No conversion, no conversation: consequences of retail salespeople disengaging from unpromising prospects

On encountering a prospect whom they believe unlikely to make a purchase, some retail salespeople adopt a sales strategy of limiting engagement with the customer, relying on a "no conversion, no conversation" (NC2) sales strategy. Is this a good or bad sales strategy? Based on a multisourc...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 2021-05, Vol.49 (3), p.502-520
Main Authors: Cron, William L, Alavi, Sascha, Habel, Johannes, Wieseke, Jan, Ryari, Hanaa
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Behavior
Business and Management
Customer relations
Customers
Decision making
Decision strategy
Intuition
Marketing
Marketing research
Methods
Original Empirical Research
Personal selling
Purchase intention
Sales
Sales personnel
Salespeople
Salesperson–customer relationships
Selling
Shopping
Social Sciences
Time allocation
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Summary:On encountering a prospect whom they believe unlikely to make a purchase, some retail salespeople adopt a sales strategy of limiting engagement with the customer, relying on a "no conversion, no conversation" (NC2) sales strategy. Is this a good or bad sales strategy? Based on a multisource dataset combining salespeople and objective sales performance data, the authors examine retail salespeople's performance consequences of disengaging from a customer, i.e., of the NC2 sales strategy. Higher sales performance and sales growth arises from the use of an NC2 sales strategy when (1) salespeople are experienced professionals skilled in gauging customers' purchase likelihood, (2) store traffic is high, and (3) salespeople are oriented to building lasting customer relationships. However, (4) when store traffic is low and peers use the NC2 sales strategy as well, this customer disengagement strategy yields lower returns for salespeople.
ISSN:1552-7824
0092-0703
1552-7824
DOI:10.1007/s11747-020-00763-x