The negative effects of experience and control on salesperson’s performance

Abstract

There is evidence that the greater the seller’s level of locomotion, the greater the sales performance. In this paper, we proposed that the high level of behavior-based control system undermines this positive relationship, due to the large amount of follow-ups of sellers’ actions, inhibiting them. Furthermore, we proposed that this moderated relationship becomes negative (worse) when there is high level of experience. This three-way moderation effect is explained by the organizational conflict from the control to the salespeople, which is consistent with literature on organizational socialization. We did a survey with salespeople working on retail stores. The results demonstrated that the seller’s level of locomotion is a predictor of sales performance, but that the high level of behavior-based control system reduces it. In addition, when there is a high experience, this relationship worsens, reducing the performance.