Multi-Tasking Incentives in B2B Sales: Fostering Multi-Tasking or Creating Goal Confusion?
(A2023-114473)

AUTHORS

Marcel Keen, Ruhr-Universität Bochum; Sascha Alavi, University of Bochum; Martin Krämer, University of Houston; Sebastian Hohenberg, The University of Münster (WWU)

ABSTRACT

Salespeople’s work is growing increasingly multi-faceted and complex as they bear responsibility for the essential tasks of customer acquisition and retention. By employing multi-tasking incentives (MTIs), sales organizations account for salespeople’s multi-tasking focus and aim for optimal behavior steering and performance realization in such multi-tasking situations. To advance knowledge on effects of such MTIs, we examined data from a quasi-natural field experiment with an international telco company which implemented such an incentive scheme. By employing difference-in-difference analyses we do not find significant main effects of the MTI implementation, but strongly contingent effects with salespeople’s customer relationship management competence and performance uncertainty. We observe a “core competency” effect which suggests that salespeople focus on their core competencies when working under a multi-tasking incentive.