Our discussion throughout this book has focused on the topic of selling and sales management. Based on the X-Be framework, a comprehensive roadmap to effectively manage the sales activities from the low-level inter- actions between the involved people all the way to the overall and strategic planning of corporate sales was presented. But, when we were developing the ideas that underlie this framework and the corresponding roadmap, our thoughts were not limited to selling. They were much broader than that, as they were concerned with the fundamentals of reward-oriented behaviors in social interactions in general. As discussed in social exchange theory, the analysis of these behaviors can further refine our understanding of a variety of social situations in which exchange takes place. We wanted to gain some insights into the intrinsic characteristics of social interactions, and we wanted to do it by imposing theprinciple of parsimonyon us.
The literature on selling and sales management is abundant, but very few authors have taken on the challenge of explaining the complexity of selling and sales management on the basis of a parsimonious framework – a framework that is made up of only a few operational elements, yet is able to account for various selling and sales management situations logically and effectively. Many contributions to the body of knowledge of sales management come down to piling-up case studies, sales stories, formal codes, and appeals to “common sense.” These contributions are usually not presented in an integrated fashion from a perspective of the customer’s value-pursuing behavior, which makes it difficult for the sales commu- nity to leverage them in a systematic way within the highly competitive corporate world.
In this book, we took a completely different approach. We devel- oped an integrated, parsimonious, and logically based framework to help conduct the various selling and sales management operations in a system- atic, effective, and efficient manner. As was demonstrated in the previous 177
chapters, this framework has applications in many key activities that take place in a sales department and beyond; this includes, but not limited to, managing sales opportunities, generating sales forecast, constructing sound judgments about customers, planning sales events, managing cus- tomer objections, guiding the communication with the customers, design- ing adequate sales offers, developing a team-oriented environment for selling and sales management, constructively evaluating salespeople per- formance, effective handling of competition, activity-based costing, and practicing management by objectives. The X-Be tool that is used to carry out such activities is a Simple Algebraic Language to Engineer Satisfac- tion(SALES) of both parties involved in the exchange.
But, while the focus here is on selling and sales management, we believe that the framework can be extended to the study of other types of human interactions where some kind of value exchange needs to take place. In this respect, the X-Be framework’s ideas can be used to develop insightful agent-based models to describe and simulate the behavior of emergent struc- tures such as markets, economies, organizations, communities, and so on.
In this chapter, we leave aside the benefits and potential applications of the X-Be framework and we focus on its theoretical foundations. We do that by looking at the connections between the X-Be concepts and some selected topics that stem from various scientific disciplines. The discus- sion will be brief but multiple and will concern the fields of philosophy of science, decision sciences, cognitive psychology, behavioral studies, sociology, and systems engineering. The main purpose of this discussion is to highlight the contributions of these disciplines to our understanding of the issues of exchange behavior and provide indications about how we intend to advance our future research in this area.
SALES AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
At the heart of our framework for the exchange behavior in selling and sales management is the proposition that sales behavior, however subjec- tive may be its particulars, and no matter how much uncertainty it may evince, can, in theory and practice, be analyzed, planned, and systematized – and thus, considered using some elements of the scientific method. If we were writing a book on another topic such as mechanics, thermody- namics, and quantum physics, we would not have to state and discuss a proposition like this one. It would have been obvious to the readers; these topics are after all part of what we call natural sciences. But in the case of selling and sales management, the reader may have legitimate reasons to
SALES AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE 179 be wary of claims such as these. Broad dicta about sales activity present few theoretic objects to be substantiated and discussed in scientific circles.
Too, the rhetoric of science is often deployed irresponsibly, simply to add an air of legitimacy.
Science is highly esteemed. Apparently, there is a widely held belief that there is something special about science and its methods. The naming of some claim or line of reasoning or piece of research “scientific” is done in a way that is intended to imply some kind of merit or special kind of reliability…Advertisements frequently assert that a particular product has been scientifically shown to be whiter, more potent, more sexually appealing or in some way superior to rival products…The high regard for science is not restricted to everyday life and the popular media. It is evident in the scholarly and academic world too. Many areas of study are now described as sciences by their supporters, presumably in an effort to imply that the methods used are as firmly based and as potentially fruitful as in a traditional science such as physics or biology.
A. F. Chalmers (1982) –What is This Thing Called Science?
But this is not to say that the “soft” disciplines have nothing to learn from the natural sciences. The broad paradigm of observation, analysis, induction, deduction can still be of use – not merely in social disciplines (which are, it is true, striving for scientific legitimacy), but in everyday life. Our claim is that certain elements of the scientific method can be usefully applied to the study of sales for the benefit of salespeople, sales managers, and sales researchersThe approach that we propose consists in inventing a small number of operational elements on the basis of empirical studies and relevant principles and constructing a theoretical framework with these elements to account for the complex nature of selling and sales management.
At present, most sales studies are focused on piling-up business cases or sales stories. This “facts only” approach cannot reveal much, for raw facts have relevant meanings only when they are looked at within a certain conceptual framework [as per the thesis of the theory dependence of observation (Kuhn, 1962)] – they are just stimuli that would not be useful unless they are interpreted, synthesized, and converted into meaningful actions, in the same way as does data, which become useful when it is elevated to the level of information, and then knowledge. But, for a salesperson to convert raw facts into actions, she needs a theory, a conceptual framework that helps her analyze the “facts” and synthesize them. As psychologist Kurt Lewin said, indeed, “experience alone does not create knowledge” – “there is nothing so practical as a good theory”.
In this book, we propose such a “theory” for the field of selling and sales
management – a “theory” that is embodied in the X-Be framework and its (1+7) elements.
We should also note that the need for such a framework to interpret
“facts” and “experience” is not unique to social sciences; it is also the case in natural sciences as has been revealed in philosophy of science. Some remarks by, Francois Jacob (1995), a Nobel Prize winner for medicine, in his autobiography, The Statue Within, might be illuminating in this respect:
Contrary to what I once thought, scientific progress did not consist simply in observing, in accumulating experimental facts and drawing up a theory from them. It began with the invention of a possible world, or a fragment thereof, which was then compared by experimentation to the real world. And it was this constant dialogue between imagination and experiment that allowed one to form an increasingly fine-grained conception of what is called reality.
In our research on selling and sales management, the “possible world”
that we envision – and to which we aspire – is one in which selling and sales management could be analyzed using a SALES of both parties involved in the exchange. “Simple” so that all employees involved in the sales process are able to implement it with no major difficulty; “Algebraic”
so that salespeople and sales managers can carry out meaningful operations on the various concepts used in the language SALES. But, to develop such a language, we need a theoretical framework on the basis of which the language alphabet and operations can be designed.
To set our inquiry for the development of such a framework on a sound track, we must first of all define what we mean by selling: Selling is the process in which a party (the seller) searches for, communicates, and interacts with another party (the buyer) for a certain exchange to take place to the satisfaction of both parties.
Selling can thus take place regardless of what form of communication and interaction is used (electronic or non-electronic, personal or non- personal) and regardless of what type of exchange will take place (items, services). Under this definition, successful selling behavior is measured by a mutually satisfactory exchange between both parties involved. With this in mind, we can initiate our inquiry for the development of a theoretical framework for selling and sales management.
The inquiry process is tripartite. Firstly, we must think about our research paradigm and decide about the beliefs and basic knowledge that we will use to account for human behavior. As we have already mentioned, these are rooted in other disciplines including decision sciences, cognitive psychology, and behavioral studies; as for the research paradigm, it is