Skill in personal sales: an examination of expert reasoning in industrial salespeople

Personal selling has received considerable emphasis in marketing literature. Regrettably, our knowledge in this area has often been found lacking. This dissertation research was designed to counter this weakness by searching for identifiable mental processes that separate the expert from the non-expert salesperson. The differences that emerged should prove valuable in the selection, training, and evaluation of salespeople.

An expert is viewed as one who, by virtue of training and experience, can do things the rest of us cannot. Experts possess an extensive body of operative knowledge. Operative knowledge is knowledge that allows one to perform a given task. In some contexts this is called expertise, in the sales literature it is usually termed skill. Skill has received scant research effort and only recently been added to the dominant model of performance in sales (Churchill et al. 1985). This study focused on explicating the skill construct by borrowing and expanding concepts and methodologies used in the field of cognitive psychology to study expert reasoning in personal sales. Essentially this study consisted of; a) taking a group of expert salespeople and a group of non-expert salespeople, b) subjecting them to a difficult sales situation, and c) examining differences in decision making between the two groups.

The sales situation used in this study was developecl using the critical incident technique to isolate elements of the sales job that require exceptional performance. From a population of approximately 150 food broker salespeople, 20 experts and 20 non-experts were selected to participate in the study. This selection was based on a skill measurement instrument developed in the course of this study. The subjects read the problem situation, thinking aloud as they read, and vicariously assumed the role of the salesperson in the problem scenario. Subjects' verbal protocols were recorded, transcribed and analyzed using a procedure outlined by Ericsson and Simon (1984). The results of this analysis produced many insights into: a) time and quality of decision making, b) confidence in decision making, c) the use of experience, d) the structure of knowledge, and e) the process of expert reasoning.