The salesperson trait of competitiveness has, for motivational reasons and decades now, kept the interest of marketing managers and researchers alike. Yet, despite the trait’s importance, much about competitiveness remains unknown. In particular, and surprisingly, a rather fundamental question remains unexplored: “competitive against what?” Extant research has assumed the position that all competitive salespeople are preoccupied with other people (e.g., comparisons and/or evaluations based on others). However, just as the target of competitive behavior can be another individual, group or organization, we propose here that the target is sometimes internal (i.e., the competitive individual herself or himself). We suggest that many highly competitive salespeople are not preoccupied with others or interpersonal rivalry but instead compete with themselves, against their own standards and personal bests. Accordingly, our research explores the complexity of competitiveness and the implications to management. Across three studies, we seek answers to four research questions. First, does competitiveness have distinct (reasonably independent) internal and external orientations? Second, how might these different orientations associate with different critical salesperson behaviors (e.g., working hard, working smart) en route to performance outcomes? Third, and with guidance from leadership theory, how might differently competitive salespeople react behaviorally under different leader behaviors? Fourth, how might differently competitive salespeople react behaviorally and perform under different compensation (incentive) structures? Ultimately, we show that meaningful complexity has been thus far overlooked, given various behavioral and outcome performance implications. Our examination has wide-ranging practical implications. Beyond the behavioral consequences explicitly addressed here (e.g., in-role vs. extra-role effort), a new view of competitiveness is instrumental to sales force decisions about hiring, team selling, selling alliances, among others.
Read
