Call for Papers

Thought Leadership on the Sales Profession

We are pleased to announce a unique conference that promotes scholarship and teaching on the sales profession, bringing together an exclusive group of C-suite sales leaders and the world’s thought-leading academics. The conference will stimulate the discussion of cutting-edge research ideas and emerging trends in the field.

In our past conferences at Harvard, Columbia, HEC-Paris, and Stanford, we have had the editors of Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, and Management Science present and a host of other practice-based publications such as Harvard Business Review and Sloan Management Review.

It will be an exclusive group of participants, as we plan to grant admission by invitation or by paper selection only. Interested academics should submit proposals for competitive sessions. Authors of accepted proposals will receive invitations to present their work.

We encourage you to submit your best work in professional selling and sales force management. The submissions should be in the form of 3 to 5 slides that highlight the following:

• Problem – identify the practical problem addressed and why it is important
• Approach – briefly outline your approach (the focus of your presentation should not be methodological, but we do want rigorous methods to support the research)
• Results – highlight your key results
• Implications for Practice – specify how your results can help managers make strategic decisions

Submissions should also include 200-word abstracts (no paper needed). Submission to the conference does not preclude your work from being published by any journal.

We expect the presentations to focus on substantive questions, key findings, and managerial implications. These presentations should provide valuable insights for practitioners and stimulate idea generation that could spark important contributions to the field of sales and sales management.

The deadline to submit your slides and abstract is January 15th, 2023. A committee of leading academics and noted practitioners will select the papers to be presented at the conference.

Please email your submissions to salesthoughtleadership2023@gmail.com by January 15, 2023 at the latest.

Sincerely,

Michael Ahearne
Professor and C.T. Bauer Chair in Marketing
Research Director, Sales Excellence Institute
Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship
C.T. Bauer College of Business
University of Houston

Johannes Habel
Associate Professor of Marketing
Sales Excellence Institute
Department of Marketing and Entrepreneurship
C.T. Bauer College of Business
University of Houston

Thomas Steenburgh
Richard S. Reynolds Professor of Business Administration
Senior Associate Dean for the Residential MBA Program
Darden School of Business
University of Virginia