Sales prospecting framework: Marketing team, salesperson competence, and sales structure

Abstract

Sales management is an integral part of virtually all market exchanges. Marketing team, sales opportunities, salesperson skills, firm sales resources, digital platforms, and sales compensation plan create a marketing-salesperson-firm dynamic underlying the sales prospecting framework. Firm’s managers continuously strive to deal with these manifold elements of such dynamic context. This article offers an overview of the sales prospecting effort and sheds light on how firms generate superior performance by managing three interconnected elements. The marketing team (e.g., generating leads), salesperson competence (e.g., individual and team competence), and the firm being ready to deploy sales structure (e.g., sales platform) result in superior performance. By thinking outside the box, the authors propose the Salespeople Prospecting Framework with multiple associations based on previous marketing, sales, and retail research. The authors discuss implications for managing the sales funnel and offer suggestions for further research investigation.