It is recognized that employees operating in supermarkets are always in pressure to allure customers with skills and sell them as many products as they can. Therefore, a salesperson needs to face the exerting pressure by the market in their retail businesses to gain a competitive edge.
The salespersons, in any retail organization, are considered key assets and their performance assessment are very important to get better results.
It will also help the management of supermarkets to know the level of pressure they are exerting on their employees and the modes with which they can prevent it. Moreover, it will also help you to apply theoretical knowledge practically and increase his experience of working in the field.
With reference to the above statements mentioning the status, that sales management function is quite significant in the successful implementation of business strategies. The factors affecting selling performance are not limited to personal qualities, but various others such as management controls, customers’ attitudes towards purchase and sales pressure are also significant. Therefore, the article specifically assesses the performance of employees operating as sales agents and salespersons in the US supermarkets by taking into consideration the pressure of sales that leave an impact on employees’ productivity and performance level.
In today’s world where competition is soaring to its peak, and offensive approaches of negotiations with customers and buyers are being used, tactical approaches of selling do not give results. The sales force in generating sales plays an important role. Getting sales success, as it is the part of an organization, which directly interacts with the customers to buy the products and offerings. Salesforce, in superstores, guides the customers and encourages them in buying the products. Therefore, the circumstances, factors, determinants, and behaviors that affect the performance of the sales force are important.
In recent years, determinants and factors affecting the sales force performance have more importance in literature and studies. However, researchers studying these determinants, usually ignore some relationships among the factors affecting the sales force performance, especially the escalating and intensifying sales pressure.
Although reasonable stress and pressure of job is present in all professions, some jobs have been considered as more pressure exerting than others do. In the retail sector, people’s monetary and financial benefits are largely pinned to their sales targets achievements with some fixed pay. While keeping in mind this aspect of their benefits, it becomes a challenge for the sales force to direct, peruse, influence, and convince the customers to buy their products. This challenge of selling their products and achieving their given targets pressurizes them and affects their performance.
Job performance includes quantitative and qualitative outcomes of the individual as well as group efforts accomplishment. Moreover, it was also explained that the strength of job performance basis upon the requirements of the job, organizational objectives, and targets, and the organization value the people and their activities. The basic job of a sales force is to get their sales targets and increase their organization’s products sales. Traditional organizations depute their salespersons to give their considerable time to capture new customers in the market. Salesforce heroes are those people who acquire new important and sizeable customers. Companies, either by acquiring new customers or by increasing their sale to a current customer, can grow and sales force is placed on a key position to achieve the company’s growth. This growth can only be achieved if salesforce performs at their best.
Workload pressure creates job stress in the people of a firm. Job stress is considered a factor that negatively impacts the organization and its people’s functionality. Due to its potential threats related to family life and one’s performance, job stress can generally be immobilizing. Stress is considered a condition which usually happens when an individual experiences the pressure of something on himself, or when the demands of some certain situations are escalating than their abilities to handle. When these demands are huge, intensive, and persist for a longer time without any break or interval of relaxation, they cause psychological, mental, physical or behavioral problems in that individual and consequently leading to a bad performance in their work.
Three types of correlations were considered present between the degree of job-related stress and performance in the job. First is a negative one. Negative linear correlation, in which stress (distress) directly decreases the performance or productivity. Secondly, stress can increase the productivity or performance showing a positive linear correlation by both the terms. Thirdly, both stress and performance (productivity) can demonstrate a curvilinear U-shaped correlation in which mild and low degree of stress can raise the performance in the start to a peak, but then lowers the performance, as it becomes distressed.
Job stress is usually considered as dysfunction to performance and productivity as it declines the quality and the quantity of performance. It also negatively affects the morale of an individual by wasting time and energy in coping with the stress, limiting the focus and attention on the job at hand and so, decreasing the performance.
Developing the skills of mapping the values in sales force and employing this into conversations to customers is a significant success determinant in current selling competitive environment. Leadership should sort out and ensure that value exploration of customers is a core competency of their salesforce working environment. Most salespeople under pressure show these behaviors: present their offerings to the customers when they only should build sound understanding of the situation and customer; – negotiate the prices when the customers are interested in value creation; – focus on giving away the price concessions to decrease the tension between the two instead of exchanging values and bargaining regarding trade. This shows that increased sales pressure may badly impact the sales by reducing the performance of salespeople rather than showing the improvements in it.
It also explains the existence of sales pressure in superstores and employees must have to achieve their sales targets there also. Up to a specific level of pressure, it will support them in increasing their performances regarding generating sales and capturing customers. However, if this pressure goes beyond a certain level of their tolerance to deal with it, their performance may be decreased. Therefore, the leadership of the superstores should also consider the other ways than sales targets and sales pressures that have been proved to be more efficient and effective in raising the performance of sales force as sales pressure is only effective up to a mild level of pressure. Sales and Marketing fields are now changing their focus towards developing loyalty and retaining their customers. Management of organizations is focusing and training their sales forces to build customer relationships and upselling and cross-selling the products as ways of increasing their sales. Firms are also building better evaluation processes of their sales force to better their performances.