The impact of organizational social networks on salespeople’s negative headquarters stereotypes

Extant sales management literature shows that holding negative headquarters stereotypes (NHS) by salespeople is harmful to their sales performance. However, there is a lack of research on how managers can leverage organizational structures to minimize NHS in sales forces. This study aims to know how social network patterns influence the flow of NHS among salespeople and sales managers in a large B2B sales organization.

The authors hypothesize and test whether patterns of social networks among salespeople and sales managers determine the stereotypical attitudes of salespeople toward corporate directors and, eventually, impact their sales performance. The authors analyzed a multi-level data set from the B2B sales forces of a large US-based media company.

The authors found that organizational social network properties including the sales manager’s team centrality, sales team’s network density and sales team’s external connectivity moderate the flow of NHS from sales managers and peer salespeople to a focal salesperson.

First, the data was cross-sectional and did not allow the authors to examine the dynamics of social network patterns and their impact on NHS. Second, The authors only focused on advice-seeking social networks and did not examine other types of social networks such as friendship and trust networks. Third, the context was limited to one company in the media industry.

The authors provide recommendations to sales managers on how to leverage and influence social networks to minimize the development and flow of NHS in sales forces.

The findings advance existing knowledge on how NHS gets shared and transferred in sales organizations. Moreover, this study provides crucial managerial insights with regard to controlling and managing NHS in sales forces.