Assistant Professor Chris Nelson co-authored research in Industrial Marketing Management on how salespeople should try to understand and adapt their technique based on the customer’s orientations.
Ever wonder about the best way to invest in a relationship with a buyer? It might all come down to understanding your buyer’s style. In recent research by Assistant Professor Chris Nelson in the Department of Marketing at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business shows that the way salespeople build relationships with customers can make a big difference.
When it comes to buying, not everyone is the same. Some buyers like to get straight to the point and focus on the task at hand – “task-oriented” buyers. Others prefer to build a personal connection and value the relationship just as much as the deal – “interaction-oriented” buyers.
“Salespeople should determine the orientation of the buyer early in the relationship,” said Nelson. “Knowing which type of buyer you’re dealing with is important when building a long-term relationship.”
The research, “More is better but in what direction? The effects of relationship marketing investment breadth and depth on customer gratitude, ” discusses two main ways salespeople can build relationships with their customers.
- Relationship Marketing Investment Breadth: Investing in a wide variety of relationship-building activities at a shallower level.
- Relationship Marketing Investment Depth: Concentrating on thorough relational investments in a single or small number of relational activities.
Depending on the type of customer, salespeople should aim to use different strategies:
- For Task-Oriented Customers: Use a breadth strategy where you may invest time, money, and effort into a variety of relational categories such as interpersonal communication, financial discounts, and preferential treatment at a shallower level.
- For Interaction-Oriented Customers: Focus on a depth strategy, where you choose a relational category that is particularly meaningful to the buyer and heavily invest in that area.
Nelson joined the Elon University faculty in 2020 with research interests in relational selling dynamics and sales technology. He teaches classes on the topics of professional selling, sales management, customer relationship management, and marketing research.
Nelson’s research has been published in several high-quality journals, with a separate article on technology implementation to improve sales team-customer interactions in the European Journal of Marketing. Upcoming research for Nelson will be focused on how ethical salespeople can repair damaged customer relationships.
Nelson plans to utilize this research in the Fall for his professional selling courses. The students enrolled will be able to practice identifying the customer’s orientation and develop a strategy to optimize the relationship.
Nelson co-authored “More is better but in what direction? The effects of relationship marketing investment breadth and depth on customer gratitude” with Associate Professor Xinchun Wang and Assistant Professor Annie Peng Cui at West Virginia University.