flexible in the selling approach I use. – .80 5 I tend to use a wide variety of selling approaches with different customers. – .82 Cross selling (Adapted from Schmitz 2013) –– – .51 .75 .67 Over the past 12 months, 1 I tried to cover my customers’ needs for additional products on a – .54 broad basis. 2 I made my customers obtain additional products they required. – .77 3 I ensured that my customers purchased many additional products our company offers. – .65 4 I exploited my customers’ potential with regard to additional products extensively. – .70 New product commitment (Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000) –– – .65 .88 .86 1 I feel emotionally attached to the success of the new products. – .86 2 Achieving objectives for the new products has a great deal of – .82 personal meaning to me. 3 I enjoy discussing the new products with other salespeople. – .71 4 I feel a strong sense of duty to ensure the success of the new products. – .82 5 I would be willing to make further investment of my time and energy – .83 to support these new products. All loadings are significant at p < .01. Fit indice (Sample 1): ppp = .862. Fit indice (Sample 2): ppp = .590. FL = factor loading, CR = composite reliability, and CA = Cronbach’s alpha. Highest correlation between constructs in Sample 2 ρ =.58 (Efforttosellnew products—New product commitment) Boldface type indicates latent constructs We further evaluated the validity of our CSB scale in received 191 usable responses, for a response rate of Sample 1 using a second dataset (Sample 2) obtained 56.0%. On average, these salespeople had 18.03 years of from a commercially available panel of B2B salespeople. work experience in sales jobs and 9.50 years with their We included our three CSB items and the scales of related company. The Sample 2 CFA showed a good fit of the concepts in a survey that was sent to 341 salespeople. We measurement model to the retest data (i.e., a ppp-value of J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 877 DeCarlo, T. E., & Lam, S. K. (2016). 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Publisher: Springer Journals
Copyright: Copyright © 2017 by The Author(s)
Subject: Business and Management; Business and Management, general; Marketing; Social Sciences, general
ISSN: 0092-0703
eISSN: 1552-7824
DOI: 10.1007/s11747-017-0521-1
Publisher site: See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 DOI 10.1007/s11747-017-0521-1 ORIGINAL EMPIRICAL RESEARCH Are conservative approaches to new product selling a blessing in disguise? 1 1 Michel van der Borgh & Jeroen Schepers Received: 12 November 2015 /Accepted: 26 January 2017 /Published online: 6 April 2017 The Author(s) 2017. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com . . Abstract A new product’s success in the marketplace largely Keywords Sales management Salesperson performance . . depends on salesforce actions. Many B2B salespeople display New products Conservative selling behavior conservatism when confronted with new products in their Business-to-business Perceived risk processing theory portfolio, such that they maximize their efforts to sell existing products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product. So far, it is unclear whether this conservative selling behavior Many business-to-business firms use their existing salesforce (CSB) is harmful to new product selling performance, and to sell new products. Given the increasingly rapid introduction how this behavior can be managed. Building on perceived risk of next generation products, salespeople face a complex prod- processing theory, and employing multi-level structural equa- uct portfolio in which new products compete with proven tion modeling on a multi-source dataset, the authors empiri- sellers (Moore 2006). This requires salespeople to constantly cally substantiate that salespeople’s CSB makes their effort to make choices on whether to sell a well-established product or sell new products more effective. Remarkably, such effort is one that is new to the market and the salesperson, and thus then valued less by sales managers. The authors also find that bears some risk and outcome uncertainty. CSB is a result of a risk assessment and evaluation Managers generally attribute the lack of product success— process, in which internal marketing efforts (i.e., provid- 40 to 90% of all new products fail in the marketplace—to ing salespeople with information on the new product) salespeople’s choices for proven sellers, rather than trying to determine the weight of perceived performance risk sell new products (Ahearne et al. 2010; Wieseke et al. 2008). (i.e., new product radicalness), social risk (i.e., manage- Companies thus invest millions of dollars annually to make rial new product orientation), and financial risk (i.e., new products look more attractive to salespeople (Fu et al. long-term rewards). Managers looking to control the 2010). Particularly, they try to alter a salesperson’srisk per- levels of CSB in their salesforce should carefully align ceptions by providing information that makes the benefits of their information support activities with the perceived the new product more salient and accessible in the individual’s risk dimensions of the new product selling situation. decision process. Unfortunately, this strategy seems unsuc- cessful. Only 11% of B2B salespeople see product in- formation as an enabler of closing profitable deals John Hulland served as Area Editor for this article. (Corporate Visions 2015), and 85% to 90% of product training has no lasting impact, which amounts to $4.25 * Michel van der Borgh billion of unproductive training in the U.S. alone (Stein w.v.d.borgh@tue.nl 2011). Research by Accenture thus concludes that com- panies Bhave been investing in programs that yield little Jeroen Schepers value^ (Angelos et al. 2017,p.6). J.J.L.Schepers@tue.nl Although managers consider the risk-averse stance of 1 salespeople toward new products to be dysfunctional Department of Industrial Engineering & Innovation Sciences, (Atuahene-Gima 1997), salesperson conservatism may not Eindhoven University of Technology, P.O. Box 513, 5600 MB Eindhoven, The Netherlands be bad at all (Rackham 1998). Presenting customers with a 858 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 proven seller before trying to sell the new product may help product information as the extent to which salespeople the salesperson accentuate the benefits of the latter because within a unit are collectively provided with timely, rel- customers evaluate innovations vis-à-vis market-conform evant, and accurate information on how the new product product functionality and performance. In fact, some firms addresses customer needs. While Atuahene-Gima (1997) have found that a careful exposure of customers to a new proposed that providing information to the salesforce product increases sales effectiveness compared to an approach enhances new product selling effort, Anderson and where customers hear all of the new product’s benefits but Robertson (1995) and Hughes (2013) wereunableto lack a point of reference. For instance, when Sonoco, a U.S.- substantiate such effects. To resolve this ambiguity, we based international packaging supplier, launched an innova- conceptualize new product information as a contingency tive packaging, its salesforce first explained existing packag- factor and argue for its effects through the logic of ing to customers to provide them with a reference price. They priming (Mandel 2003; Scheufele and Tewksbury then promoted the new packaging, which had the same price 2007). Priming is providing an employee with a cue but an increased efficiency and a more distinctive look. This that activates particular associations in memory prior conservative approach proved very effective (Anderson et al. to executing a sales task. We posit that priming sales- 2006). Thus if salespeople’s conservatism is not as harmful as people with new product information alters the weights managers think, firms’ investments to push salespeople to- of the perceived risks in salespeople’s behavioral deci- ward selling new products may be an unnecessary resource sions under uncertainty. We find that organizations can drain or even counterproductive. only effectively control the level of their salespeople’s While the conservatism of salespeople stands virtual- CSB if they align the level of information provision ly unexplored, there is clearly a strong need to know with the different dimensions of perceived risk in a how it relates to sales performance and what factors new product selling situation. stimulate or discourage salespeople’s conservatism. In Finally, we bridge new product selling literature and per- response we introduce the concept of conservative sell- sonnel evaluation studies in the human resource domain. The ing behavior (CSB) and build on perceived risk process- majority of new product selling studies consider sales perfor- ing theory (Conchar et al. 2004; Jacoby and Kaplan mance as the number of products sold (e.g., Fu et al. 2009; 1972) to investigate its antecedents and consequences. Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000). However, less objective Because the process of dealing with perceived risk is elements such as the level of effort a manager perceives from a inextricably linked with information processing (e.g., salesperson also play an important role in promotion decisions Conchar et al. 2004; Dowling and Staelin 1994), we (Harris et al. 2014). We consider an objective measure of new pay particular attention to the role of new product in- product selling performance as well as the managerial evalu- formation provided to salespeople. We empirically sub- ation of a salesperson’s performance and show that CSB stantiate that managers do not appreciate salespeople’s makes the effort to sell new products a stronger driver of conservatism, despite the fact that it proves to be an objective performance, but a weaker driver of the managerial effective strategy to sell new products. We then provide overall evaluation of the salesperson. clear insights into how sales managers may control We build and test a conceptual model by employing CSB. More specifically, we make at least three substan- a multi-step approach, drawing on multiple data sources. tive contributions to existing literature. First, we conducted exploratory research with 32 em- First, by introducing CSB we extend research on salesper- ployees from 15 high-tech companies to ground our son behavior in the new product selling domain. More specif- hypothesized relationships and to help develop CSB’s ically, we define CSB as the extent to which a salesperson operationalization. Second, we tested the CSB scale maximizes selling efforts for existing products before engag- using survey data from 172 salespeople (Sample 1) ing in efforts to sell the new product. CSB does not imply working for a global ICT company. Third, we confirmed rejection of the new product; the salesperson may appreciate the psychometric properties of CSB relative to related the new offer and put in much effort to sell it (i.e., display a concepts using data from 191 salespeople (Sample 2) of high persistence or intensity), but only after the options to sell a commercially available panel of B2B salespeople. existing products have been explored. This also sets CSB Fourth, we tested our hypotheses using survey data apart from dysfunctional selling behavior (Atuahene-Gima from Sample 1. Fifth, we demonstrated the suitability 1997), or new product resistance or rejection (Kauppila et al. of Sample 1 and the generalizability of our findings 2010). We contrast CSB with these behaviors and show that through descriptive meta-analytic triangulation. Finally, CSB interacts with effort to positively affect new product sell- we augmented the data from Sample 1 with secondary ing performance. market data to demonstrate the robustness of our find- Second, we add to literature on internal marketing of ings across different market contexts and conditions. new products toward salespeople. We define new Next, we describe our conceptual framework and model. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 859 Theoretical background precede effortful behavior and capture a salesperson’s willingness to try hard in selling new products (Fu Theoretical foundations of conservative selling behavior et al. 2010). CSB differs from these concepts in that it specifically accounts for the temporal ordering of selling Central to our study is the concept of conservatism, which new and existing products. Salespeople may invest finds its roots in the Greek word conservare, meaning Bto much effort in selling the new product, but only after keep,^ Bto preserve,^ or Bto retain.^ Psychology, sociology, they have explored the options to sell the existing prod- economics, and political science research presents conserva- uct. CSB also accounts for the fact that salespeople do tism in various ways, including as an individual behav- not need to be positive or negative about the new prod- ior, a personality trait, an attitude, a business strategy, uct. This is an implicit premise of studies on effort- or a social/cultural norm (Jost et al. 2003;Wilson related concepts though. 2013). Individuals’ conservatism associates with avoid- Adaptive (or smart) selling is another related concept. This ance of cognitive complexity, a lower willingness to reflects a salesperson’s capacity to plan and execute a wide deviate from social convention, and a desire for stable range of selling behaviors and activities based on situational beliefs as opposed to uncertainty (Jost et al. 2003). considerations (Sujan et al. 1994). Unfortunately, most studies We focus on conservative behavior, which entails on adaptive selling consider the skill of adaptation but do not conducting known courses of action before engaging in new focus on specific alterations in selling behaviors or activities. and unknown activities when making decisions under risk. A CSB specifically suggests that the order of new and existing useful lens for studying such behavior is provided by literature product selling may be such an adaptation. on perceived risk processing, which describes how individuals Finally, two concepts in the new product selling litera- perceive risk and consequently make behavioral decisions ture specifically account for the trade-offs or complemen- (Conchar et al. 2004). Risk reflects the extent to which there tarities between new and existing product selling. First, is uncertainty about realizing potentially significant and/or product selling ambidexterity holds that selling new and disappointing outcomes of decisions. existing products can be balanced over time through al- An important assumption in perceived risk processing lit- teration of activities (Van der Borgh et al. 2015). Studies erature is that human decision makers are risk averse. The on ambidexterity do not discuss the order of selling that more outcome uncertainty surrounding a behavioral choice, leads to this balance. Because salespeople have to decide the more likely individuals prefer less uncertain options. in each encounter which product to present to customers Although most sales studies also assume salespersons to be first, CSB provides a more informative lens on salespeo- risk averse, risk aversion is seldom operationalized. We pro- ple’s trade-offs than product selling ambidexterity. vide a more detailed and practical perspective. Second, cross- and up-selling behaviors reflect selling ad- ditional items to customers who have previously pur- CSB and related concepts chased one or more item(s) (Kamakura 2008). Such sales behaviors are usually successful because salespeople have CSB represents a sales domain–specific behavioral represen- a foot-in-the-door with these customers. CSB may influ- tation of risk aversion and is defined as the extent to which a ence sales outcomes through similar principles but does salesperson maximizes selling efforts for existing products not require a history of purchase to take effect. before engaging in efforts to sell the new product. CSB de- Later, we continue to distinguish CSB from these scribes the order in which salespeople sell products from their concepts in our empirical analysis. Next, we build our portfolio. Rather than making a one-time choice in selling an conceptual model. existing or a new product, salespeople may change their prod- uct preference (and accompanying pitch) along the sales pro- cess. CSB may even act as a deliberate strategy to reduce Conceptual development customer objections. CSB shares conceptual territory with related con- Perceived risk processing theory cepts; Table 1 provides a comprehensive overview. Extant research on salesperson behavior during the sale We build on perceived risk processing theory to derive CSB’s of new products mainly focuses on effort or its varia- antecedents. The theory posits that individuals go through tions. For instance, selling (or working) hard reflects the three phases when they have to make product choices that amount of time spent in trying to achieve sales goals involve risk: risk assessment, risk framing, and risk evalua- (Rapp et al. 2006). New product adoption is an interac- tion. In the first phase individuals perceive five dimensions of tion of selling effort and commitment to the new prod- risk that ultimately influence their product choice: perfor- uct(Kuesteretal. 2016). New product selling intentions mance risk (i.e., chance that product does not produce desired 860 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 1 Concepts related to conservative selling behavior Effort to sell new products / New product adoption Adaptive / Smart selling Hard selling Definition BThe amount of time, activity or BThe interaction between the degree BEngaging in planning to determine persistence of the salesperson in to which [salespeople] accept and the suitability of sales behaviors and selling the focal new product^ internalize the goals of a new activities that will be undertaken, the (Atuahene-Gima and Micheal product (i.e., commitment) and the capacity to engage in a wide range 1998,p. 906) extent to which they work smart and of selling behaviors and activities, hard (i.e., effort) to achieve these and the alteration of sales behaviors goals^(Atuahene-Gima 1997,p. 500) and activities in keeping with situational considerations^ (Sujan et al. 1994,p. 40) Antecedents Salesperson’s perception of the new Expected customer demand, sales Experience, knowledge, empowering (selected product (Ahearne et al. 2010); manager adoption (brand adoption; leader behaviors (Rapp et al. 2006) studies) Assigned goals, self-set goals, Wieseke et al. 2008); Salesforce self-efficacy (Fu et al. 2009); integration (Kuester et al. 2016) Salesperson motivation and ability (Johnson and Sohi 2016) Outcomes Customer’s perception of the new Selling performance (Hultink and Customer service, performance (selected product (Ahearne et al. 2010); Atuahene-Gima 2000); (Rapp et al. 2006) studies) Satisfaction in selling new product, New product success performance in selling new product (Kuester et al. 2016) (Atuahene-Gima and Micheal 1998); New product sales (Fu et al. 2009); Implementation success (of new product selling strategy) (Johnson and Sohi 2016) How it Effort does not consider the order of Adoption combines an attitude and a Smart and adaptive selling suggest that differs selling new and existing products behavioral construct, thereby assuming the degree to which salespeople alter from CSB during and across sales encounters. that a salesperson both needs to accept the their sales presentation to the nature Although salespeople may invest a new product and put effort in its sales of the sales situation increases overall lot of effort to sell new products, they processes to be successful in selling the sales performance, but these concepts may do that only after they have product. CSB does not require a positive do not show how salespeople (should) explored the options to sell existing attitude toward the new product. Adoption adapt their presentation. CSB specifically products, i.e., after displaying CSB. also disregards the aspect of timing, i.e., suggests that the order of new and existing when to exert effort? CSB covers this product selling may be such an adaptation. aspect. New product selling intentions Product selling ambidexterity Cross- and up-selling Definition B[I]ntentions serve as an indicator of BSalesperson ambidextrous selling behaviour Cross-selling is Bsales of additional how hard people are willing to try as consisting of two items related (or sometimes and how much effort they are separate constructs [selling new unrelated) to a previously purchased willing to exert over time to and selling existing products] that probably item, while up-selling involves the perform a specific behavior (Ajzen trade off […]and […] increase of order volume either by the sales 1991)^ (Fu et al. 2010,p. 64) pursued alternately (i.e. through of more units of the same temporal separation)^ purchased item, or the upgrading into (Van der Borgh et al. 2015) a more expensive version of the purchased item^ (Kamakura 2008,p. 42) Antecedents Self-efficacy, attitude toward selling Manager orientation, organizational Cross-selling motivation (selected the new product, subjective norms identification (Van der Borgh et al. (Schmitz 2013) studies) (Fu et al. 2010); Product 2015); locomotion orientation innovativeness, customer newness (sales-service ambidexterity; Jasmand (Fu et al. 2008) et al. 2012); expected hunting success, acquisition-based compensation plan, prevention focus, promotion focus (hunting- farming ambidexterity; DeCarlo and Lam 2016) Outcomes Growth rate of new product sales Selling performance (Van der Borgh et al. Cross-selling performance (selected (Fu et al. 2010); New product 2015); Customer satisfaction, sales (Schmitz 2013; Schmitz et al. 2014) studies) performance (Fu et al. 2008) performance, efficiency (Jasmand et al. 2012); profit margins (DeCarlo and Lam 2016) J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 861 Table 1 (continued) How it Intention is a psychological state that Salesperson product-selling ambidexterity Cross- and up-selling literature holds that the differs from indicates that a salesperson is willing and CSB are related but different concepts. successive sale of an additional product after CSB to sell the new product. However, it While both reflect situations in which new an initial successful sale is easier because does not necessarily translate into and existing products are sold, product of an increased commitment through a actual behavior. In addition, intentions selling ambidexterity focuses on the foot-in-the-door with the customer. CSB’s may capture a willingness to try and degree of balancing both types of products in effect on sales performance partially relies on exerteffortovertimeto perform a selling activities, while CSB focuses on the the same logic but CSB does not require a specific behavior (Ajzen 1991), but it order of presentation. CSB is thus a more past sale to be effective. does not capture the temporal ordering fine-grained perspective on product selling of (selling) activities. CSB does. ambidexterity. outcomes), social risk (i.e., chance that product affects the way organizational context and outline managerially-relevant fac- others think of individual), financial risk (i.e., chance that tors that make up individual’s perceived risk dimensions in product involves losing money), psychological risk (i.e., organizational settings (e.g., Sitkin and Pablo 1992; chance that product does not fit well with self-concept), and Wiseman and Gomez-Mejia 1998). We build on these studies physical risk (i.e., chance that product causes health injury) to define the elements in the perceived risk processing frame- (Jacoby and Kaplan 1972;Mitchell 1999). In contrast to the work and employ a qualitative study to ground our concepts first three risk dimensions, psychological risk and physical and hypothesized relationships. Specifically, we interviewed risk may be salient for some products (e.g., popular brands, 32 employees from 15 high-tech companies. All employees luxury goods, food or health products), but are absent for most had a role in new product development and launch within their other products (Labrecque et al. 2016). respective companies. Functions included salespeople and In the risk framing phase, individuals Bsort and filter infor- their managers, R&D managers, product engineers, and mational cues that will enable them to handle or reduce per- marketers. ceived risk^ (Conchar et al. 2004, p. 427). Such information We first consider the perceived risk dimensions that sales- processing determines the relative importance of each risk people rely on during risk assessment: performance, social, dimension in an individual’s choice process. Mass media, and financial risks. In our study context, psychological and managers, friends, or researchers may (de)emphasize one or physical risk dimensions are less of a concern because the more risk dimensions in individuals’ decisions through acti- newly introduced products do not pose risk to a salesperson’s vating particular connections or associations in their health or self-identity (cf. Labrecque et al. 2016). cognitions―a process called priming. For instance, Mandel Asalesperson’s uncertainty to what extent effort spent in (2003) shows that instructing individuals to think about family the sales process will result in closing deals is largely a func- and friends makes social risk more salient than financial risk tion of the (un)familiarity of the product to the decision maker in behavioral decisions. and other stakeholders (Sitkin and Pablo 1992). One of the In the last phase, risk evaluation, individuals decide on fundamental challenges in new product selling is new product whether to make a risky choice or not. Individuals Bmanage radicalness: the extent to which the new product is perceived the consequences of perceived risk through a process of men- to be inconsistent with the systems, needs, and norms already tal accounting […] that constitutes perceived-risk evaluation^ adopted by the business customer (Micheal et al. 2003). As an (Conchar et al. 2004, p. 431). In general, the larger the per- R&D manager from an automotive company said: BOur sales- ceived risk, the larger the threat to extant wealth and the less people are really good in selling simple vehicles […] But likely individuals make the risky choice. However, individ- when they have to explain an innovative vehicle with four uals also weigh the risk dimensions as potential losses against independent axes and all configurational options, the pitch evaluation standards, specifically their initial asset levels (e.g., becomes more complex because the customer does not under- past investments) and trait-based personality characteristics stand the product.^ New product radicalness directly affects such as self-confidence (Mitchell 1999; Wiseman and the chance that a salesperson can attain the desired perfor- Gomez-Mejia 1998). mance outcomes and thus embodies the performance risk a salesperson perceives. In addition, managers model risk behavior and lend Perceived risks in new product selling their personal legitimacy to the taking or avoiding of risks Although perceived risk processing theory originates in con- More information about the design and descriptives of the qualitative study is sumer research, several works extend the theory to an available from the first author upon request. 862 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 of their subordinates (Sitkin and Pablo 1992) through and is centrally coordinated, as described by a manufacturing their selling orientations. A sales manager from an origi- company product manager: BOur salespeople really need to be nal equipment manufacturer indicated: BIn contrast to convinced about the added value of new products, how they more transactional selling situations where sales priorities address the problems and needs of their customers. We invest are communicated company-wide, our complex B2B sell- a lot of resources and time in away days, workshops, training, ing environment requires that I assume an important role information meetings, drinks, exclusive trips, et cetera.^ in guiding salespeople on how to proceed with the selling Managers expect that salespeople become less conservative task.^ We thus focus on managerial new product because information lowers perceived risk through clarifying orientation, which reflects to what extent salespeople per- how the new product benefits customers and Bsignaling^ the ceive managerial practices, actions, and directives that company’s commitment to the new product (Erdem and Swait guide employees’ attention, time, and effort toward the 1998). However, in accordance with perceived risk processing sale of new products in the firm’s product portfolio. theory, we do not posit a direct but a moderating effect of new Employees align their behavior with leader orientations to product information as it influences how employees act on minimize potential risks while maximizing benefits with re- their perceived risk dimensions (Conchar et al. 2004). spect to pay, promotions, and job assignments (e.g., Detert and Finally, we account for three categories of evaluation Burris 2007). Not surprisingly, a salesperson who acts in line standards that previous perceived risk processing studies with managerial preferences generally is evaluated favorably have outlined. First, individual preferences toward risk are by his/her manager (Podsakoff and Mackenzie 1994). In con- captured in self-confidence (Conchar et al. 2004;Mitchell trast, a salesperson who does not follow the dominant selling 1999), company tenure (Wang 2015), and past orientation generally is evaluated critically by his/her manag- performance (Sitkin and Pablo 1992). These factors pro- er. The stronger a manager’s new product selling orientation, vide an individual with evidence from past or enduring the more clearly employees perceive a strategic prioritization abilities to overcome obstacles and therefore drive indi- of selling goals, and the more convinced they become that viduals to accept risks that others would avoid (Wiseman deviating from working toward these goals changes the way and Gomez-Mejia 1998). Second, people are more or less their manager thinks about and evaluates them. We thus see likely to take risk as a function of their past investments managerial new product orientation as the key indicator of and resultant current asset levels; individuals with more social risk. favorable current assets are more likely to avoid risky Organizations also channel employees’ risk assess- choices (Conchar et al. 2004). We thus consider a ments through monitoring and rewards (Sitkin and Pablo salesperson’s pay scale and customer relationship quality 1992). In B2B settings managers typically find them- (i.e., the salesperson’s perceptions of his/her customers’ selves unable to set specific rewards for new products trust in, satisfaction with, and commitment to him/her) because they cannot make an accurate estimation of the to represent past investments and achievements within true customer demand for new offerings (Schöttner 2016). the company and its customer base, respectively. Third, Moreover, installing new product-specific incentives in- individual risk taking depends on whether problems are creases the chance that salespeople push new products presented as gains or losses (Kahneman and Tversky that customers do not need or want. Rather than linking 1979). In our context, a radically new product may also salary and bonuses to new product sales volume, firms offer much value to customers. We define new product typically install long-term reward systems,asput by an advantage as the salesperson’s perception of product su- R&D manager from a logistics company: BWe motivate periority relative to existing products with respect to qual- our salespeople to take a long-term perspective that aligns ity, cost-benefit ratio, or technological innovativeness, and with our strategic objectives.^ Long-term rewards lower account for the possibility that such perceptions may af- the perceived financial risks associated with selling new fect risk behavior. products because they provide more leeway for salespeo- In sum, Fig. 1 presents our conceptual model. We describe ple to obtain their targets (Wei and Atuahene-Gima 2009). our hypotheses next. We thus regard long-term rewards as the key indicator of perceived financial risk and define them as incentives that aim to facilitate the achievement of various long-term ob- Hypotheses jectives and specified strategic goals in a time frame of longer than one year. Perceived risk dimensions in risk assessment We also examine the important role of external information during salespeople’s risks processing. New product Perceived performance risk Compared to new products that information typically comes to salespeople in aggregated form contain familiar features and benefits, radically new products J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 863 that associate with changes in a customer’s established usage inputs, acting upon demands, and adjusting their behavior patterns and habits carry a high performance risk for salespeo- due to the feedback received (Schneider et al. 2003). The ple. There is more uncertainty as to whether the customer will stronger a manager’s new product orientation, the more clear- adopt the new product (Atuahene-Gima 1997), and standard- ly employees perceive strong expectations to explore new ized sales procedures do not suit radically new products; these sales routines and to accept the chance of failure. In fact, require intense, tailored sales efforts (Song and Montoya- salespeople know that not engaging in the risky choice of Weiss 1998). The selling process of radically new products selling new products will change how a sales manager thinks will thus be perceived as more complex than the selling pro- about them. To avoid this high social risk, salespeople are cess of less radically new products. As salespeople strive to more likely to first explore new product selling options rather maximize their performance through the path of least resis- than trying to sell customers an existing product. We therefore tance (Allcott and Sweeney 2016), new product radicalness hypothesize: makes salespeople more likely to delay their engagement in risky sales choices and first expend effort to sell an existing H2: Managerial new product orientation is negatively product. We therefore hypothesize: related to CSB. H1: New product radicalness is positively related to CSB. Perceived financial risk Long-term rewards communicate to salespeople the importance of realizing the firm’s long- Perceived social risk For salespeople, their sales manager is term revenue growth and taking a long-term perspective influential because of his or her formal status, personal con- in responding to customers’ needs and wants (Wei and tact, and pivotal role in individuals’ overall performance eval- Atuahene-Gima 2009). Compared to short-term rewards uations (Wieseke et al. 2008). Salespeople interpret manage- such as order intake targets, long-term rewards carry less rial orientations through an iterative process of receiving perceived financial risk because even after a time period SALESPERSON RISK ASSESSMENT RISK FRAMING H4a: + PERFORMANCE H4b: + H4c: + New product Managerial information overall New product performance radicalness H1: + evaluation H6a: – H5b: + RISK EVALUATION Managerial Conservative Effort H5a: – new product selling to sell H2: – orientation behavior new products H5c: + H6b: + • Self-confidence � Company tenure New product Long-term � Past performance � Pay scale selling rewards H3: – � Customer relationship quality performance � New product advantage EVALUATION STANDARDS (COVARIATES) Data sources Sales representative (t = 1) Sales manager (t = 1) Company records (t = 2) Fig. 1 Hypothesized model PERCEIVED PERCEIVED PERCEIVED FINANCIAL RISK SOCIAL RISK PERFORMANCE RISK 864 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 of personal underperforming, a sales rep has many occa- rewards become less important antecedents of CSB. sions to restore his or her contribution to revenue growth Formally: and receive the sales reward. The lower perceived finan- cial risk makes it more likely that salespeople make sell- H4: New product information (a) strengthens the relation- ing the new product their first choice in sales cycles, es- ship between new product radicalness and CSB, and pecially because they understand that Bnew products con- weakens the relationships (b) between managerial new stitute the lifeblood of long-term firm success^ (Mullins product orientation and CSB and (c) between long-term et al. 1999, p. 282). In contrast, short-term rewards pres- rewards and CSB. surize salespeople to pursue immediate outcomes, which are perceived to be more easily attained by prioritizing proven sellers over complex new offerings (Ahearne Risk evaluation outcomes: CSB’s performance et al. 2010). We therefore hypothesize: consequences H3: Long-term rewards are negatively related to CSB. Previous research has convincingly demonstrated that higher levels of salesperson’s effort to sell new products leads to positive performance outcomes (Johnson and New product information as risk-framing mechanism Sohi 2016). Reasons include that a high level of effort conveys to customers the value of the product and the An individual’s risk perceptions, information processing, salesperson’s confidence in the product (Ahearne et al. and risky choice are inextricably linked (e.g., Conchar 2010) and being more persistent helps overcome occa- et al. 2004; Dowling and Staelin 1994). In this nomolog- sional setbacks and thus closing deals (Fu et al. 2009). ical network the information available to decision makers Effort to sell new products also positively relates to a determines the relative weight of the perceived risk di- manager’s overall performance evaluation, as it signifies mensions through a process of cognitive priming that salespeople are willing to go the extra mile and do (Mandel 2003). Priming an individual with a specific in- not refrain from engaging in difficult selling tasks. formation cue creates cognitive activation tags. When in- Harris et al. (2014) even report that sales managers dividuals assess risky choice situations, the perceived risk may prefer hard work and productivity over a dimensions have to Bmake contact with one of the tags salesperson’s intentions to satisfy customer needs. left earlier and find an intersection^ (Collins and Loftus Although disconcerting from a marketing point of view, 1975, p. 409). These intersections are easily available it shows the importance of salesperson effort in mana- and retrievable at the time a risky decision has to be gerial evaluations of their subordinates’ performance. made and thereby affect the weight of perceived risk When salespeople display CSB and thus delay their dimensions in an individual’s choice (Mandel 2003; efforts to sell the new product during and across customer Scheufele and Tewksbury 2007). encounters, the resources remaining for intensively selling The dimension that most closely corresponds to the the new productinthe endaremore limitedbecauseof primed information becomes more important relative to the shorter time period available. In addition, people re- other dimensions. New product information specifically vising their initial choice from a set of options need some addresses how the new product and its features satisfy time to recalibrate because of cognitive processes such as customer needs. Rather than stressing social or financial dissonance, rationalization, anticipated regret, or inertia elements in risky situations, managers provide new prod- (Hoch 2002). Salespeople who (have to) switch their sell- uct information in an effort to reassure salespeople that ing efforts from existing to new products may therefore the product will perform well in the market (Atuahene- only grudgingly accept their new strategy. Their overall Gima 1997). It therefore appeals to the salesperson’sper- effort to sell new products will therefore be lower. In sum, ception of performance risk. Providing new product infor- we expect that effort to sell new products will mediate mation to salespeople will strengthen the relationship be- between CSB and performance outcomes. Formally: tween perceived performance risk and CSB and weaken the relationships of perceived social risk and perceived H5: Effort mediates the relationship between CSB and per- financial risk with CSB. Hence, we expect that new prod- formance outcomes such that (a) CSB negatively relates uct radicalness will become a more important antecedent to effort to sell new products, and effort to sell new and managerial new product orientation and long-term products positively relates to (b) managerial overall J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 865 performance evaluation and (c) new product selling that employees may have reached their cognitive and performance. physical limits and now go the extra mile. Second, we expect that CSB strengthens the positive rela- Salespeople are rational actors who allocate their cognitive tionship between effort to sell new products and new product and physical resources across a portfolio of products in a way selling performance. Because CSB indicates the extent to that maximizes overall performance (Ahearne et al. 2010). which a salesperson maximizes selling efforts for existing This implies that they may plan and organize their selling products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product, activities in a way that makes sales efforts more effective customers likely experience a sequential presentation of prod- (Allcott and Sweeney 2016;Rapp et al. 2006). One approach ucts in a sales cycle with a salesperson who acts conservative- for salespeople to structure their selling activities is to ly. Literature supports the notion that new products become change the order in which different products from the more attractive when presented following existing products. product portfolio are presented to the customer. We thus For instance, sales literature in consumer settings suggests that posit that conservative selling can be a strategy that foot-in-the-door techniques can help lower initial resistance to combines with effort to sell new products to affect a adopt because in their strive for consistent responses, cus- salesperson’s performance outcomes. tomers agreeing to a small initial request are more likely to First, we expect that CSB dampens the positive rela- comply with a larger or riskier request (Cialdini and tionship between effort to sell new products and overall Guadagno 2004). Sequential presentation also makes a new managerial performance evaluation. Managers assess product look more attractive to a customer; compared to an their subordinates by judging the degree to which a existing product, each additional feature of a new product may salesperson matches their ideal of a Bgood salesperson.^ add desired capabilities and thus provide the customer with This is typically reflected in high effort and productivity another reason to purchase (Thompson et al. 2005). This (Harris et al. 2014). When launching new products, makes the effort spent on selling the new product more effec- managers expect this effort to be enduring because tive. In sum, we posit: salespeopleneedtoopenupanewmarketbyinforming and educating customers about how the new product H6: CSB moderates the relationship between effort to sell may address customer needs and problems (Fu et al. new products and performance outcomes, such that 2010). When salespeople first focus on selling existing CSB (a) weakens the positive effect of effort to sell products and delay their effort to sell the new product new products on managerial overall performance eval- till the late stages of sales cycles, managers will feel uation and (b) strengthens the positive effect of effort to that their employees had the chance to put in more sell new products on new product selling performance. effort to sell the new product but did not take this opportunity. Additional effort that employees put into selling new products after a period of conservatism thus translates less strongly into managerial evaluations. In Method contrast, when salespeople expend effort in selling new products throughout the sales cycle, managers may feel Research context and data collection that employees constantly took initiative and were com- petitive in selling new products (Pettijohn et al. 2001). Following our qualitative grounding discussed earlier, Because the sales activities of such employees lack a for Sample 1 we gathered data from a global ICT com- period where no effort was expended on selling the pany that operates in 90 countries and is representative new product, managers are less likely to think that more of B2B selling contexts as (1) new products are intro- effort could have been put in. Each additional unit of duced annually, (2) new products are complex and break effort is then appreciated more because managers feel from existing offerings, (3) the salesforce organization is unit-based, and (4) selling is a relational rather than a 2 transactional activity. The company’s product portfolio From a methodological perspective, we note that previous research points consists of workspace management systems, connectivi- out that the independent variable can also act as a moderator of the mediating effect (Preacher et al. 2007). In such cases the independent variable produces ty solutions, and datacenters, among others. Such prod- its effect in part by changing the mediating process that normally produces the ucts have a relatively short life cycle. outcome (Judd and Kenny 1981). In our case it is expected that CSB changes The company’s sales force focuses on a set of approximate- the way in which other stakeholders (i.e., managers and customers) perceive high levels of effort, thereby leading to different outcomes. ly 500 business customers in industries such as finance, 866 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 government, education, transport, and retail. At the time of four items adapted from Low and Mohr (2001) to indicate the study, the company had just introduced several new solutions extent to which the salespeople in their unit received timely, that required significant changes in customers’ work process- relevant, and accurate information on how new products ad- es. The radicalness of these solutions differed across sectors; dress customer needs. It is therefore a unit-level measure. not every sector faced equally substantial changes to their The salesperson questionnaire included managerial new work processes. The new products immediately entered product orientation, measured with five items from Van der the salespeople’s product portfolios and accounted for a Borgh and Schepers (2014). Long-term rewards was substantial portion of the company’s total annual reve- measured with three items adopted from Wei and nue (28%). Sales units received collective briefings and Atuahene-Gima (2009) such that a low score on these training about the new product’s features, value propo- items indicate a focus on short-term rewards. New prod- sition, and link with customer needs. uct radicalness was measured using a four-item scale We collected data from three sources at different points in developed by Langerak et al. (2008), and effort to sell time. We asked all 244 salespeople and their 31 managers, new products was based on work by Sujan et al. (1994) organized in 31 sales units, to complete a questionnaire. and Hultink and Atuahene-Gima (2000). After two reminders, sent over a three-week period, we re- New product selling performance was taken from company ceived 172 responses from salespeople (70.5% response rate) records and reflects for each salesperson the sales volume and 31 responses from managers (100% response rate). All generated from the sale of new products as a percentage of units sampled featured at least 3 responding salespeople. Six his/her overall sales volume. Managerial overall performance months after collecting the questionnaire data, we obtained evaluation was also collected from company records as we performance data from company records. were given access to an aggregate measure of managers’ for- mal evaluations of each salesperson’s overall functioning. Sub Measures dimensions tapped into individual performance in terms of output and behavior and included questions as BThis salesper- With minor wording adjustments to enhance the applicability son obtained revenue targets for his or her customers,^ BThis of some items, most of our constructs could be operationalized salesperson sticks to the company’s formal rules and with scales validated in previous work. However, because regulations,^ and BThis salesperson contributes to the CSB is a new concept, we carefully considered its company’ssuccess.^ For each employee, the aggregated score operationalization. Following our review of relevant literature indicated a Bpoor^ (1) to Bexcellent^ (5) evaluation. and general qualitative grounding, we interviewed four sales We controlled for the evaluation standards that salespeople managers of our focal company and asked them to reflect on may use in their risk evaluation phase. Specifically, we mea- their experiences with new product launches in the salesforce sured self-confidence with one item from Riggs and Knight and what actions they typically associate with salesperson (1994). In addition, company tenure (i.e., years with the firm), conservatism. The managers consistently mentioned elements past performance (i.e., order intake target obtained on all such as being cautious, sticking to existing sales routines, and products in previous year), and pay scale (i.e., a market- preferring to maximize the potential of proven sellers first. based salary structure dividing sales people in different Based on the managers’ input and studies on political (e.g., levels of salary relative to the market) were obtained from Jost et al. 2003) and accounting (e.g., Watts 2003)conserva- company databases. Customer relationship quality was tism, we developed an item pool. We conducted industry- measured with four items from Palmatier (2008), and specific investigations to define the average product life cycle new product advantage was measured using a four-item and sales process duration. As a result, items referred to Bnew scale developed by Langerak et al. (2008). products^ when those were introduced in the 12 months pre- ceding the questionnaire. The initial pool of items was then refined based on further in-depth interviews with the sales Analyses managers, their salespeople, and their sales support staff. Next, we constructed a draft questionnaire and pretested it Analytical approach with six company employees and two industry experts. Following the pretests, we made minor wording adjustments Because salespeople were nested within sales units, responses to enhance the applicability of the items. The resulting scale from salespeople of the same unit may be interdependent. To consists of three items. determine whether we should explicitly account for multiple Table 2 contains the scale items for our measures. All re- levels in our analyses, we examined the intraclass correlation sponses were recorded on five-point Likert scales with 1 coefficients (ICC) for the variables in our model; ICCs ranged (Bstrongly disagree^) and 5 (Bstrongly agree^) as anchors. from .025 to .176. Even small ICC values (e.g., .05) indicate To assess new product information, sales managers completed that researchers should control for dependence of observations J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 867 to prevent considerable bias in the results (Cohen et al. 2003, .93 and composite reliabilities varying between .82 and .94. p. 538). We thus accounted for the multilevel structure of our Average variances extracted (AVE) exceeded .50 for each data and estimated a multilevel structural equation model construct, in support of convergent validity. The con- (MSEM) with Mplus 7.11 software (Muthén and Muthén structs also displayed discriminant validity because the 2012). Compared to regression-based multilevel approaches, AVE of each construct exceeded the average variance MSEM has the advantage not to conflate within- and between- shared with any other construct. group effects. MSEM separates the effects using latent vari- We evaluated the validity of our CSB concept and scale in ables at both levels and thereby accounts for measurement Sample 1 using a second dataset (Sample 2) obtained from a error (Preacher et al. 2010). commercially available panel of 191 B2B salespeople. The Finally, we obtained a relatively small sample and set out to CSB scale again displayed desirable psychometric properties test moderated and mediated effects that are non-normally and satisfied the criteria for discriminant validity versus relat- distributed. Given these conditions we employed Bayesian ed concepts. Appendix A provides more detail. methods because these provide more reliable estimations on small samples (Muthén and Asparouhov 2012) and do not assume or require normal distributions for the model parame- Structural model analysis ters (Zhang et al. 2009). We tested our hypothesized model using Sample 1 and took a stepwise approach. In the first step, we included the control Measurement model analysis variables and our hypothesized direct effects (Model 1). In the second step, we specified and added the interaction effects of To test whether the data fit the hypothesized measurement unit-level new product information (Model 2). We standard- model, we conducted a confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) ized all independent variables before creating the product that accounted for the non-identification problem that may terms to enable model convergence and facilitate the interpre- occur with small sample sizes (i.e., the CFA is Bayesian) tation of the coefficients without altering the underlying data. and that considered the nested nature of our data (i.e., the Thus, we obtained the following multilevel equations: CFA is multi-level). Table 2 reports the results. To determine the Bayesian CFA model fit, we examined CSB ¼ γ þ γ NPO þ γ LTR þ γ NPR þ γ NPI ij ij ij ij j 00 10 20 30 01 the posterior predictive p (ppp) value. Our BCFA showed a þ γ NPO NPI þ γ LTR NPI ppp-value of .862, which indicated a good fit between the ij j ij j 40 50 ij ij model and the data. One cross-loading (λ = .198) NPA, npr_1 þ γ NPR NPI þ γ TEN þ γ PP ð1Þ 60 ij j 70 ij 80 ij and four residual covariances (σ = −.129; ij npo_3,npo_4 σ = −.149; σ =.055; σ = .075) were ltr_1,ltr_3 eff_2,eff_3 eff_4,eff_5 þ γ PAY þ γ CRQ þ γ NPA þ γ SCF ij ij ij 90 100 ij 110 120 found significant, which warrants the use of Bayesian estima- tion techniques (i.e., subscript capitals indicate latent þ u þ e 0j ij constructs, lower case indicates items. Please refer to EFF ¼ α þ α NPO þ α LTR þ α NPR Tables 2 and 3 for details on the acronyms). ij 00 10 ij 20 ij 30 ij All items loaded on their respective factors with substantial þ α CSB þ α NPI þ α TEN þ α PP 40 ij 01 j 80 ij 90 ij values, and no serious cross-loadings (i.e., > .3) were ob- ð2Þ served. Table 3 shows that the scales also achieved sufficient þ α PAY þ α CRQ þ α NPA 100 ij 110 120 ij ij reliability, with Cronbach’s alphas varying between .73 and þ γ SCF þ π þ ε ij 0j ij Consistent with Muthén and Asparouhov (2012), our CFA employed an SPO ¼ θ þ θ CSB þ θ EFF ð3Þ ij 00 10 ij 20 ij inverse-Wishart prior, IW(I, df) with df = p + 6 = 35, which corresponds to prior means and standard deviations for residual covariances of 0 and .01, þ θ CSB EFF þ θ TEN þ θ PP 40 ij j 70 ij 80 ij respectively. Thus, we specified informative priors for cross-loadings with ij the prior distributions N(0, .01). To reduce any auto-correlation problems among Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) iterations, we used a thinning þ θ PAY þ θ CRQ þ θ NPA 90 ij 100 110 ij ij of 10 with a total of 100,000 iterations to describe the posterior distributions. We relied on a burn-in of 50,000 draws to reach a stationary posterior distri- þ γ SCF þ μ þ ϵ ij hij 120 0hj bution. We confirmed the convergence of the Gibbs sampling by examining the trace plot of the Markov chains and the Gelman-Rubin potential scale reduction statistic (PSR). The posterior parameter draws indicated conver- SPO indicates salesperson performance outcome for salesper- ij gence and stability after hundreds of draws (i.e., PSR < 1.002). To assess son i of unit j, other acronyms are explained in Table 3. whether our Bayesian procedure affected the outcomes of the CFA, we ran Furthermore, γ , α ,and θ are intercepts; γ ... θ are 00 00 00 10 110 an alternative maximum likelihood CFA. Results indicated a consistent pattern of items loadings. regression coefficients; e , ε ,and ϵ , are individual-level error ij ij ij 868 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 2 Main construct scale measures and factor loadings Construct /item Factor loading New product information (adopted from Low and Mohr 2001) [Manager rated] Please consider the new products X, Y, and Z that were introduced in the product portfolio of the sales team you supervised during the past 12 months and answer the following statements. 1 The new product information communicated about customer needs was very reliable. (npi_1) .85 2 The provided new product information included important details about customer needs. (npi_2) .90 3 The new product information provided was accurate. (npi_3) .94 4 The new product information was provided in a timely manner. (npi_4) .86 New product radicalness (adopted from Langerak et al. 2008) The new products of [company]… 1 involve high change over costs for my customers. (npr_1) .56 2 are difficult for my customers to understand or evaluate. (npr_2) .75 3 take my customers time to really understand their advantages. (npr_3) .81 4 require advance planning by my customers. (npr_4) .74 Managerial new product orientation (adopted from Van der Borgh and Schepers 2014) My sales manager wants us to devote our time and attention primarily to. . . 1 the selling of new products and services in our assortment. (npo_1) .81 2 the development of a sales argument for the new products and services. (npo_2) .89 3 experimenting with the selling tactics for the new products and services. (npo_3) .80 4 the utilization of new selling opportunities for new products. (npo_4) .71 5 spot new, rising needs of customers. (npo_5) .55 Long-term rewards (adopted from Wei and Atuahene-Gima 2009) 1 I am strongly motivated by the pay system to take a long-term orientation (e.g., revenue growth). (ltr_1) .87 2 Our pay policies make it possible to achieve long-term (1 or more years) goals. (ltr_2) .90 3 Our pay policies make me keenly aware that long-term results (e.g., revenue growth) are more important than short-term results (e.g., .84 order intake). (ltr_3) Effort to sell new products (based on Sujan et al. 1994 and Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000) When I engage in the activity of new product selling, I… 1 always take the initiative. (eff_1) .90 2 do not give up easily when encountering a customer to whom it is difficult to sell new products. (eff_2) .86 3 always anticipate and act upon potential problems. (eff_3) .83 4 am constantly on the lookout to identify opportunities. (eff_4) .87 5 actively scan emerging needs. (eff_5) .83 Conservative selling behavior (new scale) Please consider the new products that were introduced in your product portfolio during the past 12 months and answer the following statements. Over the past 12 months, I… 1 always tried to maximize my selling efforts for existing products before considering the new products. (csb_1) .85 2 preferred selling existing products above selling new products. (csb_2) .89 3 behaved cautiously in selling new products. (csb_3) .81 terms; and u , π ,and μ are unique variations of unit j from the Results oj oj oj intercept (i.e., γ , α ,and θ ), after partialling out the effects of 00 00 00 all unit-level regression coefficients (i.e., γ , α ). We then Antecedents of CSB 01 01 proceeded with our Bayesian estimation procedure. 4 Tables 4a and 4b displays the results of the estimations of our For the Bayesian estimator we assumed normal N(0, 10 ) prior distributions −3 −3 for all regression coefficients and inverse gamma IG(10 ,10 ) prior distri- two models. Model 2 explained significantly more variation butions for the variance parameters. Similar to the Bayesian CFA procedure, than Model 1. In support of H1, we found a direct positive we used a total of 100,000 iterations, a burn-in of 50,000 draws, a thinning of effect of new product radicalness on CSB (CI = [.02; .31]). 95% 10, and confirmed the convergence and stability of the iterations by examining The results also confirm H2, as the effect of managerial new trace plots and potential scale reduction (PSR) statistics. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 869 Table 3 Construct reliabilities and correlations 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 1. Company tenure (TEN) 1.00 2. Past performance (PP) -.04 1.00 3. Pay scale (PAY) -.06 .11 1.00 4. Self-confidence (SCF) -.07 .01 .13 1.00 5. Customer rel. quality (CRQ) -.11 .04 .14 .10 1.00 6. New product advantage (NPA) .03 -.09 -.08 .08 .14 1.00 7. Managerial new product orient. (NPO) -.08 .07 -.13 .01 .11 .21** 1.00 8. Long-term rewards (LTR) .02 .01 -.03 .05 .22** .10 .30** 1.00 9. New product radicalness (NPR) -.06 .02 .11 .05 .09 -.03 -.08 -.12 1.00 10. New product information (NPI) -.17* -.12 .01 .16* .03 .04 -.02 -.06 .10 1.00 11. Conservative selling behavior (CSB) .13 .09 .08 -.15** .04 -.07 -.16* .03 .20* .06 1.00 12. Effort to sell new products (EFF) -.13 .03 -.01 .30** .22** .08 .18* -.01 -.08 .10 -.26** 1.00 13. Managerial overall perf. evaluation .08 .27** .05 .05 .03 -.08 .02 .14 .00 -.06 .03 .24** 1.00 14. % Sales volume obtained -.04 .05 -.03 .02 .07 .23** .19* .11 -.09 -.26** -.04 .20** .13 1.00 Mean 3.3 178.3 11.7 4.2 4.1 3.5 3.7 2.8 3.4 3.0 2.4 4.2 3.1 23.8 Std. Deviation 5.3 99.2 1.0 .7 .7 .7 .8 1.1 .7 1.0 .9 .8 .6 23.4 α .87 .79 .83 .86 .73 .92 .83 .93 ρ .90 .84 .88 .91 .82 .94 .89 .94 AVE .68 .57 .59 .76 .54 .79 .73 .75 n = 172 salespeople in N = 31 sales units ** p <.01 (two-tailed).* p <.05 (two-tailed) Group-level variables; N = 31 observations product orientation on CSB is significant and negative Panels A, B, and C in Fig. 2 plot the results of the (CI =[−.33; −.01]). The main effect of long-term rewards interaction effects to facilitate interpretation. The plots 95% on CSB is significant and positive (CI = [.03; .29]), while provide the results for values 1 standard deviation below 95% the hypothesized effect was negative. This is an interesting and above the mean of the independent variable and the finding; we return to this result and discuss potential explana- moderator. Panel A reveals that new product radicalness tions below. Hence, despite the significant relationship have to leads to more CSB when new product information is high. reject H3. Remarkably, when little new product information is pro- We now turn to the moderating effects of new product vided to salespeople, there seems to be no effect of new information. The results show a positive interaction effect product radicalness on CSB. Panel B shows that under of new product information and new product radicalness conditions of low new product information the salesper- (CI = [.04; .34]) toward CSB. In addition, the positive son follows managerial guidance and lowers his/her CSB, 95% interaction effect of new product information and mana- presumably because being conservative entails a (too) gerial new product orientation toward CSB was supported large perceived social risk. However, when a salesperson by the data (CI = [.01; .32]). This confirms H4a and receives new product information, the effect of manage- 95% H4b. The interaction term of new product information and rial orientation on CSB is neutralized because the per- long-term rewards was significant and negative ceived performance risk becomes more salient in lieu of (CI =[−.31; −.01]). Because the main effect of long- perceived social risk. 95% term rewards on CSB turned out positive, this negative Finally, Panel C shows that a similar logic applies to interaction effect aligns with our overall argument that financial risk: when new product information is available, long-term rewards would become a less important driver long-term rewards have little effect on CSB because per- of CSB following the provision of new product informa- ceived financial risk becomes less salient in individual’s tion to the salesforce. Therefore, although we formally risk assessment. Remarkably though, under low informa- reject H4c, we do find empirical support for the dampen- tion conditions, the effect of long-term rewards is posi- ing effect of new product information expected in the tive. Long-term rewards motivate employees to care about hypothesis. We interpret this effect below. realizing the firm’s long-term revenue growth (Wei and 870 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 4a Unstandardized Bayesian estimated coefficients for antecedents and outcomes of CSB Mediator Salesperson performance outcomes Conservative selling behavior Effort to sell new products Model 1: Model 2: Model 2 Direct effects only With interactions B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. Intercept 1.40 (1.06) [−.69; 3.48] 1.54 (1.03) [−.49; 3.57] -1.625 (1.07) [−3.75; .50] Controls Company tenure (TEN) .16 * (.08) [−.01; .31] .17 * (.08) [.02; .32] -.07 (.08) [−.22; .08] Past performance (PER) .09 (.08) [−.07; .25] .05 (.08) [−.10; .21] .05 (.08) [−.11; .20] Pay scale (PAY) .10 (.10) [−.09; .30] .08 (.10) [−.11; .28] -.05 (.09) [−.23; .13] Self-confidence (SCF) -.27** (.11) [−.48; −.07] -.29** (.10) [−.49; −.08] .38** (.11) [.17; .59] Customer rel. Quality (CRQ) .05 (.08) [−.11; .21] .08 (.08) [−.07; .23] .22 ** (.08) [.07; .38] New product advantage (NPA) -.07 (.08) [−.23; .10] -.05 (.08) [−.21; .11] .04 (.08) [−.12; .20] Simple effects New product radicalness (NPR) .21** (.08) [.05; .37] .18* (.08) [.02; .31] -.08 (.08) [−.24; .08] Managerial new product orientation (NPO) -.09 (.08) [−.26; .08] -.16* (.09) [−.33;.-01] .12 (.08) [−.04; .28] Long-term rewards (LTR) .12 (.08) [−.05; .28] .14* (.07) [.03; .29] -.08 (.08) [−.24; .08] New product information (NPI) .15 (.12) [−.09; .37] .14 (.11) [−.09; .36] .11 (.47) [−.45; .63] Conservative selling behavior (CSB) -.17* (.08) [−.33; −.01] Cross-level interaction NPR x NPI .19** (.08) [.04; .34] NPO x NPI .16* (.08) [.01; .32] LTR x NPI -.16* (.08) [−.31; −.01] R 19.1% 28.5% 25.7% Boldface type indicates that the 95% posterior credibility interval (C.I.) does not include zero. S.D. = Posterior standard deviation *= p < .05 (one-tailed); ** = p < .01 (one-tailed) We conducted robustness checks to rule out alternative explanations. However, inclusion of either group-level CSB (as an additional motivation to exert CSB) or structural market elements (see section on Robustness of results) did not alter our initial findings. For reasons of parsimony, we decided not to report them here. More information about the robustness checks is available from the first author upon request For effort to sell new products, we only report the results of Model 2. They are similar to those of Model 1 because we did not hypothesize cross-level interaction effects with effort to sell new products as a dependent variable. However, as an exploratory analysis, we estimated a model regressing effort on all interaction effects. This did not change results Unit level measure Atuahene-Gima 2009). This goal can be accomplished other: when salespeople have sufficient information, through the sales of any product in a salesperson’sport- there is no need for long-term rewards since salespeople folio. Because salespeople more easily see how to realize are able to make well-informed decisions. revenue growth through proven sellers than through Overall, Fig. 2 shows three distinct moderating effects (cf. difficult-to-sell new products (Wieseke et al. 2008), Cohen et al. 2003). Paired with new product radicalness, new long-term rewards could perhaps de-emphasize salespeo- product information has a synergetic (or enhancing) effect on ple’s concerns about a new product’s success in the CSB, paired with managerial new product orientation it has a market. An alternative explanation is that long-term re- buffering effect, and paired with long-term rewards it has a wards and new product information substitute each substitution (or antagonistic) effect. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 871 Table 4b Unstandardized Bayesian estimated coefficients for antecedents and outcomes of CSB Salesperson performance outcomes Managerial overall performance evaluation % Sales volume obtained Model 1: Model 2: Model 1: Model 2: Direct effects only With interactions Direct effects only With interactions B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. B S.D. 95% C.I. Intercept 3.32** (.63) [2.08; 4.57] 3.23** (.63) [1.98; 4.48] 43.44* (26.45) [8.79; 95.68] 50.31* (26.16) [1.35; 98.97] Controls Company tenure (TEN) .05 (.05) [−.04; .15] .04 (.05) [−.05; .14] -1.16 (1.94) [−5.42; 2.21] -1.18 (1.94) [−5.00; 2.63] Past performance (PER) .15* (.05) [.05; .24] .14** (.05) [.04; .23] -.99 (1.98) [−4.89; 2.87] -.57 (1.97) [−4.45; 3.28] Pay scale (PAY) .04 (.06) [−.07; .16] .04 (.06) [−.07; .16] .49 (2.31) [−4.02; 5.07] .57 (2.30) [−3.92; 5.12] Self-confidence (SCF) .01 (.07) [−.12; .14] .02 (.07) [−.11; .16] 1.17 (2.77) [−4.27; 6.59] .47 (2.77) [−4.95; 5.91] Simple effects Effort to sell new products (EFF) .16** (.05) [.06; .26] .15** (.05) [.05; .25] 5.39** (2.02) [1.43; 9.35] 5.82** (2.01) [1.87; 9.77] Conservative selling behavior .04 (.05) [−.06; .14] .05 (.05) [−.05; .14] 1.57 (2.03) [−2.41; 5.54] 1.30 (2.01) [−2.66; 5.25] (CSB) Within-level interaction CSB x EFF -.07* (.03) [−.15; −.02] 3.15* (1.47) [.27; 6.58] 2 2 2 2 2 R R =16.9% R =17.7% R =9.8% R =12.5% Boldface type indicates that the 95% posterior credibility interval (C.I.) does not include zero. S.D. = Posterior standard deviation *= p < .05 (one-tailed); ** = p < .01 (one-tailed) We conducted robustness checks to rule out alternative explanations. However, inclusion of either group-level CSB (as an additional motivation to exert CSB) or structural market elements (see section on Robustness of results) did not alter our initial findings. For reasons of parsimony, we decided not to report them here. More information about the robustness checks is available from the first author upon request Consequences of CSB of CSB on SPO through EFF is the product of the effect of CSB from Eq. 2 and the conditional effect of EFF on SPO With regard to CSB’s consequences, the results show a negative from Eq. 3 (see Preacher et al. 2007 for a detailed discussion). effect of CSB on effort to sell new products (CI =[−.33; Formally: 95% −.01]). This supports H5a. Furthermore, new product selling effort was positively related to both performance measures, i.e., ω ¼ α θ þ θ CSB ; ð4Þ 40 20 40 ij managerial overall performance evaluation (CI = [.05; .25]) 95% which equals: and new product selling performance (CI = [1.87; 9.77]). This 95% provides support for H5b and H5c, respectively. Finally, CSB ω ¼ α θ þ α θ CSB ð5Þ 40 20 40 40 ij weakened the positive relationship between effort and manager’s evaluations (CI =[−.15; −.02]), providing support for H6a. In with intercept α θ and slope α θ CSB .Inthis model 95% 40 20 40 40 ij contrast, CSB strengthened the positive relationship between ef- α θ CSB is the index of moderated mediation. Using 40 40 ij fort and new product selling performance (CI = [.27; 6.58]) in Bayesian estimation, we obtained 95% credible intervals. 95% support of H6b. This provides evidence for the thought that The moderated mediation indices for CSB on a manager’s although managers see CSB as an undesirable behavior, it may overall performance evaluation and new product selling per- in fact benefit sales performance. Figure 3’s panels A and B formance are both significantly different from zero present a more detailed account of the interaction effects of effort (CI = [.01; .04] and [−1.92; −.05], respectively). This sup- 95% and CSB, again for values of 1 standard deviation below and ports the moderated mediation effect of CSB and demon- above the mean of the independent variable and the moderator. strates that the negative indirect effect of CSB on managerial To test whether effort, in its relationship with performance, overall performance evaluation increases with higher values both mediates and interacts with CSB, we calculated the index of CSB, as the slope of the line (or the index of moderated of moderated mediation for CSB (Hayes 2015). In our mediation) is positive, while the negative indirect effect of Bindependent variable as moderator^ model, the indirect effect CSB on new product selling performance decreases with 872 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 a New product radicalness a Managerial overall performance evaluation Low New product information Low Conservative selling behavior High New product information High Conservative selling behavior 3.3 3.5 3.1 3.4 3.3 2.9 3.2 2.7 3.1 2.5 2.3 2.9 2.1 2.8 1.9 2.7 1.7 2.6 1.5 2.5 Low New product radicalness High New product radicalness Low Effort to sell new High Effort to sell new products products Managerial new product orientation b % Sales volume obtained Low New product information Low Conservative selling behavior High New product information High Conservative selling behavior 3.3 24.4 3.1 24.2 2.9 2.7 2.5 23.8 2.3 23.6 2.1 1.9 23.4 1.7 23.2 1.5 Low Managerial new product High Managerial new product orientation orientation Low Effort to sell new High Effort to sell new products products c Long-term rewards Fig. 3 Two-way Interactions of Consequences of CSB. a Managerial Low New product information overall performance evaluation. b % Sales volume obtained High New product information 3.3 higher values of CSB. In sum, the findings further corroborate 3.1 our expectations. 2.9 Of our control variables, company tenure positively as- sociated with CSB (CI = [.02; .32]). Probably, more 2.7 95% tenured employees have gained more status and are reluc- 2.5 tant to incur any damage by making risky choices. 2.3 Alternatively, more tenured employees may be older and 2.1 therefore more likely to resist change and be more conser- vative in their decision making. As expected, self- 1.9 confidence associated negatively with CSB 1.7 (CI =[−.49; −.08]) and positively with effort to sell 95% 1.5 new products (CI = [.17; .59]). Next, customer relation- 95% Low Long-term rewards High Long-term rewards ship quality positively associated with effort to sell new Fig. 2 Two-way interactions of antecedents on CSB. a New product products (CI = [.07; .38]). This suggests that trusted 95% radicalness. b Managerial new product orientation. c Long-term rewards relations make salespeople more willing to increase their Conservative selling behavior Conservative selling behavior Conservative selling behavior % Sales Volume Obtained Managerial Evaluation J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 873 effort allocated to that account. An alternative explanation These results support our rationale for adopting a perceptual could be that these accounts demand more from the sales- view on salesperson behavior and corroborate the robustness person (Mullins et al. 2014). Finally, in line with previous of our findings. studies we find that past performance positively associates with managerial overall performance evaluations (CI = [.04; .23]). All of these results are intuitive and Discussion 95% thus offer face validity to our data and increase the confi- dence in our outcomes. Many B2B salespeople display conservatism when confronted with new products in their portfolio, such that they Robustness of results maximize their efforts to sell existing products before engag- ing in efforts to sell the new product. This article provides an Adequacy of sample To further demonstrate the suitability answer to the question of whether such conservative ap- of our Sample 1 and hence the generalizability of our proaches to new product selling are a blessing in disguise. findings, we triangulated our outcomes with results of Although anecdotal evidence existed and patches of argumen- previous studies on new product selling. Specifically, we tation could be found in literature to argue that CSB could compiled a descriptive meta-analytic overview on the re- benefit rather than harm the sales of new products, conserva- lationship between new product selling effort and perfor- tive selling approaches have remained unstudied. In response, mance and then contrasted past findings with our results. building on perceived risk processing theory, we established Table 5 shows that our results closely mirror and replicate and tested a conceptual model of antecedents and conse- the stream of related work. This provides additional evi- quences of CSB. We outline our findings and implications dence of the suitability of our data and the generalizability next. of our findings. Theoretical implications Market context and conditions Using perceived risk pro- cessing theory as the theoretical lens for understanding CSB, Our work has several important theoretical implications. our conceptual model focuses on the role of risk perceptions First, we add to existing work in new product selling by of individual salespeople. However, it could be that CSB is conceptualizing, operationalizing, and validating the con- more a function of the market context and conditions into cept of CSB. We conceptualize CSB as a sales domain– which salespeople are selling. To rule out this alternative line specific behavioral representation of risk aversion. The of thinking and to further demonstrate the robustness of our latter has been a central assumption in the sales domain findings we conducted some additional tests. and in new product selling in particular (Atuahene-Gima First, consistent with the company’s targeting approach we 1997). We show that CSB differs from related constructs dummy-coded four clusters of industries: (1) finance, (2) gov- such as new product selling effort. ernment & education, (3) industry & transport, and (4) ser- Remarkably, we find that when salespeople first try to vices, retail, & media. This particular coding scheme was sell existing products before they engage in new product motivated by leading classifications of industries such as the selling, their effort to sell new products more strongly North American Industry Classification System (NAICS), translates into percentage of sales volume obtained with Eurostat, and Statistics Netherlands’ StatLine. Second, we new products. Explanations for this effect can be found in collected secondary data for the industries defined at a more how customers strive for consistent responses to sales granular level (i.e., two-digit industry codes). Specifically, we requests (Cialdini and Guadagno 2004), creeping commit- collected for each industry: size (i.e., number of companies ment in B2B sales cycles, and salespeople’s potential to with more than 250 employees), production volume change better communicate the new product’s attractiveness (production index), and innovation expenditures (in millions through highlighting new features vis-à-vis old (or miss- of Euros). These data are considered as proxies for each ing) features (Thompson et al. 2005). Previous literature industry’s market potential, growth rate, and investments in has shown that adapting sales presentations to the nature new technology (e.g., our Sample 1 company’s ICT solutions) of the sales situation benefits overall sales performance respectively. Third, we added the dummy-coded industries to (Franke and Park 2006) but has remained silent on the our conceptual model as covariates for CSB, effort, and per- specific alterations needed in new product selling. We formance outcomes. Adding these dummies did not change show that the order of presenting the customer with new our initial findings, and none of the dummy variables turned and existing products is a key factor in such adaptive out to be significant. Finally, we replaced the dummies with strategies. the three market conditions per industry. Adding these factors Second, we add to recent work on internal marketing of did not alter the findings of our hypothesized model either. new products (e.g., Wieseke et al. 2008). In contrast to the 874 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Table 5 Descriptive meta-analytic triangulation of previous new product selling research Study Effort measure Performance measure Effect size Sample size Industry (Fisher’sZr) Atuahene-Gima and Self-reported Self-reported .2895 118 Electrical; electronic and information Micheal (1998) technology, industrial equipment and systems, instruments, fabricated metals and motor parts, chemical and pharmaceuticals and building products Hultink and Self-reported Self-reported .0902 97 Technology firms. Atuahene-Gima (2000) Atuahene-Gima Hours worked Self-reported .1409 157 Electronics, information technology, &Li(2002) per week (HR) (sample 1) software development, biotechnology, .1206 190 and other high-technology sectors (sample 2) Fu et al. (2009) Self-reported Actual number of units sold .3316 143 Tooling industry Ahearne et al. Total number Percentage of sales quota .1996 226 Pharmaceutical industry (2010) of sales calls made Aggregated effect size: .1954 931 The present study Sample 1 Self-reported Percentage of sales volume .2027 172 Information and communication technology industry traditional view that internal marketing efforts motivate sales- are less appreciative of effort to sell new products when people to sell new products (Atuahene-Gima 1997; Johnson this effort follows a period of salesperson conservatism. and Sohi 2016), we show that this relationship is not straight- Although this practice does not honor the associated forward. Salespeople perceive different risk dimensions sur- sales performance, it does suggest that sales managers rounding the sale of new products. Providing new product take into account a longer time-frame in their appraisals information changes the relative weight of the dimensions in anddonot sufferfrom Brecency bias^ (Brown and salespeople’s decisions to act conservatively. More specifical- Heywood 2005) such that recent events have more in- ly, product radicalness (performance risk) becomes a more fluence on appraisals than less recent events. Our find- important driver of CSB, while managerial orientations (social ings suggest that sales managers can oversee the entire risk) and long-term rewards (financial risk) become less im- length of the sales cycle and that they factor in the portant. Especially the latter finding is interesting because timing of their subordinates’ effort. without information, long-term rewards tend to increase rather than decrease CSB. Long-term rewards may focus salespeople Managerial implications on selling existing products, while short-term rewards pro- voke risk taking. Our work offers important insights for managers. First, we Finally, we add toworkon(sales) personnelevalua- urge sales managers to get a better understanding of the con- tion. Previous studies have showed that sales managers servative behavior of their salespeople. Many managers worry are sensitive to subordinates exerting high levels of ef- that salespeople maximize their selling efforts for existing fort (Harris et al. 2014). Early work also indicates that products before engaging in efforts to sell the new product sales managers often fail to account for the task diffi- and that this practice makes them less effective in selling culty facing their employees (Mowen et al. 1985)and new products. However, a conservative selling approach that more tactical elements such as planning ability, may help salespeople to provide a better pitch to customers judgment, and time management are of lesser impor- who are then more likely to agree to risky value propositions. tance in performance appraisals (Hawes et al. 1995; This is especially likely in B2B settings, where sales cycles Pettijohn et al. 2001). Our findings align with and add extend over time and adopting a new product means that the more detail to these insights. We show that managers customer faces significant changes to its workflows. J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 875 Second, managers’ better understanding of conservatism products. A problem here, though, is that a lower qual- should go hand-in-hand with rethinking salespeople’sperfor- ity of customer relationships limits the knowledge ex- mance appraisals. Many managers use criteria such as product change between salesperson and customer. This may knowledge, attitude, effort, initiative, and aggressiveness in hamper the transfer of customer feedback into the their performance evaluations of salespeople. Specifically, company’s development department and thus block bug they correlate observed lack of effort to sell new products to fixing and product quality improvement. a salesperson’s attitude and work motivation, consequently attribute negative traits to him or her, and adjust their evalua- Limitations and future research tion of this person’s work performance downward. This may be unfair in markets where conservative selling behavior is a smart selling strategy. Although we believe our study has clear merits, there are some limitations too. Some of them provide fruitful ave- Third, managers have routinely tried to control the levels of conservatism in their salesforce by using in- nues for future research. First, we relied on salesperson perceptions of new product radicalness, managerial new centive systems, being an advocate of selling new prod- product orientation, and long-term rewards. Although this ucts, and ramping up internal marketing on new prod- fits with our perceived risk processing framework, recent ucts toward their employees. Rather than doing all at studies indicate that employeeperceptions maybediffer- once, we urge managers to consider the interrelation- ent from customer-side perceptions or manager percep- ships between these control mechanisms (see Fig. 2). tions and relate differently to performance outcomes Our results point to three possible control scenarios: (e.g., Mullins et al. 2014). Including customers as a data (1) Managers responsible for launching radically new source would provide further evidence for the validity of products can enhance CSB by setting up intensive in- ternal marketing efforts via the provision of new prod- our findings, but collecting a sample of representative respondents is hard in B2B settings. uct information. In this scenario, managers are advised to save their scarce resources of personally motivating In addition, we demonstrated the robustness of our findings through triangulation with previous results and sales staff and installing long-term rewards systems be- controlling for market context and conditions. We hold cause providing new product information makes these that our sample profile is typical for firms with field mechanisms less suitable to regulate CSB. (2) salesforces and frequent introductions of new products Managers responsible for launching less radically new in many industries, such as machinery, chemicals, plas- products can enhance CSB by rewarding the obtainment tic materials, equipment and supplies, and pharmaceuti- of objectives and goals in a time frame for longer than cals. Assuming that with increasing frequency of new one year. Importantly, this strategy only works when product introductions salespeople get more used to sell- providing no or very limited new product information to salespeople. (3) Managers who are looking to ing new and unfamiliar products, we expect that any CSB-related effects also hold for (or may even be stron- decrease CSB―perhaps because of a more transactional selling context or because CSB does not fit the organi- ger in) industries with a lower frequency of new prod- uct introductions. However, in industries where compe- zation’simage―aremostsuccessfulwhentheydonot tition offers similar products, salespeople have limited provide new product information and set short-term time to convince customers, or where fad products are (rather than long-term) goals. This runs counter to concerned, CSB may have different effects. Future re- present-day management practices and explains why search should hence substantiate the effects across in- companies are often unsuccessful in managing CSB. dustries to see in which situations CSB is most Personally motivating subordinates to sell new products beneficial. without providing new product information is likely to further decrease CSB. Finally, there are many trade-offs that sales em- ployees and their managers have to make because new products are added to a portfolio of existing products. B2B managers could think about allocating a specific Acknowledgements The authors thank Ko de Ruyter, Frank Germann, part of their salesforce to sell new products and the Bart Larivière, Maik Hammerschmidt, Ed Nijssen, Ad de Jong, and remaining part to sell existing products. An alternative Néomie Raassens for their constructive comments on previous versions to this solution is to hire new salespeople to sell new of this manuscript. 876 J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 Appendix A Table 6 Psychometric properties of conservative selling behavior scale Construct / item Sample 1 Sample 2 (n = 172) (n = 191) FL AVE CR CA FL AVE CR CA Conservative selling behavior (new scale) .73 .89 .83 .64 .84 .73 Over the past 12 months, 1 I always tried to maximize my selling efforts for existing products .85 .82 before considering the new products. 2 I preferred selling existing products above selling new products. .89 .86 3 I behaved cautiously in selling new products. .81 .71 Effort to sell new products (Adapted from Sujan et al. 1994 and .75 .94 .93 .61 .89 .85 Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000) When I engage in the activity of new product selling, I… 1 always take the initiative. .90 .82 2 do not give up easily when encountering a customer to whom it .86 .82 is difficult to sell new products. 3 always anticipate and act upon potential problems. .83 .79 4 am constantly on the lookout to identify opportunities. .87 .79 5 actively scan emerging needs. .83 .61 Adaptive selling (Fang et al. 2004; Román and Iacobucci 2010) –– – .65 .90 .90 1 I use different sales strategies with different customers. – .80 2 I vary my sales style from situation to situation. – .80 3 I change my sales approach from one customer to another. – .82 4 I am very flexible in the selling approach I use. – .80 5 I tend to use a wide variety of selling approaches with different customers. – .82 Cross selling (Adapted from Schmitz 2013) –– – .51 .75 .67 Over the past 12 months, 1 I tried to cover my customers’ needs for additional products on a – .54 broad basis. 2 I made my customers obtain additional products they required. – .77 3 I ensured that my customers purchased many additional products our company offers. – .65 4 I exploited my customers’ potential with regard to additional products extensively. – .70 New product commitment (Hultink and Atuahene-Gima 2000) –– – .65 .88 .86 1 I feel emotionally attached to the success of the new products. – .86 2 Achieving objectives for the new products has a great deal of – .82 personal meaning to me. 3 I enjoy discussing the new products with other salespeople. – .71 4 I feel a strong sense of duty to ensure the success of the new products. – .82 5 I would be willing to make further investment of my time and energy – .83 to support these new products. All loadings are significant at p < .01. Fit indice (Sample 1): ppp = .862. Fit indice (Sample 2): ppp = .590. FL = factor loading, CR = composite reliability, and CA = Cronbach’s alpha. Highest correlation between constructs in Sample 2 ρ =.58 (Efforttosellnew products—New product commitment) Boldface type indicates latent constructs We further evaluated the validity of our CSB scale in received 191 usable responses, for a response rate of Sample 1 using a second dataset (Sample 2) obtained 56.0%. On average, these salespeople had 18.03 years of from a commercially available panel of B2B salespeople. work experience in sales jobs and 9.50 years with their We included our three CSB items and the scales of related company. The Sample 2 CFA showed a good fit of the concepts in a survey that was sent to 341 salespeople. We measurement model to the retest data (i.e., a ppp-value of J. of the Acad. Mark. Sci. (2018) 46:857–878 877 DeCarlo, T. E., & Lam, S. K. (2016). 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