The relationship between effective counseling and effective selling behaviors

Increasingly, attempts to improve the relative status of salespeople are being undertaken by both practitioners and academicians. These attempts have included changes in the ways in which sales personnel are described and changes in the salesperson′s job description and training. Frequently, sales representatives are referred to as sales consultants, sales advisors, and sales counselors; and their job descriptions have been changed to emphasize the consulting, advising,and counseling roles. The research question addressed examines whether effective counseling behavior is related positively and significantly to effective sales performance. Counseling behaviors of 113 automobile sales representatives were measured and their relationship to sales performance assessed. The results indicate that sales performance is positively and significantly related to the sales representative′s congruity, but unrelated to other measures of counseling behavior.