Sales Effort and Performance: Dark Side of Customer Product Knowledge

Salespeople have to allocate time and effort working with different types of customers. Is there a trade-off associated with expending salesperson effort on customers with high versus low product knowledge? Does this potentially impact sales performance? Extant research is limited in its ability to provide insight into these issues, reinforcing the need to better understand how a sales force, spanning boundaries between a company and its customers, can effectively manage customer product knowledge to maximize sales outcomes. The current research conceptualizes and empirically tests the interplay of salesperson effort and salesperson perceived customer product knowledge in shaping sales performance. Specifically, the paper postulates that perceived customer product knowledge attenuates the positive impact of salesperson efforts on sales performance. Using data collected from a sample of 185 automobile salespeople, we find support for the main effects of salesperson effort and perceived customer product knowledge, and the proposed negative interaction. The findings suggest that high product knowledge customers can do well with relatively little effort on the part of the salesperson. At the same time, salespeople can benefit by expending more effort toward customers with low product knowledge. We conclude with a discussion of implications for research and practice.