Why customers hate salespeople - a study of business-to-business sales relationships

Sean Ennis, Michael Marck

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution book

Abstract

Acquiring business-to-business customers through trusting and mutually beneficial relationships creates competitive advantage for companies (Newell et al., 2011) and particularly for their sales organization (Djurica et al., 2011). While sales teams in all sectors agree that improving customer retention is imperative, customers still encounter unsatisfactory service resulting in their defection. Despite this fact, very few qualitative studies have examined customers’ experiences of poor service resulting in weakened relationships or ultimately terminating the salesperson-customer relationship. This paper adds to academia knowledge and industry practice by identifying critical incident factors that led to ‘why customers hate salespeople’.

Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationANZMAC Conference Proceedings 2012
Place of PublicationMelbourne
Number of pages7
Publication statusPublished - 3 Dec 2012
EventANZMAC 2012 - Adelaide, Australia
Duration: 3 Dec 20126 Dec 2012

Conference

ConferenceANZMAC 2012
Country/TerritoryAustralia
CityAdelaide
Period3/12/126/12/12

Keywords

  • customer defection
  • sales management
  • B2B services
  • customer-salesperson relationships

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