Professor Grace Xu is part of the team of researchers and authors for the article “Why Salespeople Avoid Big-Whale Sales Opportunities“, accepted for publication in Journal of Marketing. Contrary to the intuition notion that salespeople would be attracted towards big-whale sales opportunities, in fact they often rather avoid them. The study sheds new light on the reasons and nature of this behaviour. For sales managers, the results of the study imply new ways to manage salespeople’s avoidance of large sales opportunities (e.g., altering their benefit-cost calculus), and provide understanding of the role of conversion uncertainty in salesperson decision making while prospecting.

Publication related to the Area of Excellence The Complexity Advantage, sub-area Markets, information, and complexity