Making Sense Of The Customers Role In The Personal Selling

Process: A Theory Of Organizing And Sensemaking Perspective

Rachelle J. Shannahan, Alan J. Bush, William C. Moncrief, and Kirby L.J. Shannahan
This paper argues for the adoption of the theory of organizing and sensemaking framework as the theoretical underpinning of the personal selling process in a relational selling context. For relational selling, one should not think of the
selling process as a normative series of steps that a salesperson passes through with the help of a sales manager. Instead,
by expanding our notion of sales organization members beyond salespeople and sales managers to include the customers
with whom salespeople interact, we argue that one should recognize the personal selling process as a more prescriptive
customer-involved interpretation system concerned with uncertainty reduction during and between every customer
salesperson interaction.

The recognition of customers as the starting point of all

marketing activities and the driving force of the exchange
process is evidence that marketing has become increasingly
customer-centric (Sheth, Sharma, and Iyer 2009; Sheth,
Sisodia, and Sharma 2000). Sales organizations are beginning
to replace attempts to influence customers with concern over
how to better respond to customers demands and behaviors.
The result is cocreation marketing involving marketers and
customers interacting in product or service design, production,
and consumption and relying on collaboration, cooperation,
and communication. One aspect of marketing for which collaboration, cooperation, and communication are particularly
salient is personal selling in a relational selling context, as
customers and salespeople work together toward mutually
beneficial ends (Moncrief and Marshall 2005).
Understanding the personal selling process so as to make the
most of every customersalesperson interaction is of increasing
concern given the rising cost of sales calls, now estimated at
$300 (Johnston and Marshall 2011). The movement toward
long-term relational exchanges and the recognition that customers differ in terms of demand and value (Richards and
Rachelle J. Shannahan (Ph.D., University of Memphis), Assistant
Professor of Marketing, Memorial University of Newfoundland,
rshannahan@mun.ca.
Alan J. Bush (Ph.D., Louisiana State University), Fogelman College
of Business and Economics, University of Memphis, alanbush@
memphis.edu.
William C. Moncrief (Ph.D., Louisiana State University), Charles F.
and Alann P. Beford Professor of International Business and Senior
Associate Dean, Professor of Marketing, M.J. Neeley School of
Business, Texas Christian University, b.moncrief@tcu.edu.
Kirby L.J. Shannahan (Ph.D., University of Memphis), Associate
Professor of Marketing, Memorial University of Newfoundland,
kirbys@mun.ca.

Jones 2009) also highlight the importance of personal selling.

The escalating cost per sales call coupled with the increased
importance of the selling function have made determining the
characteristics of effective salespeople a long-standing goal of
managers and researchers (Franke and Park 2006), sharpened
our focus on the sales managers role in influencing salesperson
sales performance (Churchill et al. 1985; Dubinsky 1999),
and turned our attention to customers, whom we view as sales
team members (Brown and Jones 2005).
A review of the personal selling process literature suggests
that personal selling in practice in certain contexts has evolved
to require a broader theoretical framework from which to gauge
our current understanding and a firmer theoretical foundation
on which to base future personal selling research efforts. Relational selling, characterized by long-term customersupplier
commitments and the desire for a collaborative exchange process (Sheth and Shah 2003), results in relationships described
as win-win partnerships between customers and salespeople
(Guenzi, Pardo, and Georges 2007). Thus, instead of viewing
the personal selling process as a normative series of sales firm
directed steps, we find it more appropriate to view it as a form
of organizational communication more completely explained
using the theory of organizing and sensemaking framework
(Weick 1979; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005).
The theory of the organizing and sensemaking framework
(Weick 1979; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005) holds that
organizational members seek to gather information, which
they strive to interpret, so as to enhance understanding to
maximize opportunity and minimize cost. Organizing, as an
intersubjective activity through which people try to reduce
the ambiguity they face through communicative action,
involves the use of information from and about an environment to make sense of a given situation (Weick, Sutcliffe, and
Obstfeld 2005). Since organizing is something that happens
as individuals communicate, customers can be included as
Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, vol. XXXIII, no. 3 (summer 2013), pp. 261275.
2013 PSE National Educational Foundation. All rights reserved. Permissions: www.copyright.com
ISSN 08853134 (print)/ISSN 15577813 (online)
DOI: 10.2753/PSS0885-3134330302

262 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

sales organization members who have the opportunity to

affect the selling process during each interaction with a salesperson. We suggest that as customers and salespeople engage
in an ongoing process of making sense of the circumstances
in which [they] find themselves and of the events that affect
them (Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005, p. 413), they
work together to reduce uncertainty for themselves and, in
doing so, contribute to the organizational learning process of
the firm that employs them.
The purpose of this paper is to propose the adoption of an
organizational communication and sensemaking perspective
(Weick 1979; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005) of the
personal selling process for the relational selling context. The
thesis of this paper is that the personal selling process and its
success in a relational selling context is better understood, and
may be more fully explained, by broadening our notion of the
selling organization to include the customers with whom salespeople interact. We propose that salespeople and customers
are actors who engage in interlocked behaviors that they use
to interpret and retain information about each other during
their relationship. This allows the personal selling process
to be conceptualized as continual and reciprocal, occurring
during and between customersalesperson interactions, as
customers and salespeople take into consideration and assign
meaning to the information gained from each interaction
in preparation for future encounters with one another. A
review of extant personal selling process conceptualizations
sheds light on why adopting an organizational communication perspective for relational selling is both theoretically and
managerially relevant.
PERSONAL SELLING PROCESS
CONCEPTUALIZATIONS
From a Sales Orientation to a Customer Orientation
Table 1 presents a summary of the early personal selling process conceptualizations, beginning with Spiro, Perreault, and
Reynolds (1977) and ending with Weitz (1981). Although
there were earlier attempts to describe the selling process
(i.e., Grikscheit and Crissy 1976; Shapiro and Posner 1976),
scholars credit Spiro, Perreault, and Reynolds (1977) as the
first to attempt a comprehensive synthesis of the major factors in the salespersoncustomer interaction (Wotruba 1980).
Notably, many of the early conceptual models depict personal
selling as a series of sequential steps. Also notable is that while
many of the early conceptualizations included the customer,
many derived from a sales-oriented perspective. In fact, many
of the early conceptualizations are normative and are based
on the premise that the role of personal selling is to influence
customer choice, implicitly viewing the customer as a hurdle
to overcome rather than an equal participant in the process.

Beginning with Brooksbank (1995), Table 2 presents a

summary of more recent and more customer-oriented personal
selling process conceptualizations. The marketing literature has
increasingly advocated a customer-oriented approach (Brooksbank 1995; Sharma, Iyer, and Evanschitsky 2008) and more
recent perspectives of the personal selling process do focus on
information coming from the prospective customer. In practice, the new realities of relational selling in an informationintensive environment (Hunter and Perreault 2007, p.29)
highlight the pivotal role the customer plays as a provider of
information in the sales process. But while the more recent
conceptualizations are instrumental in focusing on the role
of the customer and information during the personal selling
process, many remain salesperson focused and sales organization controlled. In fact, Sharma, Iyer, and Evanschitsky argued
that current approaches to selling are all oriented toward the
supply side (2008, p.302). The more recent conceptualizations also tend to be normative and thus lack the prescriptive
insights from a perspective grounded in theory.
Cause for a Broader Conceptualization of the
Personal Selling Process
Extant conceptualizations of the personal selling process such
as stimulus response (Jolson 1975), selling formula (Still and
Cundiff 1973), and needs satisfaction (Strong 1925) stop short
by not developing the relationships among the components
in the process and in essence treat[ing] the customer role as
passive (Spiro, Perreault, and Reynolds 1977, p.351). Furthermore, the sales literature and community has embraced,
as its dominant perspective, the seven steps of personal selling (Dubinsky 198081), which is mechanical or normative
in its emphasis on salesperson task execution. However, an
explanation of the personal selling process in a relational
selling context requires a broader conceptualization than the
traditional seven steps perspective.
In their review of the traditional seven steps of selling,
and examination of what they call the transformative factors
that have led to changes in each step, Moncrief and Marshall
(2005) present an evolved seven steps selling process. The
authors suggest that whereas the traditional seven steps reflect
a selling orientation, the evolved selling process reflects more
of a customer orientation in that the focus is on relationship
selling. Consequently, the selling process has largely evolved
to securing, building, and maintaining long-term relationships
with profitable customers (Moncrief and Marshall 2005). The
transformative factors identified by Moncrief and Marshall
(2005) as affecting the selling process include technology,
the strategic role of selling within organizations, team-based
approaches to selling, and increased buyer knowledge and
sophistication. Such factors have contributed to the evolved
selling process, giving way to the following new, though not

Summer 2013 263

Table 1
The Personal Selling Process: Early Conceptualizations (19771982)
Author(s)

Year

Journal

Spiro, Perreault,
and Reynolds

1977

IMM

First attempt at a comprehensive synthesis

of the major factors in the salesperson
customer interaction.

Bonoma and
Johnston

1978

IMM

Propose an exchange model emphasizing five

social and economic exchanges.

Weitz

1978

JMR

Offers ISTEAa sales process model.

Plank and
Dempsey

1980

IMM

Propose a multistage, two-dimension,

communication-oriented selling model for
organizational selling.

Dubinsky

Weitz

Dubinsky and
Staples

198081

1981

JM

198182

JPSSM

Historical Significance

First empirical attempt to describe the selling

techniques salespeople use. Presents
the personal selling process (PSP) as a
useful structure for understanding the
sales process and the various salesperson
techniques.
Presents a contingency-based model of sales
interactions.

Clarifies the PSP.

Key Concept(s)
Personal selling consists of sequential steps;
exchange occurs if salespersoncustomer
strategies are compatible; salespeople and
customers are focal people in the process.
Salesperson perception of the purchasing firm
influences the selling approach used while
purchasing agent perception of the selling
firm influences the buying approach used.
ISTEA depicts a sequence of salesperson
activities that center on developing
impressions that influence a customers
choice decision.
Describes what the salesperson should
do; provides a basic framework for the
training of salespeople; model is admittedly
normative and salesperson focused.
PSP is made up of seven basic steps. Personal
selling is a systematic process; techniques
are salesperson skills, implying the PSP is
salesperson dependent.

Suggests salesperson resources and behaviors,

customer buying task, and salesperson
customer relationships have a moderating
effect on the selling behaviorseffectiveness
relationship.
Although the seven steps are presented as
steps a salesperson may pass through, the
authors discuss the importance of success at
prior steps in driving the sale.

Notes: IMM = Industrial Marketing Management; JMR = Journal of Marketing Research; JPSSM = Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management;
JM=Journal of Marketing.

necessarily sequential, steps: customer retention and deletion, database and knowledge management, nurturing the
relationship (relationship selling), marketing the product,
problem solving, adding value/satisfying needs, and customer
relationship maintenance.
The evolved seven steps perspective recognizes that the selling process unfolds over time as those involved in the process
interact and communicate. In todays relationship selling
environment, salespeoples individual skills, while necessary,
are not necessarily sufficient to single-handedly drive the personal selling process or sales performance (Colletti and Fiss
2006). Salespeople must work with their customers to access
the right information, to disseminate it to the right people,
and to coordinate the efforts of others to deliver value to the
customer. As such, customers are important contributors to
the success of the selling organization.

AN ORGANIZATIONAL COMMUNICATION
PERSPECTIVE
Scholars have long recognized that the salesperson is not the
only one affecting sales performance (Riordan, Oliver, and
Donnelly 1977) and that the outcomes of sales efforts are the
result of interactions between buyers and sellers (Weitz, Sujan,
and Sujan 1986). An organizational theory and sensemaking
view of personal selling builds on research such as the cognitive
process and salesperson trait of interpersonal listening in the
personal selling context (Aggarwal et al. 2005; Castleberry and
Shepherd 1993; Castleberry, Shepherd, and Ridnour 1999).
It also focuses our attention on the impact of customers as
information providers through their words and actions as
equal communication partners for salespeople and important
organizational members of a selling firm.

264 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

Table 2
The Personal Selling Process: More Recent Conceptualizations (1995Present)
Author(s)

Year

Journal

Historical Significance

Brooksbank

1995

JPSSM

Moncrief and
Marshall

2005

IMM

Presents a three-phase model of personal

selling. The micromarketing-in-action
model focuses on matching customer
needs with what a selling firm has, not on
closing the sale.
Present a set of transformative factors that
have led to an evolved, nonsequential sales
process called the evolved selling process
(ESP).

Smith,
Gopalakrishna,
and Chatterjee

2006

JMR

stner and
Godes

2006

HBR

Hunter and
Perreault

2007

JM

Sharma, Iyer, and

Evanschitzky

2008

Journal of
Relationship
Marketing

Present a transactional sales process in terms

of the concrete outcomes of an integrated
marketing communications sequence of
lead generation, appointment, conversion,
and closure.
Describe a four-stage personal selling process
that gives greater recognition to the role
of customers.
Develop and test a behavioral process model
for evaluating the different uses of sales
technologies on sales performance.
Offer a tentative framework for selling in
high-technology firms.

Key Concept(s)
Because personal selling is part of the
marketing process, it should share
customer-oriented philosophy and
methodology.
ESP is customer focused. Steps do not
necessarily occur for each sales call and are
not necessarily sequential; process occurs
through the work and efforts of many
people in a variety of positions in the selling
firm.
Firm actions and customer decisions interact
to produce outcomes; salesperson
performance is measured in terms of order
writing resulting from a single visit.
Customers provide valuable input
(information) to the personal selling process;
salesperson relies on those in the buying
organization to help achieve his or her goals.
Model divides selling activities into
administrative and relationship-building
tasks that drive relationship-building and
administrative performance.
Present a five-phase, demand-side process
starting and ending with the customer.

Notes: JPSSM = Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management; IMM = Industrial Marketing Management; JMR = Journal of Marketing Research;
HBR=Harvard Business Review; JM=Journal of Marketing.

Although coworkers and leaders are generally identified as

the two major forces in ones immediate work environment
(Schnake 1991), firms with a customer orientation and focus
on fostering customer relationships (Moncrief and Marshall
2005) must also include their customers. This is because such
firms are characterized by cooperative partnerships, a search
for integrative outcomes, and a long-term focus (Hunter and
Perreault 2007). Since in a relational selling context, customers
have the opportunity to participate in and impact the selling
process as they work with salespeople to identify problems,
determine needs, propose, and implement effective solutions
(Bosworth 1995; Rackham and DeVincentis 2001), they too
should be regarded as a major force in the immediate work
environment of the salesperson.
Within an organizational communication framework, the
personal selling process is no longer adequately explained in
terms of a series or compilation of selling firmcontrolled
steps and a sales call is not simply a series of events that can be
managed by the salesperson (Macintosh et al. 1992). Instead,
because it allows for the inclusion of the customer as an equal

and active communication partner and sales organization

member, the selling process becomes a form of ongoing organizational communication and sensemaking that contributes
to organizational learning for the buying and selling firms.
Accordingly, for relational selling, personal selling may be better explained using the theory of organizing (Weick 1993).
Using the Theory of Organizing to
Explain Personal Selling
Reeves and Barksdale (1984) suggest that while there is always
a need for more original theory development, an arsenal of
theories, which have yet to be applied to personal selling to
guide empirical research, is available. For instance, while social
exchange (Blau 1964) may be a plausible model to represent
how salespeople relate to their managers (Menguc 2000,
p.206), it may not appropriately represent how customers
relate to salespeople. In fact, McFarland, Challagalla, and
Shervani (2006) provide support for an organizational communication conceptualization of personal selling, describing

Summer 2013 265

it as an interorganizational, person-to-person relationship in

which the unit of analysis is the individual relationship. They
suggest that if salespeople can identify buyer cues, they are
likely to respond to them. Similarly, if customers can identify
seller cues, they are likely to respond to them. We suggest that
the organization that is created and that happens as customers
and salespeople alternate between perception and interpretation of, and response to, one anothers cues facilitates the
working relationship between the two and helps them achieve
mutually beneficial ends as they move through the personal
selling process.
The theory of organizing (Weick 1979) holds that organizational members seek to gather information, which they
strive to interpret, so as to enhance understanding to maximize
opportunity and minimize cost. In defining organizations not
as structures made of positions and roles but as communication activities, organizing is defined as something that happens as individuals communicate. The theory offers a useful
framework to explain interpersonal communication between
organizational members in one group or department as well
as communication with members of another group, organization, or external public (Smudde 2000). Organizations are
viewed as open social systems that process information from
an environment that contains some level of uncertainty.
In Daft and Weicks (1984) model of organization as an
interpretation system, to minimize uncertainty, organizations
seek information and then base organizational action on that
information. Uncertainty reduction occurs through individuals sending and receiving information and carrying out the
interpretation process. Uncertainty reduction is important
because it is a central motive to interpersonal communication (Heath and Bryant 2000, p.215), and as such, people
go to great lengths to obtain and share information in order
to understand one another.
Uncertainty reduction is particularly relevant for personal
selling since salespeople must determine customer needs
and motives and decide what customer behaviors and other
communication cues mean so they know what to do next.
Because salespeople never face situations of absolute and perfect information, they must access information from outside
the selling firm to reduce uncertainty. Customers also lack
absolute and perfect information yet need to determine which
selling organization can best meet their needs. In trying to
reduce ambiguity and arrive at some common understanding
for themselves and for their employing firms, salespeople and
customers interact and, in doing so, organize and engage in
sensemaking.
Sensemaking
Sensemaking is a process of social construction (Berger and
Luckman 1967) that individuals use in an attempt to interpret

and explain cues from their environments. It is an ongoing

cognitive process yielding some form of accomplishment that
emerges from efforts to create order and make retrospective
sense of what occurs (Weick 1993). This happens through the
production of accounts, which are discursive constructions
of reality that interpret or explain (Antaki 1994). Sensemaking
allows people to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity by creating rational accounts of the world that enable action, which is
particularly important in dynamic or changing contexts where
the need to understand why changes are occurring is critical
to sustaining relationships (Weick 1993).
Sensemaking research has tended to focus on one of two
approaches. One approach has been concerned with the social
processes associated with sensemaking during extreme or crises
conditions (Benner 1994; Snook 2000). This line of research
focuses on uncertainty reduction and suggests a dialectical
relationship between social structure and sensemaking: the
accounts generated by sensemaking facilitate the formation
and reformation of social structure while social roles and
relationships provide the basis for sensemaking (Maitlis 2005;
Weick 1993). This line of research is particularly applicable to
customersalesperson interactions in a personal selling context as the customers and salespeople work together toward
mutually beneficial ends in an increasingly complex and everchanging environment.
A second approach to sensemaking research focuses on
how certain groups influence others understanding of issues
within organizations (e.g., Griffith 1999). Such research
examines different leaders and the sensemaking strategies they
implement (Gioia et al. 1994), or how middle managers can
gain top management attention and influence organizational
action through sensemaking processes (e.g., Dutton and
Ashford 1993). Much of this line of research highlights the
importance of sensemaking as an important organizational
activity (Maitlis 2005). Findings suggest that while leaders
are uniquely positioned to influence issue understanding
and enactment, their interpretations can be shaped by others
through communication. This approach to sensemaking has
particular relevance for the organizational learning aspect of
personal selling since following interactions, customers and
salespeople return to their respective firms to make sense of
their interactions and observations and to plan next steps.
Furthermore, customers advocating for a particular selling
firm may attempt to influence others in the buying center
while salespeople advocating for a particular customer may
attempt to influence others on the sales team or within the
sales organization at large.
While much of the early literature on sensemaking has been
conceptual, more recent research has focused on data collection using individual and collective narratives in an attempt
to ferret out some of the underlying sensemaking processes.
Much of this qualitative research describes how managers

266 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

make sense of the past, cope with the present, and plan for
the future (Dunford and Jones 2000; Jameson 2001). For
example, Rouleau (2005) interviewed and observed a sales
manager and a collections manager over a six-month period in
an attempt to interpret each managers routines and conversations in order to develop a practical perspective of strategic
sensemaking. The study uncovered specific routines that the
sales manager performed regularly to help prepare herself and
her customers for any changes. For example, one routine was
build the product symbolically. Here, the sales manager
wanted to create the proper atmosphere every time she gave
a product presentation. Other routines identified were to call
customers systematically and explore the feel of the market.
By thoroughly describing daily routines and conversations,
research is beginning to identify how individuals are enacting
a set of micro-practices (i.e., rules and behaviors) to help make
sense of situations in their environments.
Sensemaking for Uncertainty Reduction
Sensemaking is socially constructed with others (Smerek
2011). It occurs as people act and react within a larger social
context and as they engage in loosely coupled systems that
have norms guiding participants behavior (Weick 1979).
While organizing involves the process of looking back at
events and actions from ones environment and making sense
of what one observed and experienced, sensemaking involves
turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended,
that serves as a springboard into action (Weick, Sutcliffe, and
Obstfeld 2005), and that plays a pivotal role in the determination of human behavior, whether people are acting in formal
organizations or elsewhere (Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld
2005, p. 409). More simply, to make sense of something,
people first bracket events or accounts based on their own
experience and may eventually talk to others to make sense
of that experience. Ultimately, this process leads to rational
accounts of the world that reduce uncertainty about a situation and enable action.
A central theme of sensemaking is the reduction of uncertainty and equivocality through the deliberate effort to understand a situation. Uncertainly arises from a lack of information,
having inadequate understanding, and having undifferentiated
alternatives (Lipshitz and Strauss 1997). Equivocality consists
of having too many meanings from which to choose (Weick
1979). Ambiguous events or actions, once perceived, are
thought about and talked about by individuals who compare
them to past experience in order to search for their meanings
and to determine what to do next.
Sensemaking views making sense as reciprocal exchanges
between actors (enactment) and their environments (ecological
change) that are made meaningful (selection) and preserved
(retention) (Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005). Enactment,

selection, and retention, triggered by ecological change, are the

interlocking organizing processes that guide organizing and
sensemaking (see Figure1). Sensemaking begins when a difference or change in the environment, referred to as ecological
change, occurs and is noticed. Once noticed, this change
becomes the focal point of those who try to understand its significance. In examining the change, referred to as enactment,
raw data about the change are generated. During the selection
process, the raw data are eventually converted to meaning
and action in order to determine What is happening here?
Individuals impose various plausible relationship structures on
enacted raw data in an effort to make that determination and
look to the past for an example of something like this that
has happened before, to explain and respond to the ecological change. In the end, the retention process allows for the
products of successful sensemaking to be stored for future use,
should individuals wish to. The outcomes of this process are
these accounts or accomplishments that allow individuals to
deal with uncertainty and ultimately enable action.
Sensemaking and the Personal Selling Process
Sensemaking can be applied to the examination of specific
instances of communication (Smudde 2000) like those
between customers and salespeople. Because sensemaking
involves looking back at events and actions from ones environment and making sense of what was observed and experienced,
the view is particularly helpful in explaining how and why
salespeople can interpret customer communication cues as
providing evidence of a good prospect or a good customer
or how a salesperson might be labeled by a customer as a good
rep. In addition, while the personal selling process can be
described as comprising steps, the steps should be regarded
as actions or responses that are taken not simply because they
are supposed to come next in a predetermined sequence but
because the steps are appropriate given the information that
was perceived and the meaning that was assigned to it as customers and salespeople offer and exchange information.
For salespeople and customers alike, ecological change
triggers the organization processes of enactment, selection,
and retention, leaving them to interpret what has happened
and determine what to do next. Enactment is the cognitive
process through which one begins to identify anomalies and
tries to make sense of external changes in the environment.
Sensemaking activities such as noticing, categorizing, and
bracketing are triggered by ambiguities and equivocalities in
ongoing relationships. Therefore, it is extremely important for
salespeople to actively listen (Aggarwal et al. 2005; Castleberry
and Shepherd 1993; Castleberry, Shepherd, and Ridnour
1999) to customers and continually monitor the environment
surrounding them. Salespeople must be cognizant any time
there appears to be any question, uncertainty, or flux in their

Summer 2013 267

Figure 1
The Processes of Organizing and Sensemaking: Implications for Personal Selling

Source: Weick (1979).

relationships with customers. During this initial process of

organizing and sensemaking, salespeople should categorize or
assign meaning to anything that might be happening with the
customer that could jeopardize their relationship.
Selection is the process through which attempts are made
to reduce the number of possible meanings associated with
equivocality in relationships by using past experiences. Individuals use cognitive sensemaking activities such as mental
modeling and retrospective attention to reduce the number
of possible explanations for equivocality (Weick, Sutcliffe,
and Obstfeld 2005). The goal of the selection process is to
use past cues and experiences to create a plausible story or
reason surrounding the equivocality. During this process of
organizing and sensemaking, salespeople would consider past
experiences in real-life situations with customers or simulated
experiences from sales training to generate a plausible story
for ambiguities occurring in relationships with customers. For
example, experienced salespeople would try and remember

what happened (plausible story) the last time this ambiguity

occurred to rectify the situation with a customer, whereas new
salespeople might refer to a manager- and trainer-developed
best practices list of plausible stories on how to handle such
a situation.
The final process of organizing and sensemaking is retention. Retention is the cognitive process through which individuals solidify and store in memory the provisional accounts,
experiences, or plausible stories. For Weick, Sutcliffe, and
Obstfeld, when a plausible story is retained, it tends to
become more substantial because it is related to significant
identities and used as a sense of guidance for further action
and interpretation (2005, p.414). Retention is more than
just a mental place to store past behaviors. It is a process that
has removed past equivocality, and a process that will affect
subsequent actions. Since uncertainty and equivocality are
normally occurring conditions in all customer relationships,
retention is especially important for salespeople as they draw

268 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

from their experiences and training programs to more effectively build relationships and to more efficiently move with
their customers through the selling process.
Ecological change represents the ever-changing environment that must continually be monitored and updated. For
the salesperson, ecological change may come in the form of a
change in customer habits or requirements, a change in buying
center membership or policy, the gain or loss of an account, or
the emergence of a new or the demise of an existing competitor. Figure1 uses the example of a change in customer ordering
as the ecological change triggering enactment, selection, and
retention for the salesperson. For customers, ecological change
examples include the exit of a current supplier from or the
entry of a new supplier to the market. Learning that a new
product has been launched or that the trusted salesperson a
customer has been dealing with is no longer with the company
are other examples of ecological change.
Enactment, selection, and retention are interrelated cognitive processes that contain two elementsassembly rules and
interlocked behavior cycles (Weick 1979). These two elements
are used to reduce equivocality or uncertainty in each of the
three processes. Assembly rules are rules or guidelines that
are used to construct the process based on past interactions
with others to remove equivocality (i.e., interlocked behavior
cycles). For salespeople, examples of assembly rules include
(1) effortwhich behavioral cycles require the least/most
effort; (2)frequencywhich cycles have occurred most often
in the past; (3)successwhich cycles have been most successful in the past for removing equivocality; (4)rewardwhich
cycles resulted in the greatest rewards; and (5) duration
which cycles can be completed in the shortest amount of
time.
Assembly rules are the means by which individuals register the amount of equivocality or uncertainty in any process
(Weick 1979). The greater amount of equivocality in an
environmental input (ecological change), the fewer number of
rules one activates to construct the process. For a salesperson
in the early stages of relationship building with a new client,
environmental input will be surrounded with much uncertainty because the salesperson is unfamiliar with the customers
requirements and behavior, making it more difficult for the
salesperson to determine the appropriate behavioral cycle to
use. In this case, only a small number of rules could be used to
construct the process. Conversely, in established salesperson
customer relationships, there is less equivocality surrounding
customer requirements and behavior, and thus less uncertainty
as to what a particular ecological change might mean and
how the salesperson should proceed. Therefore, salespeople
would use a greater number of rules to construct this process.
Ultimately, the more equivocal, or uncertain, the situation,
the less experience individuals have in dealing with it, which
means they have little to go on and few, if any, rules available

to guide them. Alternatively, the less equivocal, or the more

familiar, the situation, the more experience individuals have
in dealing with it, and thus they have more rules available to
help them. The theory of organizing and sensemaking echoes
the importance of partnerships and relationships in sales since
relational selling, in general, is a situation with less equivocality, more certainty, and thus more rules than transactional
selling, which is typified by more equivocality, less certainty,
and fewer rules.
Personal Selling and Organizational Learning
While information perception, interpretation, and response
can occur during single customersalesperson encounters, it
also occurs outside of them as customers and salespeople return
to their firms to determine, often in consultation with others,
how to approach subsequent encounters. Since formally structured organizations have limited time and other resources to
determine what they can provide customers that others cannot,
they try to answer this question before their resources run out
or before their competitors can do so (Daft and Weick 1984).
Those trying to answer the question are in a constant state of
interpretationor making senseof what has been done and
learned in the past so they can solve the problem of what to
do next (Daft and Weick 1984; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld
2005). The result is an ongoing organizational learning process
involving the gathering, filtering, and processing of information about the external environment so the organization can
make choices and follow courses of action.
As one of the primary points of contact between a company
and its customers competitors, and the environment in general, salespeople often possess critical information that others
in the organization do not (Podsakoff et al. 2000). Salespeople
enter into the environment and are responsible for scanning,
interpreting, and acting on information from that environment. Much of this activity occurs as salespeople organize with
customers but it also occurs outside of customer interactions
in consultation with others in the sales organization to make
sense of their observations and work with others to plan the
next steps. Figure 2 illustrates how customersalesperson
organization provides a link between the organization that is
created and happens during the customersalesperson interaction and the organizational learning process (Daft and Weick
1984) for each firm. Figure2 includes some possible results
of salespersoncustomer organization as they pertain to each
organizational learning stage (perception, interpretation, and
response).
The organizational learning process begins with gathering
information from either external, internal, personal, or impersonal sources (Daft and Weick 1984). In relational selling, a
salesperson gathers a great deal of external information through
direct contact with customers. As integral organizational

Summer 2013 269

Figure 2
Example of SalespersonCustomer Organization as a
Contributor to Organizational Learning from Each Perspective

members and communication partners, customers provide

salespeople with valuable information and behavioral cues
that can facilitate the selling process. The organization that
happens as customers and salespeople interact contributes to
organizational learning as individuals think about and use
their perceptions of their observations or experiences to piece
information together.
Interpretation, the second organizational learning stage, is
the process through which information is given meaning and
actions are chosen (Daft and Weick 1984, p.293). Interpretation is made possible through individuals ability to recognize
and reconcile anomaly and make do with bits of information.
Customer communication cues are important bits of infor-

mation that are open for interpretation and resulting action

by a salesperson. Only after salespeople interpret and make
sense of what they perceive can they formulate a response and
contribute to the organization they create with their customers
and the organizational learning process of the selling firm. The
accounts that are compiled are essentially filed in the memory
of the salesperson to be referred to later and may be shared
with others in the selling firm so that others may learn from
the experience.
The final stage of the organizational learning process occurs
when the salesperson takes an action or response. Selling steps,
activities, or techniques can be viewed as salesperson actions
or responses that are taken because his or her perceptions and

270 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

interpretations dictate they are appropriate. Figure2 illustrates

one customer action that can be perceived by a salesperson
the customers referral of the selling firm to another buying
firm. Such an action, once perceived, is likely to be interpreted
favorably by a salesperson since prospecting is an expensive
procedure that typically takes multiple calls to uncover someone who may or may not become a bonafide prospect (Moncrief and Marshall 2005). In addition to making work life
easier for a salesperson by facilitating the selling process with
another customer, the salesperson may interpret the gesture as
a sign of the customers satisfaction with the selling firm and
an indication of the customers relationship intention. Possible
salesperson responses include devoting more time and effort
to the account or being a stronger advocate for the customer
to other sales firm members. Alternatively, a salesperson cue
noted in Figure2 that a customer may perceive is a salespersons responsiveness. A customer may interpret a salespersons
perceived responsiveness as a sign that the customers business
is important to the selling firm. Possible customer responses
include agreeing to further meetings, providing more information, or engaging other buying center members.
The Personal Selling Process as an Interpretation System
Customersalesperson relationships in a relational selling context rely on the creation of understanding between customers
and salespeople so that together they can come to a mutually beneficial solution. Such relationships are characterized
by patterns of interaction in which individuals words and
actions affect how each responds (Littlejohn and Foss 2005)
as information is acquired, interpreted, and responded to.
Moncrief and Marshall (2005) noted that one implication
of the relational selling context for personal selling is that it
demands we reconceptualize the selling process as customer
oriented and comprised of new steps and activities, hence their
putting forward the evolved selling process.
Building on the notion of the evolved selling paradigm
and the evolved seven steps model (Moncrief and Marshall
2005), we advocate that the personal selling process can be
thought of as an interpretation system comprised of individuals whose goal is to reduce uncertainty with respect to each
aspect of the evolved selling aspects. Notable is that each of
the evolved seven steps relies on the acquisition and interpretation of and response to information that is often provided
to salespeople by customers. However, although the customer
may offer information, the information must be perceived,
correctly interpreted, and appropriately responded to by the
salesperson to facilitate the selling process. Customer retention and deletion, for instance, relies on accurate information
about customers so that the use of databases can facilitate the
selling process. Those customers who are willing to provide
valuable information about themselves and their needs at the

early stages of a personal selling relationship facilitate this

step. Database and knowledge management is closely related
to customer retention and deletion in that salespeople rely on
computer systems to access important customer information.
Such systems, however, are only as powerful as the information
they contain, the most valuable of which is that provided by
the customers themselves. The aspect of nurturing the relationship (relationship selling) is particularly reliant on information
acquired from and participation of the customers since this
is where customer needs, problems, and concerns are fleshed
out, and where relationships are established and built. As for
marketing the product, the role of the customer is just as pronounced, particularly, as Moncrief and Marshall (2005) noted,
during sales presentations, in which the customer is no longer
passive. In terms of problem solving, the customer once again
is an active participant, posing key questions and providing
vital information in working with the salesperson to come
to a solution. The customer contributes to adding value and
satisfying needs through identifying mutual goals between the
seller and the buyer. As for customer relationship maintenance,
characterized by continued customer contact in an effort to
build business, its success also relies on successful customer
selling organization communicationcommunication that
takes place every time organization happens between the two.
Since throughout the evolved selling process, the seller and
customer are actually working in tandem toward mutual
success (Moncrief and Marshall 2005, p.21), success can be
achieved only to the extent that a customer is a willing and
cooperative relationship and communication partner.
Support for an organizational communication perspective
of the personal selling process for relational selling within
the context of the evolved selling paradigm (Moncrief and
Marshall 2005) lies in its reflection of an approach to selling
that is focused on securing, building, and maintaining longterm relationships with customers. Since communication is
a key aspect of relationships, and customers are key relationship partners in a relational selling setting, customers must
be explicitly recognized as active and influential participants
in the personal selling process. Thus, whereas Moncrief and
Marshalls (2005) graphical depiction of the seven steps of
evolved selling positions the customer as being affected by
each with one-way arrows pointing from each step to the
customer, given the interactive nature of relationships, the
arrows should be bidirectional to depict the customers ability, through communicative interaction and organizing with
the salesperson, to also impact each step (see Figure3). More
specifically, the bidirectionality of the arrows indicates the
opportunity for organizing to happen (Weick 1979) during
every customersalesperson interaction.
As seen in Figure 3, every aspect of the personal selling
process within the evolved selling paradigm (Moncrief and
Marshall 2005) allows for the customer to actively partici-

Summer 2013 271

Figure 3
Depiction of the Uncertainty, Equivocality, and Opportunity for Ecological Change Surrounding
the CustomerSalesperson Organization that Occurs During Every Interaction and Affects Every Aspect
of the Evolved Selling Process (Based on Moncrief and Marshall 2005)

pate in and affect the selling process through the provision of

information and other communication cues. Thus, at every
step, the salesperson is presented with the opportunity to use
the information acquired from customer interaction to try
to remove uncertainty and to develop accounts and routines
with respect to the opportunity with a particular customer.
Alternatively, at every step, the customer uses information
acquired during interactions with the salesperson to try to
remove uncertainty as to the salespersons ability to meet the
buying firms needs. Figure3 also reinforces that uncertainty
and equivocality can arise at any time and that ecological
change can be associated with every aspect of the personal
selling process.
Theoretical Implications of Organizing and Sensemaking
Although there are exceptions (e.g., Hunter and Perreault
2007; Sharma, Iyer, and Evanschitzky 2008), much of the
existing personal selling process research has focused on selling techniques subsumed under the traditional seven steps
framework (Dubinsky and Staples 198182; Dwyer, Hill, and

Martin 2000; Hite and Bellizzi 1985). The implications have

been largely normative and managerial in identifying more versus fewer utilized salesperson techniques, which have certainly
been instructive for training purposes. Although sales activities
have formed the basis of performance evaluation, strategy
development, and process engineering (Marshall, Moncrief,
and Lassk 1999), a preoccupation with the practically derived
selling firmdriven activities comprising the traditional seven
steps of selling has likely impeded personal selling research. A
movement away from personal selling as interpersonal social
influence based (see Sharma 1990) or intra-organizational
influence based (see Joshi 2010) toward personal selling as
organizational communication and uncertainty reduction
based may be helpful in advancing personal selling research.
The framework based on the theory of organizing and
sensemaking (Weick 1979; Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obtsfeld
2005) provides a useful and more prescriptive theoretical
framework for examining and explaining the personal selling
process in an environment in which the salespersons imperative is to help forge relationships and heighten cooperation
with customer firms (Hunter and Perreault 2007, p.16). In

272 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

defining organization as something that happens when individuals communicate rather than something delineated by a
formal structure (Weick 1979), one can include customers as
sales organization members and the personal selling process
can be treated as an interpretation system (Daft and Weick
1984). The adoption of an organizational communication
perspective of personal selling allows for the development of
a conceptual framework within which to explore the influence
of customers communication cues on the personal selling
process and salesperson performance. Since customers are
among a salespersons most significant organizational others,
taking their communication cues into consideration may help
to account for more variation in salesperson performance
than the research has demonstrated in the past (Churchill et
al. 1985).
Managerial Relevance of an Organizational and
Sensemaking Perspective
Since some customers are more willing than others to invest
time and effort in an exchange relationship (Pine, Peppers,
and Rogers 1995), it is important to identify customer communication cues and to develop and compile accounts that
have positive effects on the personal selling process and on
sales performance. What is more, sales organization goals and
objectives with respect to particular customer relationships
are sometimes broader than mere sales volume. Encouraging
salespeople to identify and benefit from customer cues may
result in the facilitation of the selling process and contribute
to the achievement of other organizational goals and objectives, such as lowering costs, enhancing profitability, or gaining broader market access (Jones et al. 2005). Managers who
understand this concept can adapt their training programs to
focus on sensemaking and include emphasis on salesperson
attention, interpretation, and response to all customer communication cues.
Managers of customer-oriented firms should view customers not only as equal and active participants in the selling
and organizational learning processes as they interact with
salespeople but as an extended part of the company itself
(Sheth and Sisodia 2002). From a managerial perspective,
understanding which presale customer cues facilitate selling
efforts and help drive salesperson performance is important
not only for developing sales training but also for prioritizing customers. The theory of organizing and sensemaking
framework allows for the recognition that customer words and
behavior give salespeople something to work with, a basis on
which to proceed. As salespeople intently perceive, accordingly
interpret, and appropriately respond to customers cues, the
results should be a better understanding of customers sales
cycles, more accurate sales forecasts, and easier identification
of a firms best customers. What we may find is that those

salespeople with the ability to perceive, interpret, and respond

to customer cues and to use accounts gathered over time are
among a firms most effective and productive.
Recognizing customers as partially responsible for the
selling process and for sales performance allows for greater
managerial insight into outcome variables such as salesperson effectiveness and productivity, since time spent actively
problem solving versus firefighting and doing damage
control will be determined to some extent by the quality
of each customer relationship. Being able to identify those
customers who are better or worse at clearing the path for a
salesperson to focus on meeting customer wants, needs, and
value creation helps sales managers to better understand and
evaluate salesperson performance. For instance, if a particular
customer provides personal sellingfacilitating information
and engages in personal sellingfacilitating behaviors and a
sale is not completed, this reaction may be an indication of a
salespersons inability to close. Alternatively, if a customer does
not freely provide personal sellingfacilitating information or
often engage in personal sellingfacilitating behaviors but a
sale is made, then the customer may have indicated a need
for a longer selling cycle.
CONCLUSION
Personal selling, especially in a relational selling context, provides an example of a loosely coupled system in that customers
and salespeople, while responsive to one another as they work
together, retain separateness and identity since each belongs
to a formally structured organization. Even more, the selling
process occurs for customers and salespeople simultaneously
during each interaction and in parallel for the buying and
selling firms over time. Viewing the personal selling process
as an opportunity to create and sustain an organization that
serves as an interpretation system (Daft and Weick 1984)
allows for customers and salespeople to be active participants
in and contributors to the personal selling and organizational
learning processes.
Adopting an organizational communication perspective of
the personal selling process is important for personal selling
and sales management research and practice in two respects.
First, it explicitly recognizes that customersalesperson
interactions create organization and that resulting customer
salesperson communication affects the customersalesperson
working relationship. Second, it recognizes that the selling
process contributes to organizational learning (Daft and
Weick 1984) such that following each customersalesperson
interaction, the customers and salespeople return to their
respective formally structured organizations to make sense of
their interactions and observations and to formulate and plan
the next steps, often in consultation with others. In relational
selling, customersalesperson interactions are undertaken to

Summer 2013 273

meet the goals of their respective organizations. Applying

the theory of organizing (Weick 1979) and the process of
sensemaking (Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld 2005) to the
personal selling process in such a context recognizes that in
assuming key boundary-spanning roles on behalf of their
respective formally structured organizations (Spekman 1979),
organization happens (Weick 1979) when customers and
salespeople interact. Organization also happens when those
within the selling and buying firms work together to make
sense of customersalesperson interactions. As customers and
salespeople organize, each tries to make sense of their immediate situation by observing, interpreting, and responding to
the communication cues of the other.
An organizational communication framework may apply
to transactional sales relationships (Day 2000; Dwyer, Schurr,
and Oh 1987; Weitz and Bradford 1999), since even in single,
discrete, and short-lived encounters customers and salespeople
perceive, interpret, and respond to one anothers cues. However, the organizational communication framework applies
more to relational selling, particularly given the feedback
loop that allows a salesperson to process, use, and act on
the framework not only during but also between customer
salesperson encounters.
Leigh and Marshall (2001) recognized salespeople as the key
conduits for information flows among all of the stakeholders
involved in a sale and as important gatherers and disseminators
of information that drive the customer relationship process.
In relational selling contexts, one must view the customer as
an actively involved relationship and communication partner.
In such contexts, salespeople work with customers to reduce
ambiguity and uncertainty toward the achievement of mutually beneficial goals. Although salespeople execute a multitude
of tasks through the course of the personal selling process, the
success of this process is ultimately a function of successful
customersalesperson organization.
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