Salespeople's experience with last-mile internal selling processes: Benefits and challenges

Abstract

Research on the intraorganizational dimension of the sales role (IDSR) underscores salespeople's proactive behavior, such as internal navigation and individual drivers thereof, to deal with challenges in internal selling. However, extant literature has not provided insights into the crucial last mile of the internal selling process (ISP), the stage between the final sales presentation and the actual closing of the sale. In four waves of in-depth interviews, we perform a micro-analysis of how salespeople's perception of two key characteristics of the last mile of ISPs, hierarchical extensiveness and personnel specialization, can serve as both a benefit and a challenge. Data also reveal salespeople's complex strategies and organizational factors that affect the valence of these ISP characteristics. These findings have important implications for managing salesperson IDSRs.