The effectiveness of sales people on customer loyalty : a quantitative research into the Irish printing industry

Abstract

Relationship selling is not a new concept and has been written about by many authors however it is very rarely industry specific and little is known about the effect modern relationship managers have over customer’s loyalty given the new concept of readily available digital information. It is also evident viewing literature previously written that the arguments and assumptions based around relationship selling is from the view of the sales person and not the buying organisation, It is the authors aim to ascertain the effect relational sales people have over customer loyalty in the modern Irish printing industry and more specifically are they still worth the high wages these sales people have become accustomed to. The researcher performed a survey of the entire printing industry in both north and south Ireland in July 2014 using a questionnaire and model previously used in America and performed a comparative analysis by which he came to his conclusions. The author overcame preconceived ideas pertaining to the sales environment and the views of buying organisations over sales people’s behaviours, realising that relational behaviours are the single most important skill a sales person can have and or develop. Author keywords: Customer loyalty, relationship sales people, business to business marketing