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.