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INTRODUCTION
While many selling approaches have been advanced in the sales management literature (e.g., AIDA, stimulus response and problem solving selling), empirical and conceptual support for such approaches is limited. Despite their popularity in the textbook literature, little is known about the relative effectiveness of personality knowledge (i.e., matching communication and personality or sales persona), sales skills and strategies (e.g., listening, interviewing and influencing skills) and the dynamics of the sales process (e.g., introduction, qualification presentation and close).
The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the effectiveness of various components of the selling process by conceptually and empirically exploring the potential contribution of the counselor selling method. This new sales approach is essentially an operationalization of many of the ideas propounded by Weitz's (1981) contingency framework. Weitz proposed that earlier research on selling effectiveness ignored the opportunity of salespeople to match their behavior to the specific customer interaction they encounter. This characteristic is a fundamental property of the counselor selling method: within an overall framework (the sales process) the method permits and encourages the salesperson to make adjustments to his/her sales behavior that are dependent upon cues received from the buyer. Furthermore, the method is an extension of the marketing concept whereby the salesperson acts as a facilitator enabling customer needs to be satisfied by means of a purchase. Its operationalization thus allows full integration of the personal selling function within the marketing mix--an advantage not enjoyed by some "hard sell" approaches.
By presenting the framework of the counselor selling method and the underlying thinking and theories that support it, the academic and practitioner communities will have the opportunity to consider, evaluate, discuss and test its effectiveness. This is the rationale of this paper. The first section provides a brief overview of the method; then the first of the constructs--personality knowledge--is explained and the implications for salesperson behavior discussed; the third section examines the use of microskills derived from the counseling and therapy field and applies them to the personal selling situation; next a sales process, also developed from the counseling interview, is presented and justified. Finally, the components are empirically tested and the implications discussed.
OVERVIEW OF THE COUNSELOR SELLING METHOD
Four major selling approaches have been identified (Gwinner 1968;...