Abstract
An exploratory study of industrial buyers and sellers in Australia reveals some discrepancies between what buyers prefer salespeople to know and do and what salespeople believe buyers prefer. Individual, in-depth personal interviews were conducted with 53 buyers and 42 sales representatives. Three aspects of salespersons’ on-the-job behaviour were investigated: knowledge, behaviour and competence. Results are reported for three categories of industrial selling situations: selling to supermarkets, selling to the trade (excluding supermarkets), and new business and technical selling situations. The research suggests that salespeople may have some inaccurate beliefs about buyers’ preferences. Sales representatives who sell to in-store supermarket buyers seem especially to suffer from this problem. On the other hand, salespeople engaged in new business and technical selling seem to have correct beliefs about buyers’ preferences.
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