Purchasing and sales professionals spend considerable portions of the work week interacting. Usually the burden of persuasion is faced by the seller and a very important objective of any sales call is an improvement in the buyer-seller relationship. This research examined the views of a sample of 173 purchasing executives and 193 manufacturers' representatives concerning sellers' performance on a number of variables related to exchange relationships. Analysis indicated that buyers held significantly more modest views of the performance of sales representatives than did members of the business-to-business sales force.
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