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Article
Death of a Salesman: Birth of a Knowledge Broker
International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management
  • Yuliya V. Yurova, Nova Southeastern University
  • Michael Bendixen, Nova Southeastern University
  • Russell Abratt, Nova Southeastern University
  • M. Rawdan
ORCID

Yuliya Yurova0000-0003-4524-3471

,

Michael T. Bendixen0000-0003-0010-3854

Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2014
Abstract/Excerpt

Call centres have emerged as an important channel for the sale of infrequently purchased goods and services. The purpose of this paper is to examine the predictors of sales agent performance and their changed role in inbound call centres. Two independent samples were taken from a single inbound call centre, the first taken during a peak sales week, and the second from an off–peak sales week. PLS was used to model the relationship between agent tenure, selling time, administrative time and sales performance metrics. Agent tenure was found to have a limited effect on sales performance. Increased selling time and reduced administrative time increased both sales performance metrics. Both of these findings are contrary to traditional sales and call centre management theory. From these results it is apparent that adaptive selling techniques are required to deal with the reduced information asymmetry in the information age.

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1504/IJECRM.2014.066877
Disciplines
Citation Information
Yuliya V. Yurova, Michael Bendixen, Russell Abratt and M. Rawdan. "Death of a Salesman: Birth of a Knowledge Broker" International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management Vol. 8 Iss. 1/2/3 (2014) p. 1 - 14 ISSN: 1750-0664
Available at: http://works.bepress.com/russell-abratt/13/