Microfoundations of sales and sales-allied capabilities

The sales function has a crucial interface-strengthening role to play in firm strategy. Indeed, research over the past three decades has firmly established that the sales function meaningfully contributes to strategy formulation, strategic planning, and business/marketing strategy implementation. Further, consistent with the view that sales can be an interface-strengthening function that affects and is affected by other business functions, firm-level sales capabilities and sales-allied capabilities – firm-level, non-sales capabilities that impact specific aspects of sales and capabilities that can be impacted by the sales function – are critical for competitive advantages. However, research into microfoundations of sales and sales-allied capabilities stays somewhat below the radar of sales research. This research, based on an in-depth review of 502 articles from 15 journals, (i) reveals specific microfoundations of sales and sales-allied capabilities, (ii) delineates a comprehensive set of firm-level, sales and sales-allied capabilities and associated microfoundations, (iii) develops an integrative framework of microfoundations of sales and sales-allied capabilities, and (iv) proposes a comprehensive research agenda for investigating microfoundations of sales and sales-allied capabilities in the context of the contributions of the sales function to strategy.