0 avis
The Impacts of Business Objective and Leeway Left to Salespeople on Negotiation Outcomes
in National Conference in Sales Management, Norfolk, USA, April 1-3, 2020 NCSM 2020
B2B selling is a complex negotiation process involved with multiple issues. Buyers and sellers often have opposing sets of interests and goals on a set of issues such as price, delivery, guarantee, and payment term. A satisfactory resolution helps both parties achieve a competitive advantage over their opponents. In sales negotiations, the seller organization relies on granting its salespeople a certain level of authority to secure bargaining terms in pursuit of its business objectives.
...
Delegating authority to salespeople exerts beneficial effects on achieving optimal and customized prices and solutions because they have a better boundary position than their managers. Thus, centralizing authority – limited delegation may restrict salespeople, which does not help in reaching a deal and may lower the customer’s perception (Mishra and Prasad 2004). However, full delegation may result in a high cost (high discount), limited sales effort and low profit (Joseph 2001). The firm’s business orientations may also affect this leeway effect in sales negotiations (Brooks and Rose 2008). For example, when the company has a sales-oriented objective, salespeople are asked to pursue a competitive goal, they are likely to enhance profits at the expense of the other party by reassessing the bargaining zone. When granted to bargain with customers, salespeople may set up a high target point. Contrarily, salespeople may set up a low target point if the company’s goal is relationship oriented. The objective of this research is to investigate whether the level of leeway assigned to salespeople affects negotiation outcomes and how. Further, the seller’s business objective may directly and indirectly affect negotiation outcomes through the leeway granted. Negotiation outcomes are measured using the presence or absence of the agreement and the buyer’s gain/loss. This research tests the hypotheses using a 3x 3 between-subject scenario-based experimental study. This is a work-in-progress paper. Participants negotiate in a buyer-seller dyad. In sales literature, the majority of the studies focused on single issue negotiation – pricing. Little research investigates sales force leeway in the multiple issues negotiation context. Thus, we set out this study to bridge this literature gap. In addition, a company’s orientation, known as its business objective is hypothesized to strengthen or weaken how salespeople’s leeway affects the negotiation outcomes. The findings may provide guidelines to managers about how to optimize negotiation outcomes by using the level of leeway granted to sales negotiators according to the company’s current business goal. For example, when a collaborative orientation is adopted by the firm, the salesperson looks for a mutual benefit and aims to maintain a good relationship, greater leeway allows to strategically making concessions, which in turn increases the possibility for both parties to reach an agreement. When the seller’s business goal is transactional, limited leeway assigned to salespeople may result in the buyer’s loss. The scope of this study is limited to the one-shot negotiation. Investigating other potential variables in a sequential setting is a worthwhile direction for future research.
Lire la suite