Contrary to the intuition that salespeople gravitate toward big-whale sales opportunities, in reality they often avoid them. To study this phenomenon, the authors integrate contingent decision-making and conservation-of-resources theories to develop and test a framework of salespeople's decision making when prospecting. Study 1 reveals that the performance impact of salesperson initial judgment of opportunity magnitude follows an inverted U shape, indicating that salespeople's avoidance of large opportunities results from rational benefit–cost analyses due to their conservation of resources. Interestingly, salespeople use a calibration decision-making strategy (i.e., calculating expected benefits by accounting for conversion uncertainty) at the portfolio rather than prospect level, in solution- but not product-selling contexts. Ignoring this calibration effect can lead to under- or overestimation of conversion rates of up to 100%. Study 2 shows that salespeople's past performance success and experience bias this calibration. Simulations reveal that when high performers or inexperienced salespeople believe their portfolio magnitude is large and conversion uncertainty low, they are less concerned about resource conservation and improve their quota attainment by 50%. Study 3 confirms the theoretical mechanism. These findings shed new lights on salespeople's decision making and suggest ways for sales professionals to improve effectiveness when prospecting.

与销售人员倾向于大鲸鱼销售机会的直觉相反，实际上他们经常避免这些机会。为研究这一现象，作者将权变决策和资源节约理论相结合，以开发和测试销售人员在探矿时的决策框架。研究 1 表明，销售人员对机会大小的初步判断对绩效的影响呈倒 U 形，表明销售人员对大机会的回避是由于他们对资源的节约而进行的理性收益成本分析。有趣的是，销售人员使用校准决策策略（即，通过考虑转换不确定性来计算预期收益）在解决方案而不是产品销售环境中的投资组合而不是前景级别。忽略这种校准效应可能会导致对转化率的低估或高估高达 100%。研究 2 表明，销售人员过去的业绩成功和经验会使这种校准产生偏差。模拟显示，当表现出色或缺乏经验的销售人员认为他们的投资组合规模较大且转换不确定性较低时，他们不太关心资源保护，并将配额实现率提高 50%。研究 3 证实了理论机制。这些发现为销售人员的决策提供了新的思路，并为销售专业人员在寻找潜在客户时提高效率提供了建议。