Sales call success factors from a purchasing, sales and neuroscientific perspective

Purpose – To empirically examine the impact of a set of influencing factors on B-to-B sales call success from a buyer, salesperson and neuroscientific perspective Design/methodology/approach – A literature review was conducted to find potential non-economic influencing factors and a set of hypotheses was generated. Subsequently, findings were verified through an expert interview. Then two surveys examining the buyer and sales perspective were carried out and hypotheses were tested. Lastly, results were aimed to be explained from a neuroscientific perspective. Findings – The results show that trust, emotion and empathy are positively correlated to sales call success. However, communication, listening skills, empathy, appearance and personality variables were on average still perceived as somewhat important for sales call success by both survey groups. Neuroscientific literature could provide insights into the effects of trust, emotion, appearance and extroversion on sales call outcome. Research limitations – The sample size permits only a general analysis and conclusions. Buyers participating in the survey tended to evaluate sales calls as rather successful, leading to an underrepresentation of “unsuccessful” sales calls in the data set. Neuroscientific literature provided insights but could not fully explain the suggested model. Practical implications – Emotional and non-economic factors including trust, positive emotion and empathy should be part of a successful sales methodology so that the effects of these factors are considered to improve the outcome of sales call