Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

How salespeople deal with intergenerational relationship selling

How salespeople deal with intergenerational relationship selling Purpose – The Millennial generation (born after 1981) of salespeople is projected to become the apparent heir to replace top‐end Baby Boomers expected to retire at an alarming rate over the next five years. This problem poses a significant challenge in that buyer‐seller relationships will need to form between members of different generations. Design/methodology/approach – Through a grounded theory style approach, the paper explores this intergenerational selling relationship development problem. Findings – In addition to confirming that Millennial salespeople feel challenged by differences stemming from their age‐group, several strategies were identified for Millennial salespeople to overcome these challenges and effectively build relationships with their (older) customers. Research limitations/implications – The study is qualitative and based on a limited convenience sample, but reveals the need to further pursue study in this area. Practical implications – Managers can help younger salespeople develop strategies for managing older buyers. These strategies are establishing similarities, building credibility, showing dependability, demonstrating professionalism, and showing youthful enthusiasm. Originality/value – The paper helps resolve the issue of whether understanding generational differences is important. Statistics show that increasingly younger salespeople will call on older buyers. The paper establishes that this is consistent with discrimination, SIT theory, rather than earlier work on similarities. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing Emerald Publishing

How salespeople deal with intergenerational relationship selling

Download PDF
13 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/emerald-publishing/how-salespeople-deal-with-intergenerational-relationship-selling-mBwfrOjjT0

References (87)

Publisher
Emerald Publishing
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 Emerald Group Publishing Limited. All rights reserved.
ISSN
0885-8624
DOI
10.1108/08858621111156430
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Purpose – The Millennial generation (born after 1981) of salespeople is projected to become the apparent heir to replace top‐end Baby Boomers expected to retire at an alarming rate over the next five years. This problem poses a significant challenge in that buyer‐seller relationships will need to form between members of different generations. Design/methodology/approach – Through a grounded theory style approach, the paper explores this intergenerational selling relationship development problem. Findings – In addition to confirming that Millennial salespeople feel challenged by differences stemming from their age‐group, several strategies were identified for Millennial salespeople to overcome these challenges and effectively build relationships with their (older) customers. Research limitations/implications – The study is qualitative and based on a limited convenience sample, but reveals the need to further pursue study in this area. Practical implications – Managers can help younger salespeople develop strategies for managing older buyers. These strategies are establishing similarities, building credibility, showing dependability, demonstrating professionalism, and showing youthful enthusiasm. Originality/value – The paper helps resolve the issue of whether understanding generational differences is important. Statistics show that increasingly younger salespeople will call on older buyers. The paper establishes that this is consistent with discrimination, SIT theory, rather than earlier work on similarities.

Journal

Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing – Emerald Publishing

Published: Aug 2, 2011

Keywords: Sales; Sales management; Stereotyping; Age discrimination; Baby boomer generation

There are no references for this article.