Secondary Selling: Beyond the Salesperson–Customer Dyad

Abstract

A study involving unobtrusive observations of salespeople's behaviors in sales settings surfaces a novel insight: a salesperson's selling effectiveness with a customer may be enhanced by the way the salesperson interacts with secondary entities, such as objects and people outside the core salesperson–customer dyad. Based on this insight and social interest theory, this research introduces the construct of secondary selling. It refers to a salesperson interacting with secondary entities in a manner that indicates to a focal customer that the salesperson values these entities. The pattern of results from four follow-on studies using multiple methods and data sources indicates that, in general, secondary selling reduces a focal customer's reactance to a salesperson's recommendations, which leads to higher sales revenue and customer satisfaction. Customers with high persuasion knowledge (compared with customers with lower persuasion knowledge) are more favorably influenced by secondary selling involving company property but less favorably influenced by secondary selling involving nonfocal customers. In addition to reducing a focal customer's reactance to sales recommendations, secondary selling also helps primary selling (targeted at a focal customer) reduce the customer's reactance to a greater extent. Overall, the results provide evidence of the pervasive and influential role of secondary selling in boosting sales revenue and customer satisfaction in sales exchanges.