Overcoming the death of a salesman: the role of customer type and sales technology deployment in managing the impacts of relationship marketing investments following a relational disruption.

Abstract

With the increasing turnover of salespeople, relational disruptions are becoming more common. These disruptions can threaten the overall buyer-seller relationship. This is particularly common when customers have a short-term relationship orientation, causing issues for a new salesperson. The deployment of sales technologies and relationship marketing investments are tools that salespeople can use in such situations; however, these tools are unlikely to have a universal effect across different types of customers. Using a sample of 218 business-to-business salespeople, this study employed a scenario-based approach to explore the varying impact of relationship marketing investments and sales technology on salesperson performance, both directly and indirectly via perceived customer gratitude effects, across two customer types: transactional and relational. Findings demonstrate differing effects: social investments negatively (positively) impact customer gratitude for transactional (relational) customers, while financial investments positively impact customer gratitude for both customer types. Financial investments also positively impact performance for transactional customers and sales technology deployment positively moderates all the above relationships. Finally, a significant three-way interaction demonstrates that high levels of financial and social investments, coupled with greater technology deployment, result in the greatest performance for relational customers. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are discussed.