In search of digital solution sellers: the role of non-monetary motivation and empowering leadership behaviors

Abstract

Many B2B companies are trying to gain a competitive advantage by leveraging digitally-enabled, value-creating solutions. For this, they need to modify their sales force and re-consider what “talent” is. While the skills of digital solution sellers have been explored in the literature, much less is known about the motivational profile the new type of salesperson needs. Therefore, we explore the role of non-monetary drivers of motivation and sales supervisor empowerment. Drawing on Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and using data from 178 salespeople of a B2B company, this study investigates the impact of learning orientation, task enjoyment, challenge seeking, and service-to-others motivation on task-specific Digital Solution Selling (DSS) Implementation motivation. The results show the importance of these general non-monetary motivations for selling digital solutions and the stimulating force of sales leader empowerment. The general non-monetary motivations partially mediate the positive impact of sales leader empowerment on a salesperson’s task-specific DSS implementation motivation.

Keywords:

• Digital solution selling
• non-monetary motivation
• empowering leadership
• B2B sales force
• self-determination theory

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 It should be noted that the motivational variables in our model are also consistent with other interpretations of the key components of SDT. For example, a widespread view of SDT argues that its main components are autonomy, competence, and relatedness. In this perspective, challenge seeking can be associated to autonomy, learning orientation to competence, and service-to-others to relatedness.

2 We do not control for salespeople’s job satisfaction because it is likely to increase motivation, which in turn leads to DSS. Therefore, it does not represent the cause of an omitted variable bias and does not need a separate control.

3 The detailed indirect effects are reported in Table 5. These pertain to the model with the quadratic effect of PELB.

4 We also checked for potential interactions of these motivations on our dependent variable but found no support. We thank a reviewer for this suggestion.