Empowering salespeople in complex negotiations: autonomy and leeway in preparation and concession-making

This research investigates how salesperson autonomy in negotiation decision-making influences their anticipated preparation effort and the setting of initial positions in multi-issue negotiations. While extensive literature examines price negotiations within sales organizations, the factors shaping salespeople’s preparation for multi-issue negotiations remains underexplored. This research focuses on two types of negotiation autonomy, engagement autonomy related to the decision to negotiate and, issue autonomy related to setting specific terms. Three between-subjects scenario-based experimental studies involving 139, 103, and 132 salespeople/customer service employees, respectively, are conducted. The results show that, when granted higher engagement autonomy, salespeople anticipate investing more preparation effort into multi-issue negotiations. We also observed greater anticipated preparation effort when both engagement and issue autonomy related to price were constrained. Yet, this increased anticipated effort was accompanied by more customer-favorable initial positions, suggesting that higher anticipated preparation effort does not necessarily lead to stronger initial positions.