Business-to-business salespeople and political skill: Relationship building, deviance, and performance

Previous research has explored the role of political skill as an intra-organizational skill but not in the context of business-to-business seller’s customer relationships and sales performance. In this paper, we: (i) develop a framework to explore the relationships between political skill, customer-oriented selling, customer-relationship-building competence, and customer-directed deviance; and (ii) investigate whether these relationships improve sales performance. The empirical analysis includes 240 business-to-business salespeople. Structural equation modeling is used to test the study’s hypotheses. Results suggest political skill directly affects salesperson customer-oriented selling, relationship building competence, and sales performance. Customer-relationship-building competence is positively related to customer-oriented selling, which is inversely related to the frequency of customer-directed deviance. Contrary to expectations, customer-directed deviance is not negatively related to both political skill and sales performance. Managerial implications and directions for future research are provided.