Communicating with B2B buyers after ‘‘Dropping the Ball”: Using digital and non-digital communication formats to recover from salesperson transgressions

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijresmar.2024.01.005

Research has shown that 76% of customers expect consistent interactions with salespeople, and 80% expect a digitally rich, experience-laden selling environment. There is an increasing demand for salespeople to be ‘always on’, and they need to divide their time between customers, products, and sales activities. Part of this ‘always on’ culture is the preponderance of communications across formats, making a salesperson’s role increasingly demanding. Salespeople are often accused of myriad transgressions when handling customer accounts, and customers, with their digitally enabled access to sales-side information, can easily spot salesperson transgressions.

The type of transgression and how a salesperson manages it plays a big role in the buyer-seller relationship. Salespeople could use both digital and non-digital communication tools – as well as synchronous and asynchronous means of communication – to recognize and repair transgressions.

A research paper published in 2022 classifies salesperson transgressions into two categories:

– Relational transgressions, which are perceived violations of the rules guiding the connection between the salesperson and the customer – e.g., not accommodating the customer on issues not specified in the contract, not appearing grateful for the customer’s business, and so on.

– Sales process transgressions, which are perceived violations of the execution of a sales interaction, goods/service exchange, or other tactical issues between the salesperson and the customer – e.g., not providing requested information to the customer or not sharing the customer’s questions on their company’s behalf with the rest of the selling firm team, and so on.

The study finds that richer synchronous communication formats (i.e., face-to-face communications, videoconference, phone), relative to leaner asynchronous formats (i.e., email, text), improve relational outcomes more in the situation of relational transgressions than in sales process transgressions. For example, a quick email or text allows a swift response to an operational issue related to the sales interaction. On the other hand, relational transgressions require a depth of richness in cues to resolve, such as a salesperson who appears ungrateful to a customer needing to access more cues to respond appropriately.

The study’s findings offers the following lessons for Chief Sales Officers:

– Sales practitioners need guidance on when to prioritize synchronous conversations (i.e., when handling relational transgressions) and when to prioritize the use of asynchronous communication formats (i.e., when handling sales process transgressions).

– In-person face-to-face interactions do not work in all situations, regardless of transgression type. Instead, it is the interplay of transgressions and communication formats that significantly impact buyer–seller relationship outcomes.

– When relational transgressions occur and only asynchronous communication can be arranged, salesperson competence may not be signaled. In these cases, salespeople may need to use tactics (e.g., emphasize urgency as the reason to use email; explain why face-to-face is not feasible) to address the negative impact of the choice of asynchronous communication on customer perceptions of salesperson competence.