Over the course of the past decade, the role of marketing strategy within the broad domain of strategic management has gained credence ( Slater & Olson, 2000). Researchers have increasingly emphasized the importance of pursuing a market orientation, customer orientation, and/or a customer mind-set (Kirca, Jayachandran, & Bearden, 2005). Accordingly, firms have pursued an organization-wide focus on both understanding the customer and disseminating this knowledge to employees throughout the organization ([Deshpande, 1999] and [Kennedy et al., 2002]). In order to improve performance, employees must understand customer expectations and requirements and also commit to creating satisfied customers (Day, 1994).
Many researchers recognize that salespeople play an important role in accomplishing a customer mind-set (Chonko, Tanner, & Smith, 1991). In fact, Webster (1965) went as far to suggest that the salesperson's ability to gather information is perhaps an even more critical capability than their ability to promote. Research has supported the notion that salespeople can be used to promote a customer orientation. As boundary spanners, salespeople have access to external information that they can use to shape strategy internally ([Hutt et al., 1988] and [Slater and Olson, 2000]). Furthermore, salespeople are well-positioned to communicate strategic information generated at the point of customer contact to key managers within the company (Swanson, Kelly, & Dorsch, 1997).
Still, how firms utilize specific sales knowledge of the customer to gain advantage remains poorly understood. In some companies, salespeople are not always encouraged to serve a strategic communication role, i.e., generate new knowledge and disseminate it to managers (Floyd & Lane, 2000). Practitioners, as well as some academics, have even questioned whether sales force participation in strategic communication will have a positive impact on performance. Critics suggest that as salespeople engage in more diverse roles, such activity may take time away from selling (Jones, Roberts, & Chonko, 2000).
In order to better understand the salesperson's role in strategic communication (and ultimately in developing a customer mind-set throughout the organization), this paper (1) identifies potential antecedents of salesperson participation in strategic communication activity, and (2) attempts to clarify the nature of the relationship existing between salesperson participation in strategic communication and the individual's performance. Based in principles of vertical dyad linkage theory ([Graen, 1975] and [Lagace, 1990]), we develop and empirically test hypotheses concerning whether the firm's selling strategy, orientation toward change, and the salesperson's reported level of trust in the manager affect the extent of communication-based strategic activity performed by the salesperson. Further, we investigate whether an increased level of strategic communication influences individual sales performance (refer to Fig. 1 for a depiction of these relationships).
