Abstract Organizational buyers are increasingly employing competitive tenders with objective buying criteria to mitigate the influence of personal relationships with suppliers and reduce the overall cost of buying. This paper investigates the role of salespeople’s relationships with buyers (i.e., purchasing managers) and how they affect supplier selection in such contexts. Drawing on data from 428 tenders across different buying organizations, this study shows that the quality of the salesperson’s relationship with the buyer influences the buyer’s evaluation of the tender proposal, which, in turn, affects supplier selection. Thus, the results support an indirect effect of salesperson relationship on supplier selection even in a tender context. In addition, the results indicate that the effect of a salesperson’s relationship on buyer’s proposal evaluation is contingent on the comprehensibility of suppliers’ proposals and buyer’s product knowledge. These results have significant theoretical and managerial implications for both buyers and suppliers in business-to-business (B2B) tender contexts.

中文翻译：

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销售人员在竞争性招标中重要吗？

摘要 组织采购商越来越多地采用具有客观采购标准的竞争性招标，以减轻与供应商的个人关系的影响并降低采购的总体成本。本文调查了销售人员与采购员（即采购经理）关系的作用，以及在这种情况下他们如何影响供应商选择。本研究利用来自不同采购组织的 428 份投标的数据，表明销售人员与买方的关系质量会影响买方对投标建议的评估，进而影响供应商的选择。因此，结果支持销售人员关系对供应商选择的间接影响，即使在投标环境中也是如此。此外，结果表明，销售人员关系对买方建议书评估的影响取决于供应商建议书的可理解性和买方对产品的了解。这些结果对企业对企业 (B2B) 招标环境中的买方和供应商具有重要的理论和管理意义。