Can a higher degree increase industrial sales performance? : evidence from a MSCI China index company

Abstract

As the competition in industrial product industry is becoming increasingly fierce, to win the competition, great efforts should be made in sales, and thus it is of great importance to recruit and select salespeople. Extant studies on factors influencing sales performance suggest that factors such as educational background, major, sex and age affect the professional performance of the salespeople to varying extents. However, there are few studies into the influence of educational background and experience of salespeople on the performance of industrial sales that are specialized. Educational background can reflect personal ability to some extent, thus affecting sales performance. In addition, no consensus has been reached on the direction of educational background's influence on sales performance. Therefore, this paper will, taking KINLONG Hardware Products Co., Ltd. as an example, examine the influence of educational background on the industrial sales performance of this company. It will then further explore the influence of educational background on the turnover rate of salespeople, time needed for a salesperson’s promotion, and firms’ innovation outputs. Finally, I put forward suggestions on the recruitment and assessment of industrial product salespeople based on the research results. In this paper, the performance of 3498 salespeople who joined the company between 2009 and 2015 was analyzed. By employing empirical analysis of archival data, supplemented by questionnaire survey and in-depth interview, the study concludes: (1) Educational background has no significant influence on the performance of salespeople, and those with a higher degree even perform worse than those with a lower degree at the beginning of their career. However, as time goes by, those salespeople with a higher degree have more room for improvement in performance and are more likely to be promoted. (2) salespeople’s major has little influence on their performance, but those majoring in marketing and mechanical engineering are more likely to leave their jobs if they have previous work experience. (3) Salespeople of extroverted zodiac signs have better performance. Based on the above findings, this paper suggests that industrial enterprises should not pay too much attention to the difference in educational background when recruiting salespeople, but should give priority to those with working experience. Besides, enterprises should consider gender and age of the recruits, build a sales team with a good atmosphere, help realize their own value, and adhere to the corporate culture.