Sales Force Performance and Rewards

1
CLA 1
Every organization aims at achieving a certain level of
performance when it comes to the profitability of the
organization. The sales force in any organization is very
instrumental towards the performance of an organization as they
help push the sales of an organization to the desired level.
Organizations must see the value that the salespersons bring to
the organization as this impacts the motivation and the
productivity of the salespersons (Kuvaas et al., 2017). When a
sales team feels that there is value to an organization then they
become engaged in their work and perform well. Organizations
can show that they value the salespersons by involving them in
decision-making, paying them well, and also recognizing
achievements.
Skill sets refer to the various abilities and abilities that an
individual employee has that enable them to perform according
to expectations in an organization. The skill sets vary from the
type of sales employee; a salesperson needs more persuasion
skills while a sales manager might need more communication
skills and leadership skills (Kuczmarski & Kuczmarski, 2019).
An organization can ensure that it has the right skill set by
ensuring that the recruitment process is thorough and looks at
the practical skills of employees as well.
Global sales refer to the sales that an organization makes
outside the country where it is located. Global sales skills are
important in ensuring that an organization can effectively

penetrate an outside market. Global sales skills include
understanding the cultural differences and the language of the
target nation. A sales team needs to understand what is
offensive in other nations such as gestures, body language so
that they do not put off customers (Cuevas, 2018). The global
sales skill needed by sales managers includes effective
communication and an understanding of the trade regulations in
different countries. They need to be able to contact customers
remotely and manage sales teams in different locations.
The performance of any organization is important as it is
an indicator of growth and progress in an organization. When it
comes to the performance of employees it is directly related to
the rewards system in an organization. Employees need to be
motivated to put in extra work in the organization and the
easiest way for an organization to motivate employees is to
make them feel that they are appreciated and their efforts are
recognized. Employees and particularly sales employees work in
teams when the performance appraisal is done, it is important
that the best-performed employees are rewarded (Asaari et al,
2019). When this is done the other members of the team will be
inspired and motivated to increase productivity. An increase in
the productivity of an employee translates to the performance of
an organization in terms of sales and profitability.
Rewards are multidimensional and exist in different forms
and categories in different organizations. The two broad
categories that organizations offer are monetary and
nonmonetary rewards. Monetary rewards refer to those that have
an attached monetary value and may include salary raises,
commissions, cash gifts bonuses, and allowances. This form of
reward is mostly offered based on the performance of
employees. Organizations set targets, for instance for the sales
team there is a target for weekly sales, monthly sales, or annual
sales (Dikshit et al., 2018). Once this level has been achieved
an organization will decide to reward the top sales personnel in
monetary form.

Nonmonetary rewards are equally important in an
organization. Non Monetary rewards can exist in many forms
and one of them is a recognition reward. Some organizations
have awards such as, "salesperson of the year," or "employee of
the year". These rewards will go a long way in making
employees feel that they are part of an organization. Non
Monetary rewards also include trips, and even fringe benefits
such as medical allowances, retirement packages among others.
Intrinsic rewards refer to non-tangible rewards that a
salesperson or employee will get from their work. It is the
feeling of conscious satisfaction and the sense of achievement.
Intrinsic rewards come from within the employee that is doing a
particular task. On the other hand, extrinsic rewards refer to the
rewards that an individual gets from outside them. These
rewards can come from fellow sales employees or from the
employer (Andersen et al., 2018). The extrinsic reward shows
that somebody recognizes the effort that a sales personnel has
put into certain tasks and most of the time these rewards are
tangible.
Intrinsic rewards are very important and impact how well a
person performs their sales tasks. When an employee gets that
sense of achievement, they get positive emotional reactions
such as pride in their work, and feelings of accomplishment.
The sales staff then feel the need to work even harder in the
next assigned tasks so that they can have these positive
emotions in the future (Victor & Hoole, 2017). There is nothing
as powerful as being motivated from the inside as it helps these
sales employees to even set targets for themselves and become
very proud to be part of the sales team.
Extrinsic rewards play a role in the life of employees because
most of these rewards have a monetary value and money is
important to almost every individual as it helps one meet the
cost of living. These rewards can come even in a nonmonetary
form such as time off, advancement in career among others.
Extrinsic motivation helps sales staff feel that they are an
important part of an organization and their presence is

recognized. Organizations can use extrinsic rewards to motivate
a sales team. Once one of the team members is rewarded for
good performance the other employee will be inspired to work
harder because they want to get that recognition as well.
References
Andersen, L. B., Boye, S., & Laursen, R. (2018). Building
support? The importance of verbal
rewards for employee perceptions of governance
initiatives. International Public Management Journal, 21(1), 1-
32.
Asaari, M. H. A. H., Desa, N. M., & Subramaniam, L. (2019).
Influence of salary, promotion,
and recognition toward work motivation among government
trade agency employees. International Journal of Business and
Management, 14(4), 48-59.
Cuevas, J. M. (2018). The transformation of professional
selling: Implications for leading the
modern sales organization. Industrial Marketing
Management, 69, 198-208.
Dikshit, M. S. K., & Madan, M. V. (2018). HR Rewards system
and Employees motivation: An
Analysis. NOLEGEIN-Journal of Human Resource
Management & Development, 43-49.
Kuczmarski, S., & Kuczmarski, T. (2019). How rewards fuel or
fail innovation. Strategic HR
Review.
Kuvaas, B., Buch, R., Weibel, A., Dysvik, A., & Nerstad, C. G.
(2017). Do intrinsic and extrinsic
motivation relate differently to employee outcomes?. Journal of
Economic Psychology, 61, 244-258.
Victor, J., & Hoole, C. (2017). The influence of organisational
rewards on workplace trust and
work engagement. SA Journal of Human Resource
Week 7 Assignment Instructions and Sample R codes
Exploring Market Basket Analysis (Association Rule) with R

This assignment is to give you the hands-on experience with R
for conducting Market Basket Analysis (Association Rule) using
a real world data set. Please refer to the Chapter 14 in the
reference textbook (through the link at the bottom under
"Lessons") and Chapter 16 of the official textbook for details.
Then open this website, go over the example by using
groceries.csv data set and the same R codes to reproduce the
results step by step, study the way to explain the analysis in the
example.
Now use the same R codes to repeat the Market Basket analysis
as in the website but change the following support and
confidence to mine some 10 rules:
1. Set the minimum support to 0.001
2. Set the minimum confidence of 0.9
3. Show the top 10 rules
Now, under the Targeting Items, answer these questions (set the
minimum support to about 0.001 and minimum confidence to be
0.1)
1. What are customers likely to buy before buying yogurt?
2. What are customers likely to buy if they purchase yogurt?
3. What are customers likely to buy before buying chicken?
4. What are customers likely to buy if they purchase chicken?
Follow the website example closely step by step and use the
way the R outputs (numerical and graphical results) of the
analysis are explained in it to give insights to answers based on
the above required conditions. You may also refer to textbooks
to add some more numerical and graphical outputs to enrich
your analysis (for bobus points).
Please copy/paste screen images of your work in R, and put into
a Word document for submission. Be sure to
provide narrative of your answers (i.e., do not just copy/paste
your answers without providing some explanation of what you
did or your findings). Please include Introudction, R codes with
outputs, Figures and explanations with cover and reference
pages. A good conclusion to wrap up the assignment is also
expected. You also need to follow APA formats.

Reference
http://www.salemmarafi.com/code/market-basket-analysis-with-
r/
# Load the libraries
library(arules)
library(arulesViz)
library(datasets)
# Load the data set
data(Groceries)
# Create an item frequency plot for the top 20 items
itemFrequencyPlot(Groceries,topN=20,type="absolute")
# Get the rules
rules <- apriori(Groceries, parameter = list(supp = 0.001, conf =
0.8))
# Show the top 5 rules, but only 2 digits
options(digits=2)
inspect(rules[1:5])
rules<-sort(rules, by="confidence", decreasing=TRUE)
rules <- apriori(Groceries, parameter = list(supp = 0.001, conf =
0.8,maxlen=3))
subset.matrix <- is.subset(rules, rules)
subset.matrix[lower.tri(subset.matrix, diag=T)] <- NA
redundant <- colSums(subset.matrix, na.rm=T) >= 1
rules.pruned <- rules[!redundant]
rules<-rules.pruned
#Targeting Items
rules<-apriori(data=Groceries, parameter=list(supp=0.001,conf
= 0.08),
appearance = list(default="lhs",rhs="whole milk"),
control = list(verbose=F))
rules<-sort(rules, decreasing=TRUE,by="confidence")
inspect(rules[1:5])

rules<-apriori(data=Groceries, parameter=list(supp=0.001,conf
= 0.15,minlen=2),
appearance = list(default="rhs",lhs="whole milk"),
control = list(verbose=F))
rules<-sort(rules, decreasing=TRUE,by="confidence")
inspect(rules[1:5])
library(arulesViz)
plot(rules,method="graph", engine="interactive",shading=NA)
Market Basket Analysis with
Rhttp://www.salemmarafi.com/code/market-basket-analysis-
with-r/Association Rules
There are many ways to see the similarities between items.
These are techniques that fall under the general umbrella
of association. The outcome of this type of technique, in simple
terms, is a set of rules that can be understood as “if this, then
that”.Applications
So what kind of items are we talking about?
There are many applications of association:
· Product recommendation – like Amazon’s “customers who
bought that, also bought this”
· Music recommendations – like Last FM’s artist
recommendations
· Medical diagnosis – like with diabetes really cool stuff
· Content optimisation – like in magazine websites or blogs
In this post we will focus on the retail application – it is simple,
intuitive, and the dataset comes packaged with R making it
repeatable.The Groceries Dataset
Imagine 10000 receipts sitting on your table. Each receipt
represents a transaction with items that were purchased. The
receipt is a representation of stuff that went into a customer’s
basket – and therefore ‘Market Basket Analysis’.
That is exactly what the Groceries Data Set contains: a
collection of receipts with each line representing 1 receipt and
the items purchased. Each line is called a transaction and each
column in a row represents an item. You can download
the Groceries data set to take a look at it, but this is not a

necessary step.A little bit of Math
We already discussed the concept of Items and Item Sets.
We can represent our items as an item set as follows:
I = { i1,i2,…,in }
Therefore a transaction is represented as follows:
tn = { ij,ik,…,in }
This gives us our rules which are represented as follows:
{ i1,i2} => { ik}
Which can be read as “if a user buys an item in the item set on
the left hand side, then the user will likely buy the item on the
right hand side too”. A more human readable example is:
{coffee,sugar} => {milk}
If a customer buys coffee and sugar, then they are also likely to
buy milk.
With this we can understand three important ratios; the support,
confidence and lift. We describe the significance of these in the
following bullet points, but if you are interested in a formal
mathematical definition you can find it on wikipedia.
· Support: The fraction of which our item set occurs in our
dataset.
· Confidence: probability that a rule is correct for a new
transaction with items on the left.
· Lift: The ratio by which by the confidence of a rule exceeds
the expected confidence.
Note: if the lift is 1 it indicates that the items on the left and
right are independent.Apriori Recommendation with R
So lets get started by loading up our libraries and data set.#
Load the
librarieslibrary(arules)library(arulesViz)library(datasets)# Load
the data setdata(Groceries)
Lets explore the data before we make any rules:# Create an item
frequency plot for the top 20
itemsitemFrequencyPlot(Groceries,topN=20,type="absolute")
We are now ready to mine some rules!

You will always have to pass the minimum
required support and confidence.
· We set the minimum support to 0.001
· We set the minimum confidence of 0.8
· We then show the top 5 rules# Get the rulesrules <-
apriori(Groceries, parameter = list(supp = 0.001, conf = 0.8))#
Show the top 5 rules, but only 2
digitsoptions(digits=2)inspect(rules[1:5])
The output we see should look something like this lhs
rhs support confidence lift1 {liquor,red/blush wine}
=> {bottled beer} 0.0019 0.90 11.22 {curd,cereals}
=> {whole milk} 0.0010 0.91 3.63 {yogurt,cereals}
=> {whole milk} 0.0017 0.81 3.24 {butter,jam}
=> {whole milk} 0.0010 0.83 3.35 {soups,bottled
beer} => {whole milk} 0.0011 0.92 3.6
This reads easily, for example: if someone buys yogurt and
cereals, they are 81% likely to buy whole milk too.
We can get summary info. about the rules that give us some
interesting information such as:
· The number of rules generated: 410
· The distribution of rules by length: Most rules are 4 items
long
· The summary of quality measures: interesting to see ranges of
support, lift, and confidence.
· The information on the data mined: total data mined, and
minimum parameters.set of 410 rulesrule length distribution
(lhs + rhs): sizes 3 4 5 6 29 229 140 12 summary of
quality measures: support conf. lift Min.
:0.00102 Min. :0.80 Min. : 3.1 1st Qu.:0.00102 1st
Qu.:0.83 1st Qu.: 3.3 Median :0.00122 Median :0.85
Median : 3.6 Mean :0.00125 Mean :0.87 Mean : 4.0
3rd Qu.:0.00132 3rd Qu.:0.91 3rd Qu.: 4.3 Max.
:0.00315 Max. :1.00 Max. :11.2 mining info: data
n support confidence Groceries 9835 0.001
0.8Sorting stuff out
The first issue we see here is that the rules are not sorted. Often

we will want the most relevant rules first. Lets say we wanted to
have the most likely rules. We can easily sort by confidence by
executing the following code.rules<-sort(rules,
by="confidence", decreasing=TRUE)
Now our top 5 output will be sorted by confidence and therefore
the most relevant rules appear. lhs
rhs support conf. lift1 {rice,sugar}
=> {whole milk} 0.0012 1 3.92 {canned fish,hygiene
articles} => {whole milk} 0.0011 1 3.93 {root
vegetables,butter,rice} => {whole milk} 0.0010 1
3.94 {root vegetables,whipped/sour cream,flour} => {whole
milk} 0.0017 1 3.95 {butter,soft cheese,domestic eggs}
=> {whole milk} 0.0010 1 3.9
Rule 4 is perhaps excessively long. Lets say you wanted more
concise rules. That is also easy to do by adding a “maxlen”
parameter to your apriori function:rules <- apriori(Groceries,
parameter = list(supp = 0.001, conf =
0.8,maxlen=3))Redundancies
Sometimes, rules will repeat. Redundancy indicates that one
item might be a given. As an analyst you can elect to drop the
item from the dataset. Alternatively, you can remove redundant
rules generated.
We can eliminate these repeated rules using the follow snippet
of code:subset.matrix <- is.subset(rules,
rules)subset.matrix[lower.tri(subset.matrix, diag=T)] <-
NAredundant <- colSums(subset.matrix, na.rm=T) >=
1rules.pruned <- rules[!redundant]rules<-rules.prunedTargeting
Items
Now that we know how to generate rules, limit the output, lets
say we wanted to target items to generate rules. There are two
types of targets we might be interested in that are illustrated
with an example of “whole milk”:
· What are customers likely to buy before buying whole milk
· What are customers likely to buy if they purchase whole milk?
This essentially means we want to set either the Left Hand Side
and Right Hand Side. This is not difficult to do with R!

Answering the first question we adjust our apriori() function as
follows:rules<-apriori(data=Groceries,
parameter=list(supp=0.001,conf = 0.08), appearance =
list(default="lhs",rhs="whole milk"), control =
list(verbose=F))rules<-sort(rules,
decreasing=TRUE,by="confidence")inspect(rules[1:5])
The output will look like this: lhs
rhs supp. conf. lift1 {rice,sugar}
=> {whole milk} 0.0012 1 3.92 {canned fish,hygiene
articles} => {whole milk} 0.0011 1 3.93 {root
vegetables,butter,rice} => {whole milk} 0.0010 1
3.94 {root vegetables,whipped/sour cream,flour} => {whole
milk} 0.0017 1 3.95 {butter,soft cheese, domestic eggs}
=> {whole milk} 0.0010 1 3.9
Likewise, we can set the left hand side to be “whole milk” and
find its antecedents.
Note the following:
· We set the confidence to 0.15 since we get no rules with 0.8
· We set a minimum length of 2 to avoid empty left hand side
itemsrules<-apriori(data=Groceries,
parameter=list(supp=0.001,conf = 0.15,minlen=2),
appearance = list(default="rhs",lhs="whole milk"),
control = list(verbose=F))rules<-sort(rules,
decreasing=TRUE,by="confidence")inspect(rules[1:5])
Now our output looks like this: lhs rhs
support confidence lift1 {whole milk} => {other vegetables}
0.075 0.29 1.52 {whole milk} => {rolls/buns} 0.057
0.22 1.23 {whole milk} => {yogurt} 0.056 0.22
1.64 {whole milk} => {root vegetables} 0.049 0.19 1.85
{whole milk} => {tropical fruit} 0.042 0.17 1.66 {whole
milk} => {soda} 0.040 0.16 0.9Visualization
The last step is visualization. Lets say you wanted to map out
the rules in a graph. We can do that with another library called
“arulesViz”.library(arulesViz)plot(rules,method="graph",interac
tive=TRUE,shading=NA)
You will get a nice graph that you can move around to look like

this:
References
· Snowplow Market Basket Analysis
· Discovering Knowledge in Data: An Introduction to Data
Mining
· RDatamining.comResources
· Groceries Dataset
Running Head: RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
2
2
RECRUITMENT AND SELECTION
Recruitment and Selection of a sales force
Student’s Name
Institutional affiliation
Introduction
Sales is an essential element in any business because the sales
force represents the first point of contact between a business.
Hence, the hiring process must ensure that the people employed

are fit for the business. The process of recruitment involves
attracting a pool of applicants for various sales positions in a
business. In contrast, the selection process involves selecting
the best fit for the job from shortlisted candidates and giving
them a job in a business. This paper addresses the recruitment
and selection process for salesforce in detail.
Recruitment of a sales force
The recruitment process can be done in four steps; identification
of requirements, identification of sources of recruitment,
communicating the information and receiving applications.
1. Identification of requirements
The first step in recruiting the sales force is identifying a gap or
need for additional sales staff in the business. When a business
identifies the positions needed to be filled, it should also
identify the number of people needed for those positions.
Another important thing to note in this step is the job
description of the different sales positions, including the
educational and personal attributes needed for the different
positions (Pandey, 2017). Additionally, the job description
gives detailed functions and responsibilities of different
positions. At this point, the goal of a business at this point will
be to attract individuals who are equipped and willing to take on
the challenges associated with working in sales.
2. Identification of the sources of recruitment
A business can recruit its sales force from either external
sources or internal sources. A business will select the source
depending on the needs of the business and the nature of its
positions. Internal sources of recruitment can be transfers or
promotions. Transfers will involve moving a sales employee to
another branch of a business to occupy the same position as in
the previous branch. In contrast, promotions involve moving a
sales employee to a higher ranked position in the sales force
(Khandelwal & Kumar, 2019). Promotions will be very effective
in hiring a sales manager since it will mean hiring someone who
knows the organization well. A business can also recruit from
external sources such as employment agencies, educational

institutions, recommendations and advertisements. If a business
wishes to attract a large pool of applicants, then advertising the
vacancy or vacancies is the best option.
3. Communication
Once the business has identified where they can get their
salesforce, the next step will be communicating vacancies to the
intended audience. The information to be communicated will
include the qualifications of the sales employees, requirements,
job descriptions, and application methods. If a company is
recruiting from within an organization, it can effectively use its
notice board (Pandey, 2017). When external recruitment is
required, the sales positions can be advertised in different
media; broadcast, print, and social media.
4. Receiving applications
The recruitment process ends when a business receives the
application forms for the different positions advertised. When
advertising for applications, a business must indicate how the
applications can be sent, with the most effective methods being
via email or the company website (Hamza et al., 2021). When a
business receives the applications, they now have a pool of
applicants to select the sales staff.
Selection process
The selection process of a good sales force should be thorough
and will include the following steps.
1. Initial screening
The first step in the selection process involves initial screening
to eliminate applicants that are not fit for the job due to their
character, performance and educational history.
2. Filling an application form & Employee test.
A business will require the applicants to fill in a few details in
the application form, which are just simple, like the name of the
applicants and address. The forms will help gather verifiable
historical data from applicants. Once the management has a few
applicants, they can go ahead and do some tests to help assess
the qualifications and potential for success (Nikolaou, 2017).
Some employee tests could be oral, but most of them are

written. In recruiting a sales force, the business can include
some scenarios to assess the sales skills of an individual and
their ability to solve real business issues.
3. Job interviews
An interview will allow the applicants to exchange information
about the position applied. The applicants who will get to this
stage are promising candidates, and the interview is meant to
help choose the best fit for a business. Interviews must be
planned before ensuring that the interview content is sufficient
to recruit qualified and competent sales personnel. Planning of
an interview will include planning the location of the interview,
which should be quiet and with minimal distractions (Poláková,
2019). The interviewer(s) must know the sales applicants from
the previous steps and have listening skills and communicate
effectively. During the interview, the interviewers will need to
assess various types of information about the applications;
occupational experience, personal attributes, academic
achievement and organizational fit. The most important skills
needed for sales personnel will be interpersonal skills since
their jobs will involve interacting with customers, and hence
they need to have good interpersonal skills. The salespersons
will need to have persuasion skills to convince potential buyers
into becoming customers.
4. Conditional job offers
Since a business is not yet sure about an employees output, the
best thing is to give the applicants that pass the previous steps a
tentative job offer that will become permanent after an applicant
meets certain conditions (Billups & Podar, 2018).
5. Background investigation
The human resource team should conduct a background
investigation to help verify that an applicant's information in
their application forms and resume is accurate. The
investigation can also involve looking at the legal status and the
credit status of the applicant. The information that an
organization seeks can be found from the referees, credit
references, former employers and online searches (Popp et al.,

2020). The investigation is very important since past behaviour
will always be seen in an applicant's future behaviour.
6. Physical/Medical examination
It is important to assess that one is fit to perform the tasks
involved in sales in a business. An important examination is
looking at the mental stability and wellbeing of a person to
ensure they can work effectively in a sales position where they
are needed to interact with customers and fellow employees.
7. Permanent job offer
This is the final step in the recruitment process. Once an
organization is sure about the sales skills of an individual and
that they are fit for the positions, then a permanent job offer is
given to the applicant; an induction to the organization is
important to familiarize an employee with colleagues and the
organization.
Conclusion
Sales are an integral part of the business. The recruitment
and selection process of a salesforce must be comprehensive to
ensure that a business gets the right people for the job to help
boost sales and profits in a business. The recruitment will
include identifying a gap and receiving applications for a job
opening. If the selection process is done well, the salesforce
hired will be competent and equipped for their jobs.
References
Billups, M. J., & Poddar, A. (2018). Entry-level Salesperson
Selection: An Engaging
Experiential Exercise for Sales Management Students. Journal
for Advancement of Marketing Education, 26.
Hamza, P. A., Othman, B. J., Gardi, B., Sorguli, S., Aziz, H.
M., Ahmed, S. A., ... & Anwar, G.
(2021). Recruitment and Selection: The Relationship between

Recruitment and Selection with Organizational
Performance. International Journal of Engineering, Business and
Khandelwal, A., & Kumar, A. (2019). A study on recruitment
and selection process with
reference to current scenario in organizations. Malaya Journal
of Matematik (MJM), 7(3, 2019), 412-418.
Nikolaou, I. (2021). What is the Role of Technology in
Recruitment and Selection?. The Spanish
Journal of Psychology, 24.
Pandey, K. (2017). TLP for Sales Management & Promotion
Management/Sales Force
management 2016-2017.
Poláková, G. (2019). Multi-criteria decision making in
salesforce recruitment. Ekonomický a
finanční výzkum, 85.
Popp, N., Jensen, J. A., McEvoy, C. D., & Weiner, J. F. (2020).
An examination of the effects of
outsourcing ticket sales force management. International
Journal of Sports Marketing and Sponsorship.
1

PA 2
Sales Force Recruitment
Sales are the promotion of a new or an established product to
inform the target group and make profits. A salesperson is the
promoter of the product. For sales to be successful, from time,
certain immemorial abilities, either technical or mental, have
proved to necessitate success in this field. Accomplished sales
representatives at the highest level have had these traits.
Skills and traits were found to be relatively good predictors of
success for business-to-business institutional sales.
Skills and traits found to be good predictors of success include
research and information gathering, rapport building, closing
skills, product knowledge, sales presentation, and many more
(Dwivedi et al., 2021). For sales to be made between two
businesses, the knowledge of the products of the two parties
should be known beforehand; this provides for a curious and
informed trait in the sales representative. This provides the
parties with an upper hand and an understanding of how the
introduction of the new product affects their product. This
prevents any of the companies from experiencing a loss of any
kind. The institutions should also have a salesperson team with
good closing skills, offering a trait of persuasion. In sales,
closing the deal is of most importance and the critical aspect of

sales. Hence, an institution with a team that can convince and
instill a certain positive idea into the minds of the other
institution acts as a success to the institution.
Ordering assurance to the business that the sales will be made.
The product knowledge skills, which offers a trait of research
and curiosity of the salesperson or the team, offers an additional
advantage to the institutions, the salesperson or team can offer
conclusive and comprehensive information about the product, it
prompts the other institution into buying the product because
they completely understand what it is they intended to do with
it. Assertiveness which offers a trait of decision making, an
institution with an assertive sales representative holds an
advantage as the representative is well aware of what his
company needs and does, and his objectives in making the sales
are defined. Objectives can only be defined after an analysis of
data and information. Lastly, an institution with a sales
representative that creates a good connection with the other
institution is at an advantage. It provides a basis for future
commitments. Proving advantageous to the company of the
assurance of making a sale of an agreed amount at an agreed
time to the company. (Shwepker, &Good, 2010)
Skills and traits found to be good predictors in a job in sales.
Skills and traits found to be good predictors in a job in sales
include ability, curiosity, intelligence, innovation, and the
ability to resolve disputes. Sales are the backbone of most of
the businesses and revenue in a country. Institutions hardly
offer sales courses. Sales pitching proves to be one of the most
challenging jobs one can come across. Being prominent in sales
has called for curious, innovative, intelligent, and agile minds.
Curiosity as a trait that offers a skillset of research has the sales
representatives asking questions; it helps them make
connections with target groups, it also helps them learn and
widen the scope of how to improve their firm's product.
Curiosity gets the salesperson into digging on what the
preferences of the customers and proving that their products
meet the customers' requirements. Sales also call for an

innovative mind as a trait that offers a skill set of observation.
The salesperson should aim at fulfilling the needs of the
consumer. For that salesperson should come up with in-hand
solutions to solve the provided problem. Innovation provides
tips on sales. With the ability to move quickly and easily,
salespersons need to move from place to place to introduce or
emphasize the importance of their products. This calls for a
flexible and willing mind to overlook their geographical,
communication, or even historical barriers. The intelligence,
which offers a research skillset, provides a salesperson with
critical analysis and instills them with the required data. These
skill sets and traits have proven to be integral in the making of
an accomplished salesperson (Agodi, Ahaiwe, & Awah, 2017)
Comparison of salesperson characteristics in trade versus
missionary selling.
Missionary salespeople generally work for manufacturers
(Weilbaker, 1990). They communicate to manufacturers and
retailers on the availability of commodities, whereas trade
selling involves competition. Salespeople in trade selling aim to
win over other customers at the expense of the competition for
homogenous products. The most important distinction between
the two is the level of persuasion. In missionary selling, the
customers are well known. However, in trade selling,
salespersons need to convince their target group to embrace
their products and change their previous supplier, subjecting the
customers to high risks (Drobyazko et al., 2019). Trade selling
also calls for high-level decision-makers and stretches its
importance for assertive closing. The salesperson in trade
selling aims at closing the deal as soon as it can be possible.
However, the deals are already closed in missionary selling
since there is minimal competition (Rosson, & Ford, 2016).
Comparison of the most essential characteristics in technical
and new business selling
Technical selling involves the pitching of a product one is
entirely and able to describe. It aims at providing satisfaction to
the consumer. In contrast, the new business selling is the

pitching of a new product in the market. The information known
to the salesperson may be limited. In contrast, in a new business
selling, the salesperson seeks to make profits. The technical
salesperson should be curious and aim to deliver the right
product over profits.
Good salespeople are born, not made
Are good salespeople born or made? It is irrational to support
the above statement, which is mythical. Sure, some people are
born with inborn traits that are seen as necessary in pitching a
sale, but a talent not well refined is wasted. Salespeople are
therefore made and not born. Over the years, the number of
people partaking in business-related courses has been rising in
both genders. They are signaling an interest in the gaining and
refinement of skills among the population. Sales is a skill, and
some people can pitch sales faster than others, but this can only
happen after some refinements in the set of skills already
acquired.
References
Agodi, J. E., Ahaiwe, E. O., & Awah, A. E. (2017). Salesman’s
Personality Trait and Its Effect on Sales Performance: Study of
Fast-Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) in Abia State, Nigeria.
Journal of Economics and sustainable development, 8(24).
Drobyazko, S., Barwińska-Małajowicz, A., Ślusarczyk, B.,
Zavidna, L., & Danylovych-Kropyvnytska, M. (2019).

Innovative entrepreneurship models in the management system
of enterprise competitiveness. Journal of Entrepreneurship
Education, 22(4), 1-6.
Dwivedi, Y. K., Ismagilova, E., Rana, N. P., & Raman, R.
(2021). Social media adoption, usage and impact in business-to-
business (B2B) context: A state-of-the-art literature review.
Information Systems Frontiers, 1-23.
Rosson, P. J., & Ford, I. D. (2016). Stake, conflict, and
performance in export marketing channels. In Proceedings of
the 1979 Academy of Marketing Science (AMS) Annual
Conference (pp. 66-69). Springer, Cham.
Schwepker, C., & Good, D. (2010). TRANSFORMATIONAL
LEADERSHIP AND ITS IMPACT ON SALES FORCE MORAL
JUDGMENT. The Journal of Personal Selling and Sales
Management, 30(4), 299-317. Retrieved August 5,
2021, from http://www.js HYPERLINK
"http://www.jstor.org/stable/25765006"tor.org/stable/25765006
Weilbacher, D. (1990). The Identification of Selling Abilities
Needed for Missionary Type Sales. The Journal of Personal
Selling and Sales Management, 10(3), 45-58.
Retrieved August 5, 2021, from
http://www.jstor.org/stable/40471383

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