Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

Call for Papers

Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
Special Issue on “The Intersection of Professional Selling and Service”

The Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management (JPSSM) is pleased to announce and invites research article submissions for a special issue on Selling & Sales Management in The Intersection of Professional Selling and Service that is scheduled for publication in Spring, 2017. JPSSM is the premier international journal that is devoted exclusively to the publication of peer-reviewed articles related to personal selling and sales management.

Special Issue Background Information

Recent discussions regarding frontline employee management have begun to highlight the intersection of sales and service. Most practitioners and academics would agree regarding the synergistic impact and importance of both the personal selling process and service. Arguably, in achieving a true consultative sales approach, sales and service are inseparable. Thus, while to date they have been treated as separate research areas, there is reason to begin to question where the sales process stops and service begins, and, perhaps more fundamentally, if they are truly separable.

In many organizations the sales and customer service departments are operated as separate groups with the sales force being responsible for bringing the customer to company and the customer service department ensuring they stay. Unfortunately, this often creates tension between the sales and service functions which can reduce firm and individual performance. For example, customer service departments complain that the sales department makes promises that cannot be fulfilled. On the other hand, the sales department complains that the customer service department fails in providing an adequate level of post-sale service to their clients. Although these realities exist in the workplace, to date there has been little guidance from academics regarding these and other critical sales and service related topics.

Against this background, manuscripts are invited for a special issue of JPSSM on “The Intersection of Professional Selling and Service.” All research approaches and methodologies are welcome. Comprehensive conceptual frameworks and innovative methodological approaches are especially encouraged. Papers should be both theoretically well-grounded and managerially relevant. From a meso-paradigm perspective, research questions could examine issues at the organizational level, team/manager-level, front-line employee, and/or customer level. Papers adopting a multi-level perspective bracketing different levels will be viewed favorably.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Cross-functional coordination between sales and services
• The effects of information silos and knowledge structures housed in separate business units that carry across the same customer(s)
• Utilization of post-sales service information to enhance future sales engagement
• Does extraordinary service (achieving customer delight) translate into significant sales performance gains?
• What role does the salesperson have in providing service and what effect does service have in the sales process?
• How is co-creation of value different across the sales process and service process?
• The relative role of the sales process in service dominant economies
• Can a positive service experience compensate for a negative sales experience, and vice-versa?
• What is the relative effect of sales versus service on firm performance?
• Is it truly possible to run an ambidextrous organization that places a significant emphasis on both sales and service?
• Is there a synergistic or trade-off effect of a sales and service focus?
• What are the relative roles of sales and service for firms engaging in service infusion strategies and how might those roles change across the service infusion process?

Submission Information:

The deadline for submission of manuscripts is December 1, 2015. Papers must follow JPSSM guidelines for authors. For more information, please visit

http://jpssm.org/index.php/contributor-s-instructions/initial-submission

Manuscripts will go through the regular JPSSM review process. Only original papers not currently under review or published elsewhere may be submitted. Manuscripts should be submitted through the normal JPSSM submission process using ScholarOne Manuscripts, the online submission and peer review system. Registration and access is available at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jpssm. While submitting, please select “Special Issue Submission – Sales and Service” under “Manuscript Type”. For further information, please contact the Special Issue Co-Editors:

Adam Rapp
Ralph and Lucy Schey Associate Professor of Sales
Ohio University
Department of Marketing
201c Copeland Hall
Athens, OH 45701
Email: rappa@ohio.edu
Phone: (740) 593-2084

Thomas L. Baker, Associate Professor
University of Alabama
Box 870225
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487
Phone: (205) 348-8928
Email: tbaker@cba.ua.edu

 

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