The Fortune 500 Companies' Selection Criteria for Promotion to First Level Sales Management: An Empirical Study

Since marketing, and particularly selling activities, determine the sources and size of a company's revenue, factors which vitally affect sales force performance are matters of crucial importance to corporate management.Predicting how a newly appointed first level sales manager will perform in the new leadership task remains a difficult problem and the determination and use of selection criteria appears not to be clearly defined in the literature. Previous research has identified desirable attributes as selection criteria though typically these are neither ranked in importance nor as attributes that “can be developed later through training/experience” or be “innate to the person selected.” This research focused upon the selection criteria and practices of the Fortune 500 companies in selecting/appointing their first level sales managers. The results revealed that (i) the Fortune 500 human resource managers are in agreement with the findings of previous research with regard to which personality and charact...