Salesperson face-to-face visits with buyer organizations are an inherently dynamic phenomenon, and choreographing changes in those visits is an important consideration for a salesperson attempting to identify and pursue sales opportunities.
In the article “Choreographing Salesperson Face-to-Face Visits with a Buyer Organization: a Social Network Perspective” that was recently published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, the Culverhouse College’s Sebastian Forkmann (Assistant Professor of Marketing and James I. Harrison Family Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellow) and Thomas Baker (Ralph H. Cassel Endowed Professor of Marketing) together with their coauthors (Ryan Mullins of Clemson University, Stephan C. Henneberg of Queen Mary University of London) draw on social network theory and adopt a novel within-tie change perspective to provide guidance regarding salesperson choreographing. The authors do so by focusing on how often a salesperson visits a buyer organization (i.e., change in visit intensity, visit intensity trend, duration of relations) and the functions a salesperson visits in a buyer organization (i.e., change in diversity of visited functions, change in visit concentration on top-management).
Forkmann/Baker and their coauthors test their model of salesperson choreographing using data from 2934 salesperson–buyer organization relationships over seven consecutive sales periods. Using random coefficient models, these researchers illustrate the complex and nuanced interplay of various aspects of salesperson choreographing on sales with a buyer organization. Their findings provide actionable guidance for salespeople to better manage the choreographing of limited visits.