In the contemporary business world, the commercialization of innovations is the backbone of most major global organizations. The business environment is highly competitive. Innovation and technology are among the factors that organizations use to gain a competitive advantage. However, successfully selling innovation through motivating sales representatives is a uniquely omplex process. A more in-depth understanding of the motivation dynamics and the impact on sales rep is essential in selling innovative services and products. Understanding the complex role played by cultural imprint in motivating people would help in pushing innovation products.
Selling innovative products is very intricate as compared to selling well established products. This makes it crucial for managers have to motivate their employees well. First, these products are complex to understand; therefore, sales representatives should be encouraged to study the products and understand them thoroughly. Besides, the new products come along with the functionality and reliability uncertainties. Also, the sales representatives have to be well motivated to eliminate the fear of spoiling good client relationship due to the new product misinformation (Arli, Bauer, and Palmatier, 2018). In short, sales representatives’ motivation is vital in innovation selling; hence managers should understand the motivation concept. For managers to understand how to motivate sale representatives from diverse cultural backgrounds, it is important to understand the different cultural backgrounds.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Unlike prior researches, Hohenberg and Homburg (2016) investigate the impact of cultural imprint in motivating sales representatives for innovation selling. Most of the research on sales representative motivation has been done locally; thus, the cultural diversity factor is not extensively explained as done by Hohenberg and Homburg. The study involves 38 countries in four different continents with distinct cultures. The research found that as much as specific steering instruments should be used to motivate sales representatives for innovative results, cultural imprint should never be ignored (Hohenberg, and Homburg, 2016). Based on Hofstede's four dimensions, (power distance, long-term orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and individualism), the force steering instruments should be aligned to the cultural imprints of the representatives.
In the globalized business environment, no one can dispute the authors' conclusion that cultural difference plays an intricate role in motivating sales representatives. The results of the research undoubtedly show how steering measures have different impacts in different cultures. For instance, people in highly individualistic countries such as the United States respond better to compensation-related rewards compared to those from less individualistic cultures ( Hohenberg and Homburg, 2016) . Furthermore, sales representatives in power-distant cultures such as India and China respond well to formal awards. The steering measures such as formal awards bring supervisors direct to employees; therefore, suppervisor appreciation becomes a better alternative in such power-distant cultures. Also, in high uncertainty avoidance cultures such as Belgium, supervisor appreciation better motivates sale representatives compared to supervisor support or variable compensation steering instruments (Hohenberg, and Homburg, 2016). However, supervisor appreciation will have lower success probability in high individualism cultures. Therefore, the cultural imprint determines the best alternative steering instruments for motivating sales representatives for innovation selling in different cultures.
The findings and conclusions of this research are very crucial, especially for the multi-national corporations which aim at using innovation to create and sustain a competitive advantage. Managers must understand that a successful motivation steering instrument in a given country may not be successful if it is implemented in another country with a different culture. Thus, before settling on any motivation steering instrument, it is essential to have a comprehensive analysis of the cultural imprint. Therefore, managers should strive to align the sales force steering instruments to the cultural footprint. However, this is not to say that cultural imprint is the sole factor that determines the success of motivation steering instruments .
References
Arli, D., Bauer, C., & Palmatier, R. W. (2018). Relational selling: Past, present and future. Industrial Marketing Management , 69 , 169-184.
Hohenberg, S., & Homburg, C. (2016). Motivating sales representatives for innovation selling in different cultures. Journal of Marketing , 80 (2), 101-120.
