Managing Adaptive Selling Behaviors through the Regulatory Fit Approach.

Abstract

The importance of adaptive selling is widely recognized in the sales literature. However, previous research has primarily focused on the degree to which salespeople change their behaviors between sales orientation versus customer orientation through developed scales (i.e., SOCO and ADAPTS), leaving the appropriateness of adaptations to rigorous academic questioning and study. Bringing individual differences to the fore, this study examines closely how the regulatory focus theory (RFT), a theory of motivation and self-regulatory orientation that has been rapidly gaining prominence in the field of psychology, can be drawn from to explain a variety of buyer decision making phenomena. In this way the study extends the application of RFT to business-to-business (B2B) service industries. This work finds that the regulatory focus orientation of buyers plays an important role in moderating the relationships between selling behaviors and regulatory fit outcomes. To be more specific, this study suggests that inspirational appeal and collaboration are more effective when used with promotion-focused buyers, while personal appeal tactic tends to be more appropriate with prevention-focused buyers. The findings establish and illustrate a usable manuscript for tailoring sales influence tactics to different buyer regulatory orientations in a theoretically prescribed manner. By doing so, the study enables salespeople to positively influence the regulatory fit outcomes.