Hiring and Promotion Policies in Sales Force Management: Some Antecedents and Consequences

The conceptual framework developed in this paper suggests that firms hire salespeople at the entry level and promote salespeople from within the organization to sales management positions, when their sales tasks involve transaction specific skills and they have difficulty hiring salespeople. Hiring at entry level and promotion from within increase salespeople's trust in the organization, and reduce sales force turnover and opportunistic behavior. A test of the framework using survey data collected from 161 firms indicates that firms tend to promote from within when salespeople possess transaction specific skills. Hiring salespeople at the entry level results in greater level of mutual trust between the sales force and the firm and less opportunistic behavior by the salespeople.