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Executive Summary
As boundary spanners between the organization and its customers, salespeople play a key role in bringing product-related customer insights into the organization and in using these insights to modify existing products to enhance their relevance and value proposition in the marketplace. The focus of this study is on the interface between salespeople and product development teams because these teams are the organizational entities that are most typically assigned the responsibility for product modification decisions. The study is executed within small manufacturing organizations because the phenomenon of salesperson influence on product modification decisions is most widely prevalent and clearly observed in such a context. The study extends the extant understanding of the customer–product development team interface by addressing three questions: (1) How do salespeople influence product modifications? (2) When are salespeople more or less likely to be successful? (3) What are the product-level consequences of adopting the salesperson’s proposed modifications?

The study draws from the literature on influence strategies to identify the means that salespeople use to affect product modification decisions by product management teams. Salesperson trustworthiness is identified as a key moderating factor that enhances the effectiveness of the influence strategies in securing product modifications by the product management teams. With respect to the third question, product management team compliance with the salesperson’s product modification proposal is hypothesized to generate positive market performance for the product.

The results from a survey of 149 product managers in small manufacturing organizations suggest that two influence strategies—rationality and exchange—have a positive impact and that two influence strategies—coalition building and upward appeal—have an inverse impact on product modification implementation. The results also show that salesperson trustworthiness enhances the positive effects of rationality and exchange, while mitigating the inverse effects of coalition building and upward appeal. Finally, the results show that product modification implementation has a positive effect on the product’s performance in the marketplace. Collectively, the results suggest that salespeople should adopt the rationality and exchange strategies to get their desired product modifications implemented while also developing a reputation for trustworthiness and that it pays for organizations to listen to their salespeople.

Biography
Ashwin W. Joshi is Associate Professor of Marketing in the Schulich School of Business in York University, Toronto, where he is also the Director of the MBA program. He received his PhD from Queen’s University. His research interests are in the area of new product development, sales force management, and relationship marketing. His research on these topics has been published in Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing. In addition to his teaching, research, and administrative responsibilities, he consults internationally with organizations such as American Express, Beijing TV, Bankseta, Citibank, and China Life, among others.

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