Generating and sharing of market intelligence in sales teams: an economic social network perspective. Issue 4 (2nd October 2017)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Hall, Zachary R.; Mullins, Ryan R.; Syam, Niladri; Boichuk, Jeffrey P.
• Is Part Of: Journal of personal selling & sales management. Volume 37:Issue 4(2017)
• Page Start: 298
• Page End: 312
• Publication Date: 2017-10-02
• Subjects: sales teams -- market intelligence -- expert peers -- social networks -- sales managers; Selling -- Periodicals; Sales management -- Periodicals; 658.81
• DOI: 10.1080/08853134.2017.1393342
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0885-3134

Abstract

Abstract: In this research, we take a multimethod approach to shed light on the potential costs to sales teams that generate and share market intelligence (MI). First, we introduce an analytical model to propose the respective levels of effort that sales managers, experts, and team members spend generating and sharing MI. To test our propositions, we utilize social network data from 40 independent, business-to-business (B2B) sales teams, representing 287 salespeople. Interestingly, our results support the premise that team members become dependent (reduce MI efforts) when their sales manager or team expert shares MI among the team. We term this a "sharing tax" that sales managers and team experts pay when they share MI. Consequently, sales managers demonstrate greater MI-generation efforts the more they share MI. We also find that experts who share more (less) also show greater (lesser) MI-generation efforts, but only for teams where sales managers share low (high) levels of MI. In summary, our research innovatively conducts an empirical test of the Nash Equilibrium pattern of sales team effort to show that two critical team members, the sales manager and expert, are at a disadvantage when they share valuable MI.