自我監控對銷售業績的影響機制研究 - 以房地產銷售人員為例

Abstract

Real estate is a pillar industry in China, but some disorders and chaos in its development has forced the central and local governments to adopt stricter regulation measures. The internal structure and competitive situation of the industry is also changing. In such situation, sales problems become highlighted. As an important bridge to connect enterprises and customers, first-line salespersons are critical to build and maintain customer relationship and further to enhance firms' performance. Identifying what qualities excellent salesersons have and what strategies or skills they use is important to real estate companies. When interacting with potential buyers, if a salesperson adopts adaptive selling behavior and adjusts his or her selling methods according to different needs of buyers, he or she is more likely to make the deal. On the other hand, salespersons can increase the amount of potential buyers by acquiring and applying individual social capital. Both the adoption of adaptive selling behavior and the acquisition and application of individual social capital require particular personal quality. Self-monitoring is the common backstone of them. However, self-monitoring is one kind of personality traits that are relatively stable and not easy to change. Psychological capital, composed of hope, optimism, toughness, and self-efficacy, is a positive psychology state and can be developed and managed to help salespersons better conduct sales.

This paper explores the mechanism through which self-monitoring influence sale performance. Firstly, the literature of self-monitoring, social capital, adaptive sales and psychological capital are analyzed. Secondly, case study and daily observation help us clarify the black box. Thirdly, combining cases and literature, theoretical model and hypotheses are constructed. Fourthly, questionnaire is tested in pilot study with a sample size of 89 and then hypotheses are verified in survey with a sample size of 293. Finally, the main conclusions are summarized and the future research is prospected.

The main conclusions are as follows:
(1) the impact of self-monitoring on sales performance includes direct and indirect parts: self-monitoring has a direct positive effect on sales; both adaptive selling behaviors and social capital partially mediate this effect. If the application of social capital is regarded as seeking support from the outside world and obtaining resources, the adoption of adaptive selling is internal and is the use of salesman’s own ability. Such bi-directional support helps salesperson whose self-monitoring level is high achieve excellent sales performance.

(2) psychological capital has dependence on personality or behavior. Psychological capital is broadly defined, and seems that many positive psychological resources belong to it. Also, there is no consensus whether psychological capital is a trait, a state or between the two. State perspective is the mainstream of current studies. Scholars like Luthans think it is because psychological capital can be developed and managed that makes this new concept valuable. However, psychological capital needs to rely on individual characteristics or actions to promote the work performance. Otherwise, as a state, psychological capital will not play a stabilizing role.

(3) the discrimination between composition factors of psychological capital is not clear. self-efficacy can be distinguished from hope, optimism and resilience, but the latter three cannot distinguished from each other. The reason might be that self-efficacy is a task-specific positive state, while hope, optimism and resilience are generally associated with the general positive state. Real estate sales have strong incentives in that personal economic rewards are directly linked to the accomplishment of sales. To a large extent, real estate sales are task specific and naturally self-efficacy can positively moderate the relationship between self-monitoring and work performance, social capital and adaptive selling behaviors. The moderating effects of hope, optimism and resilience fluctuate and are not be clear.

(4) personality traits affect social capital. In mainstream of social capital study, such as the strength of “weak ties” and "structural hole theory", the structure of the social network determines a lot. Some extreme structuralism scholars even think that personality is determined by the network structure. In fact, each tie connecting two nodes in social network is established by the interpersonal communication. People with high self-monitoring level, taking social desirability into consideration, are sensitive to others' behavior, and have the ability to adjust themselves. Therefore, in interpersonal interaction, self-monitoring is beneficial to the formation and maintenance of social capital, and also affects the structure of social network.

(5) different types of social capital functions differently. Social capital from different sources have access to diverse resources. Social capital that is established as members of some social groups is linked to strong relations, such as family and close friends, and it brings favor pattern. The other type of social network, such as colleagues and customers in work, is used to obtain information. Because of the membership requirements, the first type of social capital is not easy to expand while the second type has no such requirement. Buying a house costs a lot, people are not likely to choose it as a medium to do some body a favor. In addition, there is an amount limit to family members and close friends. Therefore, the first kind of social capital does not help salesman to promote performance. The second type of social capital help them contact with numerous potential buyers. Through adaptive selling behaviors, diverse demand of customers can be satisfied and the completion of transaction is more possible.

Sales section is critical to profit-seeking organizations. If the product or service is not delivered to final consumers, the breakthrough in production, personnel, product quality and alike makes no sense. The paper provides guidance for the real estate enterprises to promote overall performance through accurately selecting right salespersons and designing targeted training courses to improve their selling capability.

Date of Award	26 Feb 2018
Original language	Chinese (Traditional)
Awarding Institution	City University of Hong Kong
Supervisor	Zhilin YANG (Supervisor) & Yong SU (External Supervisor)