An investigation into the organizational factors that affect the export sales effectiveness in Greek exporting SMEs

Abstract

This research aims to elaborate existing literature by investigating the impact of the organizational factors that affect the export sales effectiveness within sales force control systems; behaviour- and outcome-based sales control, reward and compensation schemes for salespeople, territory design satisfaction, firm size, export orientation of sales strategy and sales management experience in exports. A theoretical framework is proposed and tested on a sample of 160 Greek exporting SMEs. Research results provide supportive evidence of the positive contribution of (1) behaviour-based sales control; (2) outcome-based sales control; (3) reward and compensation schemes for salespeople; (4) territory design satisfaction, and (5) firm size in export performance. On the contrary, export orientation of sales strategy was found to have no significant correlation with export effectiveness. It appears that high-performing export sales units seem to make higher use of outcome-based sales control attributes compared to low performing ones. A positive association between reward and compensation schemes and (1) behaviour-based and (2) outcome-based sales control for high performing export sales units is identified. The effect of reward and compensation schemes for salespeople on export sales effectiveness is significantly higher when the intensity of export performance is lower. The influence of sales territory design satisfaction with export sales effectiveness is significantly higher when the intensity of export performance is lower. The findings suggest a significant positive relationship between sales territory design satisfaction and outcome-based control. They also indicate that the effect of firm size is stronger when the intensity of export performance is higher. Furthermore, a strong positive correlation between firm size and (1) behaviour-based, and (2) outcomebased sales control seems to appear.