Abstract As the focus on the effectiveness of salespeople has increased, we concentrate on the fact that selling involves broad sets of actors and investigate the approaches and behaviors of salespeople from the perspective of the purchasing agent to develop a deeper theoretical understanding of the effectiveness of salesperson strategies. Our focus is on the purchasing function that is increasingly involved in the buying process, and we examine a central research question—how does the purchasing function view salespeople’s strategies and behaviors? We describe the results of in-depth interviews with 35 purchasing executives that focused on how the purchasing function views salespeople’s strategies and behaviors. The findings suggest that salespeople, in general, do not focus enough on the needs of the purchasing function. Salespeople are not meeting the purchasing function needs, and purchase-centered sales strategies may need to be developed. These findings have theoretical and managerial implications and offer directions for future research in this area.

中文翻译：

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采购职能对销售人员的评估：对销售人员角色演变的影响

摘要 随着对销售人员有效性的关注越来越多，我们关注销售涉及广泛的行为者这一事实，从采购代理的角度研究销售人员的方法和行为，以加深对销售人员有效性的理论理解。策略。我们的重点是越来越多地参与购买过程的采购职能，我们研究了一个核心研究问题——采购职能如何看待销售人员的策略和行为？我们描述了对 35 位采购主管的深入访谈结果，重点关注采购职能部门如何看待销售人员的策略和行为。调查结果表明，一般来说，销售人员对采购职能的需求关注不够。销售人员没有满足采购职能的需求，可能需要制定以采购为中心的销售策略。这些发现具有理论和管理意义，并为该领域的未来研究提供了方向。