Product-harm crises can cost firms billions of dollars in expenses. Worse still, they create a more difficult sales environment for the salesforce. The salesforce plays a crucial role in generating revenues to help the firm recover from the crises. The more effectively they can convert leads to sales, the quicker the firm can recover. However, the literature has remained silent on how these crises affect the salesforce and how the salesforce can function more effectively during these crises. In their customer-facing role, salespeople must face consumer criticisms of the firm while looking the consumer in the eye. I suggest that salesperson traits can cause salespeople to take these criticisms more personally, and that these criticisms can adversely affect salespeople’s performance by eliciting feelings of shame. Furthermore, I suggest that brand identification and customer orientation, traits typically viewed in a positive light, can increase these feelings of shame, leading to poorer salesperson performance. The question then becomes, how do sales managers reign in these effects and train their salesforce to sell more effectively in these environments? Are there leadership traits that can counter the effects of these crises on the salesforce? Are there tactics that sales managers can train their salesforce to use that will boost their salespeople’s performance in these environments? My first study explores the effects of product-harm crises on salespeople’s performance and what sales managers can do to counter these effects. I suggest that empathic concern can weaken the effects of shame on salespeople’s performance. My second study explores the tactics that salespeople can use to sell more effectively during product-harm crises. The implications of these studies will assist sales managers in managing the behavioral consequences of salespeople’s reactions to product-harm crises, and will help sales managers better train their salesforces.
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