The impact of technology on
evolving roles of salespeople
Paul Christ
West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, and
Rolph Anderson
LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to bridge the glaring gap in the sales literature due to the
deficiency of historical research on the adoption of technology in personal selling and the resultant
impacts on sales roles.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper traces the early adoption of technology by the sales
force through information obtained from an extensive review of published works covering a nearly
130-year timeframe. Where possible, efforts are made to chronicle the early use of these technologies
by citing examples from historical publications of applications in selling situations.
Findings – In the exciting internet era, it is often unrecognized that adopting the latest technology in
selling is a long, ongoing process which can be traced back at least to the beginning of professional
personal selling in the mid-1800s when the industrial revolution enabled dramatic increases in
manufactured products. A review of the literature suggests that sales forces were often early adopters of
new technologies that laid the groundwork for taking on new or expanded sales roles. With each new
invention and its creative adoption and adaption to selling, new sales roles have been created or ongoing
ones expanded or significantly modified. Many of the roles still entrusted to today’s sales force are
arguably linked to a succession of technological adoptions that occurred between the 1850s and 1980s.
Originality/value – From a historical perspective, this paper examines sales force technology
development from the 1850s through the 1980s and the resultant impacts on sales force roles. To date, this
historic technology-sales force role relationship has not been adequately recognized or addressed in the
sale literature. The analyses presented in the present study should prove useful for academics, students,
and practitioners in the sales and marketing fields as well as researchers examining business history.
Keywords History, Innovation, Information technology, Sales force, Selling methods
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Over a half century ago, Hollander (1953, p. 5) defined sales devices as “tools or methods
used by the salesman to help in plying his trade”. In plying their trade, twenty-first
century sales forces use an impressive array of sales devices or technological tools to
carry out various important sales roles, including gathering market information,
gaining prospect trust, presenting their companies’ products and services, providing
customer service, and building long-term buyer-seller relationships. Their technology
“sales bags” include multiple telecommunications and internet-enabled devices to
readily access and provide timely information before, during, and after sales
presentations a ...
DEMONSTRATION LESSON IN ENGLISH 4 MATATAG CURRICULUM
The impact of technology onevolving roles of salespeople.docx
1. The impact of technology on
evolving roles of salespeople
Paul Christ
West Chester University, West Chester, Pennsylvania, USA, and
Rolph Anderson
LeBow College of Business, Drexel University, Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, USA
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to bridge the glaring gap
in the sales literature due to the
deficiency of historical research on the adoption of technology
in personal selling and the resultant
impacts on sales roles.
Design/methodology/approach – This paper traces the early
adoption of technology by the sales
force through information obtained from an extensive review of
published works covering a nearly
130-year timeframe. Where possible, efforts are made to
chronicle the early use of these technologies
by citing examples from historical publications of applications
in selling situations.
Findings – In the exciting internet era, it is often unrecognized
that adopting the latest technology in
selling is a long, ongoing process which can be traced back at
least to the beginning of professional
personal selling in the mid-1800s when the industrial revolution
2. enabled dramatic increases in
manufactured products. A review of the literature suggests that
sales forces were often early adopters of
new technologies that laid the groundwork for taking on new or
expanded sales roles. With each new
invention and its creative adoption and adaption to selling, new
sales roles have been created or ongoing
ones expanded or significantly modified. Many of the roles still
entrusted to today’s sales force are
arguably linked to a succession of technological adoptions that
occurred between the 1850s and 1980s.
Originality/value – From a historical perspective, this paper
examines sales force technology
development from the 1850s through the 1980s and the resultant
impacts on sales force roles. To date, this
historic technology-sales force role relationship has not been
adequately recognized or addressed in the
sale literature. The analyses presented in the present study
should prove useful for academics, students,
and practitioners in the sales and marketing fields as well as
researchers examining business history.
Keywords History, Innovation, Information technology, Sales
force, Selling methods
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
Over a half century ago, Hollander (1953, p. 5) defined sales
devices as “tools or methods
used by the salesman to help in plying his trade”. In plying their
trade, twenty-first
century sales forces use an impressive array of sales devices or
technological tools to
carry out various important sales roles, including gathering
3. market information,
gaining prospect trust, presenting their companies’ products and
services, providing
customer service, and building long-term buyer-seller
relationships. Their technology
“sales bags” include multiple telecommunications and internet-
enabled devices to
readily access and provide timely information before, during,
and after sales
presentations and buyer-seller negotiations to more fully satisfy
customers.
While sales force adoption of technology has often met initial
resistance (Rapp et al.,
2008; Hunter and Perreault, 2007), outlays for technology
continue to increase as sales
managers widely view them as investments benefiting sales
force productivity and
profitable buyer-seller relationships (Hollenbeck et al., 2009).
Studies have found that
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is
available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/1755-750X.htm
The impact
of technology
on sales people
173
Journal of Historical Research in
Marketing
4. Vol. 3 No. 2, 2011
pp. 173-193
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1755-750X
DOI 10.1108/17557501111132136
using the latest technology makes the salesperson’s job easier
(Colon, 1998), decreases
costs (Taylor, 1993), enhances communications (Thetgyt, 2000),
reduces sales cycle time
(Thetgyt, 2000), improves organizational access to information
(Leifer, 1999), and is
essential for a sales organization to develop sustainable
advantages over competitors
(Rosen, 1999; Weitz and Bradford, 1999). Adoption of the latest
technology is a way to
increase sales force effectiveness and efficiency in carrying out
sales force activities,
enhancing customer relationships, and building competitive
advantages (Moutot and
Bascoul, 2008). Furthermore, salespeople, as the direct link
between the buying and
selling firms, play the key role in influencing prospects’
perceptions of the seller’s
products and services and in cultivating long-term customer
loyalty for repeat buying
(Biong and Selnes, 1996). This often results in buyers having
greater loyalty to
salespeople than to the firms the seller represents (Anderson
and Robertson, 1995;
Macintosh and Locksin, 1997).
5. Yet, perhaps due to the dearth of historical research on the
adoption of technology in
selling and its resultant impacts (Kowalkowski and Brehmer,
2008), few contemporary
salespeople seem knowledgeable about the efforts of their sales
predecessors in laying
the foundation for today’s high-tech selling techniques and
processes. Too often, they
seem to assume that prior to the internet and its interrelated
communication devices,
little progress had been made in sales productivity. But there
have been prior inventions
going back to the mid-1800s which have been almost as
dramatic in their impact on
selling. These earlier inventions and their adoption for sales
laid the foundation for the
sophisticated roles and high-tech selling techniques of today’s
professional salespeople.
The overall objective of this study is to bridge a gap in the
literature by tracing sales
force adoption of major new technologies and the resulting
changes in sales roles from the
initial movement toward professionalism of salespeople in the
mid-1800s to the beginning
of the micro-computer and internet age in the 1980s. It is
believed that insights gained from
this investigation will enable sales practitioners and scholars to
more fully understand
America’s personal selling evolution and to gain perspectives
that will enable them to
become more alert to opportunities from future inventions to
advance the sales profession.
Our study is organized around the contention that technology
adoption is a key driver
6. in the sales force taking on new or expanded roles (Table I).
Each of these roles continues
to be a key component of today’s sales forces and these roles
are still evolving in response
to the latest technology. The present study sets the stage for this
discussion by first
providing a brief history of personal selling in the US prior to
the advent of the important
technological advances emerging with the industrial revolution.
From this point, the
study proceeds to discuss the evolution of five major sales force
roles, which were
manifested at different times in response to emerging
technology and required sellers to
learn new skills. The roles include: the Mobile Market
Developer, who utilized
transportation technologies to expand the geographic space in
which a company did
business; the Long Distance Communicator, who adopted new
and improved techniques
for communicating that were not bound by the need to be in a
specific location; the
Dynamic Presenter, who enhanced in-person sales presentations
with new methods for
providing information and stimulating customer interest; the
Market Intelligence
Gatherer, who became the organization’s eyes and ears in the
market by forwarding
reports back to the home office; and the Prompt Service
Provider, who adopted
innovations enabling the seller to respond quickly to customer
inquiries and requests.
JHRM
3,2
40. The information presented in this study is supported by
examples gathered from
published works dating back as far as the mid-1800s. A
concerted effort was made to
locate evidence of early use of each sales technology discussed
by examining trade and
business press publications from the time period when the
technologies were first
introduced. While many of the examples cited here represent
some of the earliest uses of
these technologies in a sales application, the main intent of the
cited examples is to
establish a timeframe of initial implementation and not to
suggest each example
represents the earliest use of a particular technology. However,
in many cases, these
publications offered the earliest insights into technology usage
in sales and proved to be
valuable resources for understanding how enterprising
salespeople and sales managers
creatively thought about how a technology’s benefits could be
applied to selling.
Rise of professional personal selling
Although professional personal selling did not begin until the
mid-1800s with the
industrial revolution and the resultant dramatic increase in
manufactured goods for
which demand had to be created, emergent approaches to
personal selling can be seen in
three earlier occupations (Anderson, 1991). First, there was the
Yankee peddler of
colonial America who was employed by merchants and
manufacturers along the East
Coast. In early spring, these intrepid peddlers would load their
41. wagons, boats, horses,
and even backpacks with various necessities of colonial life
provided by their employers
(weapons, nails, needles, pins, dishes, cloth, and patent
medicines) and trek across the
wilderness for up to six months visiting pioneer towns to sell
their wares. Traveling
salespeople in pioneer days were usually welcomed and often
invited to stay overnight
with families to share the latest news from other parts of the
country.
A second salesperson predecessor occupation was the credit
investigator of the early
1800s who was hired by eastern textile manufacturers and other
businesses to travel by
horseback or stagecoach to see retailers and resolve credit
matters such as overdue bills
and credit verification. Gradually the credit investigator’s
functions expanded to include
personal selling and maintaining buyer goodwill which soon
became more important
than the credit role (Wright, 1927; Atherton, 1947).
The third salesperson precursor occupation, also appearing in
the early half of the
eighteenth century, was the greeter or drummer employed by
wholesale suppliers and
manufacturers. Drummers, whose name comes from their use of
drums to generate
attention, greeted arriving retail buyers at train stations, ship
docks, or hotels.
Their main objective was to stimulate business by persuading
buyers to come view their
employers’ products before considering those of competitors.
For their efforts drummers
42. received a portion of the transaction, a forerunner to today’s
sales commission system
(Anderson, 1991).
By the mid-1880s, the growth of manufacturing processes
attributable to the industrial
revolution saw the American economy change rapidly as small
entrepreneurs grew into
giant manufacturers such as National Cash Register (NCR),
Eastman Kodak,
Westinghouse Electric, Carnegie Steel, and Coca-Cola. In the
following decade, General
Electric, Burroughs, Pepsico, and Wrigley’s Chewing Gum were
founded (Friedman,
2004). These manufacturers produced large numbers of business
machines, home
appliances, packaged grocery products, and motor vehicles, and
thousands of salespeople
were needed to create demand for these goods. At the same
time, a sales career attracted
many new people as it offered a fast route to financial success.
While turning out uniform
JHRM
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176
quality products, large manufacturers soon recognized the need
to also present their
products in a consistent, professional way and to develop
training programs to teach new
sales recruits how to do this. To accomplish this, progressive
companies created the
43. position of sales manager to direct and control salespeople and
the selling process –
including assigning territories, setting sales quotas, devising
compensation plans,
training, motivating, and evaluating salesperson performance.
This recruiting, hiring, and
training of sales professionals ended the era of “drummers.” An
article in a Heinz company
newsletter in 1905 reproved drummers in the following way:
“Specimens of this type
should be stuffed and mounted and exhibited in museums,
simply as a matter of historical
record, along with stage coaches, muzzle-loading guns, and
other relics.” The modern
salesman, it went on to assert, is “polished, intelligent,
energetic; a man of affairs; a student
of human nature; an observer of conditions; alert, affable,
dignified, enthusiastic. He is
trained for his work.” (H.J. Heinz Corporation, ca. 1905, p. 13).
This change in selling philosophy initiated the movement to
professionalize the
sales force within corporate structures. In the mid-1880s, John
H. Patterson, president of
NCR, began implementing “scientific” salesmanship based on
the writings of
Frederick W. Taylor, founder of scientific management.
Patterson prepared written
sales scripts, drew detailed maps of sales territories, tested
different methods of sales
compensation, and required salespeople to meet monthly quotas.
By 1904, NCR’s sales
manual had grown to almost 200 pages. The growth of
systematic methods of sales
management also stimulated products and services to support
sales, including trade
44. journals, selling magazines, and new academic studies in
marketing, consumer
behavior, and industrial psychology. In 1881, the Wharton
School of the University of
Pennsylvania was founded as the first business college within a
broader university, and
the first bulletin of Harvard’s Bureau of Business Research
published in 1913 focused on
the selling of shoes (Friedman, 2004). Nathaniel Hawthorne,
Herman Melville, and Mark
Twain all wrote about salespeople and stories about salesmen
began appearing in
popular magazines like The Saturday Evening Post and Colliers.
During this early period of professional selling, managers of the
sales function would
continually seek ways to increase sales productivity. In addition
to directing resources to
training their sales force, managers routinely experimented with
new methods and tools
to reach corporate sales goals. Their experimentation included
seeking out new
technologies to enhance sales force effectiveness and
efficiency. As will be discussed, the
sales force has long been at the front-end of experimenting with
and adopting new
technologies. The adoption of transportation, communication,
presentation, and
information technologies by the sales force would create or
expand the roles they play
(Table I) and their importance within the organization.
Mobile market developer
By the late 1800s, industrial or trade selling in the USA was
largely confined to retailers and
jobbers making semi-annual journeys to commercial buying
45. centers to shop for goods.
Initially, market growth was limited to the purchasing activities
of these “traveling buyers”
(Friedman, 2004), but fierce competition brought about by the
development of mass
manufacturing technologies that dramatically increased output
required sellers to
continually seek out new and expanded markets for their
products. This would compel
sellers to go beyond merely waiting for arriving buyers to
proactively traveling out to the
retailers’ stores which gave birth to the “traveling salesman”
(Tosdal, 1927).
The impact
of technology
on sales people
177
Portable merchandise such as jewelry and pistols were among
the first goods carried by
these traveling salespeople to show retailers (Wright, 1927).
Suppliers paid traveling
salespeople a share of the profit from each sale, a practice that
paved the way for sales
commissions.
While the early traveling salesperson relied on horse, wagon,
and foot to reach
buyers, the development of three important transportation
technologies – trains,
automobiles, and airplanes – would broaden the geographic
46. reach of salespeople. With
the ability to move relatively rapidly from one town to another,
many companies, for the
first time, saw value in deploying a mobile sales force.
Companies now viewed traveling
salespeople as a key component in market expansion and their
push to grow their
business would make this occupation a fixture in everyday
commerce.
Railroad
In the USA, the traveling salesperson profession began to grow
rapidly with the
expansion of the national railway network from 9,000 miles in
1850 to over 80,000 miles
by 1880 (US Bureau of the Census, 1975). The feasibility of
using railroad transportation
for traveling salespeople was spurred by industry consolidation
and integration that
included the standardization of rail gauges which provided the
interconnection of
previously incompatible regional systems (Cowan, 1997).
Traveling by rail boosted salesperson productivity by expanding
their market
coverage, allowing faster customer shipments, and permitting
more time for face-to-face
selling and service (Power et al., 1987). In an autobiography
detailing his life as a
traveling salesman, Edward F. Briggs tells how he was using the
rail lines in the early
1860s to travel throughout the mid-western USA. Still, during
this time, Briggs
estimates that there were less than 1,000 traveling salespeople
(Briggs, 1911). As the
nineteenth century drew to a close, the growing reliability,
47. affordability, and expanse of
the railroad system, along with an increased competitive
environment, led to a sharp rise
in the ranks of traveling salespeople with the 1900 USA. Census
reporting over 93,000 in
the commercial traveler occupation classification (US Bureau of
the Census, 1904).
Automobile
While the railroads in the early 1900s primarily served markets
in major metropolitan
areas, it was the evolution of the automobile that was
responsible for advancing sales in
areas beyond those served by rail lines. Motorized
transportation initially gained
commercial popularity at the start of the twentieth century when
it was used for
intra-city deliveries replacing the slower horse-drawn wagons
(Atterbury, 1907).
Around this time, some enterprising salespeople began limited
use of the automobile in
covering their sales territories. In 1912, one salesman, after
being issued his first
automobile, realized a 50 percent reduction in the time required
to cover his large
territory in New England and a 25 percent increase in customer
orders. When asked to
explain his success, he attributed it to several factors:
. conserving personal energy often lost when using other means
of travel;
. physically handling less weight since samples are stored in the
auto and only
occasionally hand carried;
48. . carrying a more complete line of product samples to show
prospects; and
. general prospect curiosity aroused by the car (Thatton, 1912).
JHRM
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178
In spite of this salesman’s success, few companies before 1920
were eager to adopt the
automobile for sales force use. For example, in 1918 a
Pennsylvania firm experimented
with automobiles by providing cars to nine salespeople. In only
one instance did this
firm find the use of the automobile to be cost effective (System,
1924a).
Acceptance of the automobile as a vital piece of selling
equipment did not take hold
until the early 1920s. Several reasons can be cited for this slow
acceptance including:
relatively high cost of automobile operation, better reliability of
the rails versus
automobiles, an under-developed highway network, entrance of
the USA into First World
War which shifted manufacturing and sales to supplying
military needs, and general lack
of managerial appreciation of autos as potential aids to sales
productivity. In 1923, one
observer of the automotive industry claimed that “organized and
deliberate motorization
of business has lagged behind individual acceptance” (System,
49. 1923). In that same year,
Eastman Kodak was supplying cars to only 25 percent of its
sales force and management
was still not convinced the automobile was effective (System,
1924a).
However, by the mid-1920s, the perceived value of the
automobile as an aid to selling
was evident in most industries. Many companies believed
significant buying power
resided in small towns and suburbs of large cities, a notion
supported by the 1920 census
which revealed that nearly half of the population in the USA
lived outside metropolitan
areas (System, 1924b). Firms also recognized that relying on
trains or trolley lines to
reach these valuable markets was not economical and in many
cases not even feasible
since rail routes remained fixed as populations expanded and
stations were often located
far from small towns. As a result, by the end of the 1920s,
automobiles had largely
replaced trains as the preferred mode of transportation for the
traveling sales force.
Airplane
Salespeople needing to be in two distance cities in one day for
sales presentations and
demonstrations or buyers requesting service on short notice are
examples of logistical
problems that automobiles and trains had difficulty addressing.
To combat these problems,
companies took to the air. The first to use the airplane in a
selling capacity were firms selling
products connected with the aircraft industry. In the early
1920s, Aerial sales services, a
50. manufacturers’ representative for aircraft-related products, used
airplanes to call on dealers
(Aviation, 1922). By the late 1920s, airplane travel by the sales
force had spread to other
industries. For instance, in 1927 the company pilot for Phillips
Petroleum Company took on
the dual role of salesman and pilot by completing a transaction
with oil jobbers in Nebraska
and Utah. He accomplished the sales in three days compared to
an average two-week period
expected without airplane travel (Scott, 1928). Also, as part of
its service plan, a Mississippi
automotive distributor began flying its mechanics to repair
sites. Whenever these flights
occurred, a salesman went along to “talk to as many automobile
prospects as he could locate
from among the crowds of people who swarmed about the
plane” (Scott, 1928).
Companies also found airplanes useful as a sales prospecting
and presentation tool to
shuttle potential customers to sites for product demonstrations.
In 1928, Remington
Rand used a company-owned plane to fly prospects to a testing
laboratory to “prove to
them that the claims made by the company representatives were
true” (Cotton, 1928).
Long-distance communicator
Prior to the mid-nineteenth century, nearly all salesperson-
prospect communication was
done face-to-face with salesmen relying heavily on their
ingratiating personalities
The impact
of technology
51. on sales people
179
and persuasive abilities to complete the sale (Read, 1910).
Because of the importance of
“pressing the flesh” and face-to-face communication, sales
training at the end of the
nineteenth century principally concentrated on preparing
salespeople for the “art of
conversation” which was viewed as a critical skill in gaining the
confidence of a buyer
(Waterbury, 1907).
But, as salespeople expanded their markets geographically with
innovations in
transportation, they became less able to build customer
relationships through frequent
in-person contact. Fortunately, new communication
technologies began appearing by
the mid-1800s to help salespeople solve this problem by
becoming long-distance
communicators. These technologies – telegraph, mail addressing
machine, and
telephone – would prove to be crucial in shifting salespeople
from a communication role
that was almost exclusively face-to-face and local to one that
was increasingly
non-personal and long distance. Long distance communication
would require
salespeople to develop new communication skills and strategies
that relied on their
writing and vocal abilities.
52. Telegraph
In the 1830s, long distance communication was limited mostly
to letters and newspapers
delivered by stagecoach or pony express (i.e. horseback rider
relays). Government mail
delivery began in 1831 with the appointment of a fur trader in
Chicago as the first
postmaster (Lebeau, 2010). In 1836, mail contractors instituted
regular stagecoach
service, taking advantage of postal subsidies to also encourage
passenger travel for
added revenue. This service became the nation’s most direct
means of east-west
communication before the telegraph. Invention of the electric
telegraph was a milestone
for being the first technology to enable rapid communication
over long distances.
Following the first successful test in 1844 covering a distance
of 40 miles from Baltimore
to Washington, DC (Standage, 1998), the telegraph network
expanded swiftly reaching
nearly 300,000 miles by 1880 (Field and Weiman, 2006).
By the mid-1800s sellers around the world were doing business
“by wire”
(Holdsworth, 1874; Crump, 1878) including salespeople in the
USA who utilized the
telegraph to perform enhanced customer relations tasks such as
speedily providing price
quotations and placing orders (Lardner, 1855; Squibb, 1886).
Also, the salesperson’s
territory management tasks, such as confirming sales
appointments and hotel
reservations, could now be done on short notice. Expansion of
the telegraph system
53. along with burgeoning demand for its use by traveling salesmen
led companies to
successfully negotiate discounted rates from companies
controlling the telegraph lines
(Spears, 1995). Each additional telegraph discount increased the
use of this new long
distance communication technology by salespeople.
Mail addressing machine
While sales letters could be mass produced using printing
presses, the manual labor
needed to individually address each letter limited its use to
small-batch mailings until the
invention of the mail addressing machine in 1859. Mail
addressing machines enabled bulk
addressing of letters and envelopes using pre-made rubber or
metal address card indexes
(Early Office Museum, 2010b). Addressing machines allowed
companies to substantially
reduce labor costs in printing names and addresses on
newspapers, periodicals, mailing
labels, envelopes, and sales letters. By the late 1800s direct
mail methods were widely used
JHRM
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180
to solicit prospect interest (Printers’ Ink, 1899), and by the
early 1900s, the preparation of
business letters was considered a vital selling skill (Noble,
1905).
54. Branded under such names as Addressograph and Graphotype,
advertisements
touted these devices as “the easiest, most profitable way to get
new business” ( Journal of
the Franklin Institute, 1911). Authorization of permit mail by
the US Postmaster in 1904
further increased the use of business direct mail as it proved to
be an effective and
efficient means for generating new sales prospects.
Telephone
Commercialization of the telephone in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth century
compelled salespeople to learn a new form of verbal
communication. For the first time,
salespeople could not rely largely on visual material in face-to-
face sales presentations
while interacting with customers. Instead, the nature of
telephones necessitated the
development of dynamic, non-observable sales presentations for
long distance
communication. Salespeople now needed a new set of verbal
skills to project
“pleasing impressions over the wire” (Cook, 1914).
First to take advantage of the telephone as a sales tool were
large retailers who set up
banks of telephones where salespeople would call prospects and
make short sales
presentations using prepared scripts. In 1912, a food retailer in
New Jersey routinely had
its sales clerks telephone customers to solicit orders for next
day delivery (Newman,
1913). These seller phone banks were forerunners of today’s
seemingly ubiquitous
telemarketing and teleselling activities.
55. By 1915, telephones were a well-established sales tool, though
they were restricted
primarily to those selling from inside a company, not outside
salespeople. The state of
telephone technology at the time limited its use by outside
salespeople for two reasons.
First, during the early 1900s, there were two competing and
incompatible telephone
systems: the Bell Company and the independents. Until an
agreement for interconnection
was reached in December of 1914, connection to each system
was required if an outside
salesperson was to effectively utilize the telephone for selling
purposes. Second, long
distance service, established in the 1890s, was suffering from
growing pains as technology
was unable to keep pace with expanding demand. By 1907, the
problems multiplied to the
point where most “long-distance circuits were plagued with
such noise and delays as to
deter all but the most determined callers” (Brooks, 1975). After
1915, the problems
restricting the use of the telephone by outside salespeople had
been largely resolved and
soon the telephone would become a critical instrument in long-
distance communication by
salespeople with prospects, customers, and sales managers (
Jones, 1917).
Dynamic presenter
In many ways, the essence of selling exists within the
salesperson’s presentation to a
customer. It is at this stage in the selling process where the
seller must engage the
buyer’s interest by providing information and, where feasible,
56. demonstrating the
product. For most selling situations, the seller accomplishes this
task by visually
presenting information and making a physical product
demonstration to support the
seller’s statements. Salespeople of the mid-1800s, though, had
few options with respect
to tools for visually displaying their assortments of products.
Sellers of this era primarily
relied on limited product samples and company printed
documents as their principle
visual aids.
The impact
of technology
on sales people
181
However, the invention of photographic techniques in the mid-
1800s would
significantly expand the salesperson’s presentation toolkit.
Initially, the toolkit was
enhanced with the addition of photographs, as evidenced by a
Michigan furniture
manufacturer’s providing salespeople with these as early as
1862 (State of Michigan,
1900), but it would be the introduction of a stream of innovative
presentation devices that
would require salespeople to learn new skills for managing
dynamic visual presentations.
Slide projector
57. Slide projection dates to the late 1,800 when the optical or
“magic” lantern was widely
employed as a lecturing instrument in the academic arena. This
device projected images
from glass plates using non-electrical light sources, such as oil
and limelight, and, when
operated by a technical team, enabled presentations in large
group situations (Hepworth,
1889). Models called stereopticons, available around 1900,
consisted of two optical lenses
allowing the presenter to create impressive effects like
dissolving one image into another
(Witcombe, 2009). Introduction of stereopticons using color
slides was particularly
useful for travelling salespeople who were restricted in the
number of product samples
they could carry with them (The School Journal, 1900).
The still picture projector, utilizing slides made from standard
size motion picture
film instead of glass plates, became popular as a device for
sales promotion
demonstrations in the early 1920s (Moran, 1927). Less
cumbersome and more powerful
than the projecting lantern, the still picture projector could be
efficiently operated by a
single salesperson. The projector models available in the mid-
1920s permitted the
salesperson to display almost any visual material including
charts, photographs, and
typewritten pages.
Slide projection with sound became part of the sales force’s
equipment in the early
1930s when projection systems were matched with the audio of
phonograph records. By
58. 1934, many large companies, including General Electric and
Packard Motor Car
Company, were regularly preparing sound-slide films for use by
their sales forces (Sales
Management, 1934). By the 1950s, slide projection systems
were developed in which
phonograph records were encoded with low frequency signals
that would automatically
advance slides (Wall Street Journal, 1953).
Three dimensional visual aids
Stereoscopes, devices presenting a 3D perspective to specially
prepared photographs,
became popular in the mid-to-late 1800s. Early evidence that
the stereoscope was being
used in selling comes from England where Charles Dickens
wrote in his periodical how the
commercial traveler “would produce his pictures and his
stereoscope to his customer, and
by their means convey to him a notion of the appearance of
choice wares of his firms”
(Dickens, 1854). In the US stereoscopes were a popular
presentation tool by the early 1900s
(Underwood and Underwood, 1908) with many firms outfitting
their sales forces with
transportable folding units (DeBower and Jones, 1914). Over
the next several decades more
advanced stereoscopes were introduced including models that
combined greater
portability with color images. Using special cameras to produce
3D color slides, many
sales organizations were quick to outfit their sales forces with
pocket-sized viewers. By
1953 the Parker Pen Company replaced many of its sales force’s
samples with lightweight
3D viewers. Parker found the viewers substantially enhanced
59. sales of certain
hard-to-carry products such as point of purchase displays (Sales
Management, 1953a).
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182
The option for 3D visual aids was limited to individuals
viewing through stereoscopes
until the 1940s when 3D films and slides were used in group
sales presentations. This
method allowed multiple customers to simultaneously view the
3D presentation with the
aid of special viewers. General Electric developed a 3D slide
presentation as an aid to
selling automobile lights to its distributors (Sales Management,
1940).
Silent motion pictures
Invention of motion pictures was a significant innovation for
personal selling. Before
motion pictures, it was necessary in many industries, such as
heavy machinery, to
transport prospects to view product demonstrations as it was
often impractical or
inconvenient to move the product to the prospect’s place of
business. By the early 1900s,
many firms “found it would pay to spend thousands of dollars in
making a (film) reel for
an audience of half a dozen” (Croy, 1912). By 1906,
salespeople, after being trained in the
use of moving pictures, would make arrangements to rent a
60. local movie theater and
invite management at a prospect company to view a film
demonstrating their firm’s
equipment (Croy, 1912). A few years later, transportable
projectors were available
making in-office showings a common occurrence and even a
necessity in many
industries (Iron Age, 1913). In many cases the industrial film
served as a prospecting tool
with the selling organization mailing the film to prospects in
advance of a salesman’s
personal visit. This was especially true when prospects were
located great distances
from the supplying firm (Literary Digest, 1914).
By 1915, the use of motion pictures in selling had become
commonplace for major
industrial firms, like International Harvester Company, du Pont
Powder Company, and
United Gypsum Company, who routinely included motion
pictures as a standard
accessory for their sales forces (Lay, 1915). Because these were
silent films, the
salesperson’s verbal skills were a vital part of the sales
presentation. In addition,
handling films and projectors required a certain mechanical
dexterity and savvy that
most salespeople achieved only through extensive training and
preparation. So, sales
presentation and demonstration training for salespeople became
increasingly important
during this era.
Talking motion pictures
While the quality and quantity of silent sales films improved
steadily throughout the
61. 1920s, it was the introduction of talking motion pictures in the
mid-1920s that opened the
door to wider use of film as a sales tool. The Graham-Paige
Motors Corporation of Detroit
became a pioneer in the use of sound pictures in sales when, in
1928, it presented a sound
film to its retail dealers in 30 cities (Baird, 1928). Other major
companies soon followed
Graham-Paige’s lead with their own creative adaptations. In
1929, Dodge salespeople set
up talking motion pictures in hotel lobbies to stimulate interest
in their automobiles
(Baird, 1930).
By the mid-1930s, talking films were colorized. In 1935,
General Electric Company
became one of the first companies to adopt color film when it
produced a 35 minute
promotional film with several minutes filmed in Technicolor.
This inventive movie,
which depicted the company’s electrical appliance line, was
made available to
distributors, who then rented local movie theaters and invited
prospects to attend.
Following the presentation, a salesperson would follow up on
leads generated from these
stimulating showings (Sales Management, 1935).
The impact
of technology
on sales people
183
62. Audio/visual machines
Until the early 1960s, traveling salespeople using slides and
motion pictures as part of
their presentations often found the setup process to be
burdensome. Not only did
salespeople have to carry the equipment, which included a
projector and possibly a
display screen, but they also needed to ensure the slides or films
were properly loaded
into the projector and suitable space was located to allow proper
viewing. By the 1960s
and early 1970s, the process of showing films and slides would
prove to be less arduous
with the introduction of portable audio/visual players. These
all-in-one units included
small viewing screens with audio speakers and lightweight
players made for quick
setup on customer desktops. Options available for sales
organizations included filmstrip
projectors, which offered still images on movie strips and took
the place of individual
slides (Wall Street Journal, 1967) and movie projectors (Sales
Management, 1975).
Additionally, the filmstrips or movies were generally self-
contained within a cassette,
thus making the loading of presentation material a relatively
simple task.
Portable slides and movie players were eventually supplanted by
videotape players.
While video machines had been on the market since the mid-
1950s and used widely
in sales training since the early 1960s ( Johnson, 1963), their
use in small group
presentations or one-on-one sales meetings was not practical
63. until the advent of portable
video players which began appearing in the early 1970s when
Sony introduced the 3
4
00
U-matic video machine (Solesbury and Harris, 1978). By the
late 1970s videotape would
become the dominate method for audio/visual presentations with
the release of the beta
and VHS 1
2
00 format videocassette later in that decade (Industrial
Marketing, 1978).
While videotape remained the primary method for audiovisual
presentations until
the digital media age, a number of industries had actively
experimented with other
media including videodisc systems. As early as 1980, General
Motors was using
videodiscs in showrooms, however, the lack of portability of
videodisc players restricted
their application for the traveling salesperson (Kleinberg,
1981).
Market intelligence gatherer
Before 1900, most outside salespeople were considered
independent operators and
unlike regular employees of the firms whose products and
services they sold. External
salespeople were paid by straight commissions and rarely
received company sales
training, so they focused almost exclusively on selling and
64. neglected customer service.
Only a few firms at the time even felt it necessary to assign
salespeople exclusive
territories (Strong and d’Amico, 1991). This hands-off attitude
began to change by 1900
as companies began to realize that managing their sales force
was essential in running
an effective and efficient organization. To better guide their
sales forces, sales managers
of the early 1900s undertook methods to establish reliable and
regular two-way lines of
communication with their field salespeople. Within this more
formal organizational
structure field salespeople were expected to function not only as
information receivers
but also as information gatherers, providing market feedback to
headquarters for
strategic and tactical planning (Anderson and Rosenbloom,
1982).
As sales management evolved in the early 1900s communication
with field
salespeople involved largely non-technical methods such as
written correspondence and
personal contact in the form of sales meetings. Technology for
salesperson-to-home
office communication was limited primarily to the telegraph
(Banning, 1905); however,
several inventions would soon be introduced that would expand
the communication
JHRM
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184
65. methods available to the sales force, and salespeople would
truly become their
company’s “eyes and ears” in the marketplace by providing
their sales managers and the
company’s database with important and timely market
intelligence.
Telephone
In comparison to letters and sales meetings, the telephone was a
dramatic technological
breakthrough that gave sales organizations potentially much
greater flexibility in
communicating with each other and with customers. Yet before
1915, inherent structural
difficulties – incompatible systems and problem plagued long-
distance service quality –
posed frustrating problems when trying to communicate with a
widely dispersed sales
force. For a few years, these problems slowed the adoption of
the telephone for sales
communications. But, by the 1920s, refinements to the
telephone system finally made it an
effective tool for communicating with field salespeople and
obtaining the latest market
information. One early sales manager suggested that the
telephone helped eliminate the
group psychology that occurred in sales force meetings: “If we
are holding a meeting with
all the field men and one says business is terrible, all the others
are likely to become
pessimistic.” This sales manager felt individual conversations
on the telephone helped
eliminate group conformity and elicited truer responses (Baird,
1931, p. 237).
66. Dictating machines
Another communication innovation that gradually found
practical application in sales
was the dictating machine. Although it was used extensively by
businesses in the 1920s
as an in-house recording device, the large size and cumbersome
handling required of
early dictation machines likely limited its acceptance as a
medium for communicating
with the external sales force until the 1930s when smaller units
could be carried outside
the main office. Dictating machines of this period recorded onto
cylinders which were
mailed between sales managers and their salespeople. One sales
manager reported in
1933 that dictation machines permitted his sales force to
provide market information in a
more relaxed and informal setting which “makes possible a
close, personal contact
between headquarters and the men in the field” (Goodchild,
1933, p. 32).
Later models of the dictating machine evolved into portable
units, operating on both
AC and DC current that enabled salespeople to record messages
at home or in their cars.
In 1950, after the Sutherland Paper Company of Kalamazoo,
Michigan distributed
portable dictating machines to its salespeople, sales force
paperwork was reduced by
30 percent, sales calls increased 20 percent, and
communications between sales
managers and field salespeople substantially improved (Sales
Management, 1951).
67. Tape recorders
The magnetic tape recorder, introduced in the late 1940s,
signaled a new advance in
sound reproduction by furnishing higher quality sound
recording and also the
convenience and efficiency of erasing previous recordings.
Moreover, tape recorders
offered portability and on-the-road use. As with the dictating
machine, tape recorders
were used by many firms as replacements for paperwork. One
firm, in 1953, reported
using the recorder as a two-way communication apparatus. First,
the salesperson would
file a verbal report on tape and send it to the sales manager.
Then, the sales manager
would listen to the tape, take notes, and record his own
comments before sending the
tape back to the salesperson (Sales Management, 1953b).
The impact
of technology
on sales people
185
Photocopiers
Methods for large-scale document reproduction were
commercially introduced in the
early 1950s with a number of major manufacturers, including
Xerox, RCA, and 3M,
offering duplication technology that replaced previously more
limited methods such as
carbon paper and mimeograph machines. Unlike previous
68. technologies which made
duplicates of documents as they were being originally created,
photocopying enabled
the reproduction of existing documents or visual images (Early
Office Museum, 2010a).
By the mid-1950s, some sales organizations were using
photocopying to replace the
time-consuming process of dictating and transcribing
communications with its sales
force (Vicker, 1957); however, the widespread use of
photocopiers within the sales office
did not take place until the early 1960s with the introduction of
plain paper copiers by
Xerox (Early Office Museum, 2010a). Before the end of that
decade full-color copiers had
became commercially available with the introduction of 3M’s
Color-in-Color copier.
Prompt service provider
In addition to the introduction of numerous technologies that
enhanced the selling
function, by the early 1900s, many sales organizations realized
success also hinged on
building stronger relationships with their customers. In
particular, sales managers
began stressing the importance of servicing ongoing customer
needs which was viewed
as a critical ingredient for successful selling and building repeat
business. Customers
needed to be confident that the salespeople they dealt with
would be reliable and
responsive to their post-purchase service needs. Fowler implied
this in 1911 when he
wrote, “the salesman must not only satisfy the customer in the
quality of the goods and
the price, but he must be satisfactory as a salesman” (Fowler,
69. 1911).
Technology has had a major impact on buyers’ expectations of
prompt service
responses from salespeople. Manifest speed advantages offered
by breakthroughs in
communication, such as the telegraph and telephone, and in
travel, with the automobile
and airplane, reduced time and distance constraints while
simultaneously increasing
buyer service expectations. Following these major inventions,
additional innovative
products were introduced that would continue to advance
buyers’ demands for prompt
service.
Telephone recorders
The first telephone recording devices were invented in the early
1900s with messages
being mechanically saved to steel wire or wax cylinder and then
later to audio records
(Morton, 2009). However, in the USA practical application of
these devices for business
stagnated due to the general monopoly power exercised by
American Telephone and
Telegraph (AT&T) and, in particular, due to AT&T’s resistance
to permitting add-on
components to its system. This changed in 1949 when the
Federal Communication
Commission loosened AT&T’s restrictions by authorizing the
use of certain telephone
recording devices (Morton, 2009). By the early 1950s,
companies began installing
answering devices to communicate with their sales forces. In
most cases, the units were
located at the sales office and functioned primarily to take
70. orders and to receive field
reports (Sales Management, 1954).
Telephone answering machines for individual use were
available by the late 1960s
but would not gain wide acceptance by salespeople until the
mid-1970s when AT&T
further relaxed its rules for allowing non-AT&T devices to be
connected
JHRM
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186
(Wall Street Journal, 1974). This decision, along with the
introduction of affordable
telephone recorders using magnetic tape, would lead to a surge
in use by sales forces and
customers requesting service.
The next advance in telephone answering technology took place
at the beginning of
the 1980s with the introduction of voice mail systems. In this
application, computers
convert caller’s messages into digital data that is stored on
memory chips rather than
magnetic tape (BusinessWeek, 1980). In 1980, Hoffmann-
LaRoche introduced voice mail
to its salespeople and quickly realized productivity, faster
customer service, and
cost-savings advantages (Waters, 1983).
Pager and beeper
71. Pocket pagers experienced initial success in the 1950s when
doctors adopted them
to maintain contact with their offices and hospitals (Levy,
1977). Yet several
shortcomings – bulky, expensive, and restricted subscriber
capacity – prevented
wide-spread application in sales until the 1970s. In 1971,
Motorola, employing new
technology that increased subscriber capacity, introduced the
Pageboy II, which
revolutionized the paging industry (BusinessWeek, 1973). The
new system used radio
coded beeps and later voice and digital displays to notify
salespeople to call their office.
At first, the range on these pagers, typically up to a 50 mile
radius, limited the system’s
application to local or regional sales organizations. This
geographic limitation was
overcome in the early 1980s when a national paging system,
operating via satellite, was
introduced. In 1982, Warner-Lambert and Rockwell
International became early users of
national paging services when they outfitted their traveling
sales executives with pagers
in order to reach them quickly no matter where they were
(Mintz, 1982).
Mobile voice communication
Until the internet age and electronic mail, voice communication
was at the core of the sales
forces’ expanding role as prompt service providers. The ability
to quickly communicate
over the airwaves or phone lines elevated customer service to
new levels of efficiency.
Over-the-air communication with mobile devices dates to the
late 1940s with the
72. introduction of two-way radios and radio telephones (Motorola,
2009) although practical
use by the sales force did not begin until the 1960s. The two-
way radio offered the benefits
of connecting salespeople to their home office as well as to
others in their organization,
including delivery personnel who were critical to customer
service (Mintz, 1982).
In the early 1980s, two-way radios gave way to mobile
telephones albeit initial service
coverage area and user capacity was limited (Mintz, 1982). This
would change with the
introduction of cellular communication which significantly
expanded user capacity and
geographic access (Industrial Distributor, 1985).
Facsimile
Facsimile machines, the invention of which can be traced as far
back as the 1840s, offered
the advantage of transmitting images and other visual details
over telecommunication
lines. A device for sending images over telegraph lines was first
patented in England in
1844 (Lubrano, 1995). By the 1920s, facsimiles had found some
use when the idea migrated
to telephone lines (Felix, 1929), but the technology did not
become a practical commercial
product until the early 1960s and did not find widespread use in
sales for another decade.
An early adopter in 1973 was the real estate network, Homes
For Living, which
persuaded members of its nationwide network to lease facsimile
machines.
73. The impact
of technology
on sales people
187
Customers who intended to make a long-distance move would
visit a nearby realtor
who was a member of the network. The realtor would then
contact a member realtor in
the new city and receive, via facsimile, pictures and information
on prospective
properties (Sales Management, 1973).
Computers
Computer technology, while widely utilized as a sales training
tool by the mid-1960s
(Sales Management, 1965), found little application by field
salespeople until late in that
decade. The earliest deployments were data terminals designed
to handle one-way flows
of data and typically involved a sales organization equipping its
field sales force with
input devices that recorded customer orders on digital media
such as magnetic tape.
Once recorded the orders could then be transmitted to the home
office over a standard
telephone connection (Rogers, 1969). Two-way data flows
enabling salespeople to send
and retrieve information were feasible by the late 1970s with
the introduction of portable
data terminals composed of a keyboard, printer, and built-in
acoustic coupler. The
74. portable nature of these devices permitted traveling salespeople
to include them in their
technological toolbags when visiting accounts and offered the
flexibility of dialing into a
host computer to retrieve customer data, inventory levels,
prices, or other information
needed during the sales call (Office, 1981).
By the early 1980s, data terminals had become obsolete,
replaced by portable
personal computers. In 1984, the semiconductor division of
Raytheon Company outfitted
50 of its salespeople with portable computers so they could
obtain the latest price
quotations for customers (Rozen, 1984). By the mid-1980s,
laptop portable computers
weighing just a few pounds were widely adopted by sales
organizations. Salespeople
were now able to provide a new level of prompt full service to
customers.
Conclusion
Historical study has been described as a way to “help establish
an identity for a
discipline by providing some idea of where it is and what it is”
(Savitt, 1980).
Paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln’s assertion in his “House
Divided” speech on June 16,
1858: If we know where we are, where we have been, and
whither we are tending, we can
then better judge what to do, and how to do it (USHistory.org,
2010). In accordance with
these observations, the overall objective in this investigation is
to present historical
evidence of how development of major new technologies create
or expand sales roles by
75. tracking the points at which the technologies were introduced,
and when and how sales
practitioners successfully adopted and adapted each to a sales
role.
Evidence suggests that adopting the latest technology to sales is
a long, ongoing
process which can be traced back at least to the beginning of
professional personal
selling in the mid-1800s. Historically, salespeople, supported by
their companies, have
sought out, experimented with, adopted, and adapted leading-
edge technology to
improve their selling efforts. Each technology offered sellers
unique benefits and
advantages that not only enhanced performance of existing
selling roles but laid the
groundwork for salespeople to take on new and expanded roles.
Most, if not all, of the
roles entrusted to today’s sales forces are arguably linked to a
succession of
technological adoptions and adaptations that occurred between
the beginning of sales
force professionalism in the 1850s and the commercialization of
the internet in the
mid-1980s.
JHRM
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Today sales professionals are products of a long process of
invention, creative adoption,
76. and entrepreneurship by their selling predecessors. This
evolution continues as astute
sales organizations remain alert to evaluating new technologies
to improve performance of
their current sales roles and perhaps create new ones to better
serve customers thereby
continuing the long process of sales force evolution and
professionalism.
Modern sales forces owe a tremendous debt to all those
hardworking, enterprising
salespeople and sales managers who have gone before and to the
brilliant inventors who
have facilitated the sales profession in carrying out its sales
roles. It is hoped that tracing
the near symbiotic relationship between new technologies and
sales roles will provide
sales practitioners and scholars with fresh perspectives for
creative adoption and
adaption of dynamic future technologies.
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About the authors
Paul Christ holds a PhD from Drexel University. He is a
Professor of Marketing and MBA Program
Director at West Chester University, the second largest
university in the Pennsylvania State
System of Higher Education. In addition to his administrative
duties, Paul Christ also teaches
MBA-level courses titled marketing management, marketing and
technology and business
research and data analysis. Paul Christ has written and
presented on marketing and technology
topics in numerous academic publications, conferences, and
other public forums, and he is author
of the book KnowThis: Marketing Basics. Additionally, Paul
Christ is founder of KnowThis.com,
one of the internet’s leading marketing references sites, and has
been a consultant to many
marketing and technology companies. Paul Christ is the
corresponding author and can be
contacted at: [email protected]
Rolph Anderson is the Royal H. Gibson Sr Chair Professor at
Drexel University. He earned his
PhD from the University of Florida, and his MBA and BA
degrees from Michigan State University.
His primary research and publication areas are personal selling
and sales management, customer
90. relationship management, and customer loyalty. He is author or
co-author of 22 textbooks,
including Multivariate Data Analysis, 7th ed. – the most
referenced marketing text in academia.
Rolph Anderson’s research has been widely published in the
major journals in his field, including
articles in the Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of
Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling
& Sales Management. In 1998, he received the American
Marketing Association Sales Special
Interest Group inaugural “Excellence in Sales Scholarship
Award.”
The impact
of technology
on sales people
193
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