Storytelling by the sales force and its effect on personal selling and buyer-seller relationships

Abstract

Scope and Method of Study: Though often observed in the field, storytelling by the sales force in not widely studied in the marketing literature. Collection and analysis of data from interviews and field observation of forty nine buyers and sellers served as a starting point. By combining these initial results with what is known about storytelling in the humanities, psychology, management, and advertising literature, a basic framework for analyzing stories in the sales setting was developed. This led to the design of three experiments that compare stories from a personal versus business point of view across three potential topic areas covering the self or the firm, the product, and human interests. Relationship orientation served as a potential moderator of storytelling effects on customer attitudes toward the salesperson and the product. Purchase intentions also served as a dependent variable.

Findings and Conclusions: The analysis showed that the main effects of personal versus business story type, if present, were quite small. Moderation by relationship orientation was not significant. The effect of attitude toward the product was significant in all three studies. The effect of attitude toward the salesperson on purchase intentions was significant in only the first study, with the effect being fully or partially mediated by attitude toward the product in all three studies. Post study analysis also indicated that the topic of the story may be more important than the personal versus business story type, at least in the onetime encounter of these experiments.