Allocation of Salespeople's resources for generating new sales opportunities across four types of customers

This investigation seeks to (1) identify various external and internal resources available to salespeople and (2) discern which resources are most likely use during the interest generation stage within each customer type. Employing a panel of experienced salespeople, the study identifies three external firm-based resources (firm tangible, firm-intangible, and firm-market based) and four internal salespeople based resources (personal, knowledge, skills, and accumulated success). By examining salespeople-level variance on resource allocation within new, short-, long-, and win-back customers, the findings suggest that salespeople adaptively utilize different resources for each type of relationship quality. Successful strategies in identifying new sales opportunities while initiating, developing, maintaining and reviving satisfaction and trust depend on the magnitude and kind of relational resources allocation.