What does adaptive selling mean to salespeople? An exploratory analysis of practitioners’ responses to generic adaptive selling scales

Abstract

The concept of adaptive selling has been firmly established as a key driver of salespeople’s selling performance. To measure adaptive selling, studies commonly use generic items that capture the extent to which salespeople adapt their behaviors to customers. Despite the predictive validity of these items, the personal selling and sales research community has criticized the items because high item scores do not reveal specifically how and to what salespeople adapt their behaviors. This research note aims to instigate academic discussion on these questions by providing a first exploratory analysis of what practitioners read into generic adaptive selling scales. Qualitative interviews reveal that practitioners perceive these scales to encompass four behavioral adaptations to six customer characteristics. A subsequent survey of 289 salespeople shows that when responding to generic adaptive selling scales, salespeople evaluate mainly to what extent they adapt their argumentation and communication style to customers’ needs, personality, and body language. This analysis is meaningful from a theoretical stance to clarify the concept and scope of the adaptive selling construct.

Keywords:

• adaptive selling
• ADAPTS
• salesperson behavior
• customer attributes
• exploratory research

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.