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Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
Necessity is the Mother of Invention: Why Salesperson
Creativity is More Important Now than Ever and What We
Can Do to Encourage it
By David Strutton, Iryna Pentina and Ellen Bolman Pullins
The role that creativity may play in facilitating selling success or customer retention has received little
attention in the sales or sales management literatures. Yet, given recent changes in the nature of the
selling role, creativity may be increasingly important. The act of creation is – or, as reasoned below,
absolutely should be – part of the professional salesperson’s job and selling arsenal. Based on the current sales and organizational creativity literatures, we justify, develop and explain a two-stage Sales
Creativity Matrix. This matrix introduces five methods through which management might inspire
greater ideational creativity among salespeople and five methods through which salespeople might
more effectively identify the most useful sales ideas.
INTRODUCTION
The academic sales and sales management
literatures are filled with models explaining
what makes salespeople perform more
effectively (e.g. Zoltners, Sinha and
Lorimer, 2008). Earlier studies focused on
personality characteristics and appearance
(Lamont and Lundstrom, 1977), adaptive
selling capabilities (Weitz, Sujan and Sujan,
1986), and flexibility (Castleberry and
Shepherd, 1993). More recently,
relationship development skills (Marshall,
Goebel and Moncrief, 2003) and the ability
to function within a sales team (DeeterSchmelz and Ramsey, 1995) have been
identified as key success factors. However,
the role of a salesperson’s or a sales team’s
creativity has been largely ignored (Wang
and Netemeyer, 2004). This is especially
troubling since today’s world of selling has
been radically reshaped by increased global
competition, cutting-edge sales
technologies, rapid empowerment of
buyers and fragmentation of markets
(Moncrief and Marshall, 2005). Such new
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approaches as relationship selling, valueadded and consultative selling are critical to
sales function-based competitive advantage
in an increasingly commoditized business
world, and require sufficient strategic
planning that can benefit greatly if sales
agents and teams exhibit more creative
approaches at each step of the selling
process (Piercy and Lane, 2005).
The role of creativity in enhancing business
processes and functional outcomes has
long been recognized. By 1943, Joseph
Schumpeter was already writing that
capitalism evolves primarily through
“creative destruction” that produces,
through mutations from within, innovative
tech nol ogi es an d orga niz ati on s.
Organizational creativity has since been
linked to outcomes such as organizational
learning (Levinthal and March, 1993),
strategic differentiation and sustainable
competitive advantage (Porter, 1996), as
well as improved new product performance
(Im and Workman, 2004), with these
relationships becoming stronger in
Academic Article
turbulent environments characterized by high
uncertainty and competiveness (Ford, Sharman
and Dean, 2008). The evolution of sales from a
marginal activity to a strategic value-creating
function responsible for integrating internal
departments and customer-facing channels for
increased organizational productivity (Geiger
and Guenzi, 2009) and competitive
differentiation (Piercy and Lane, 2005) logically
evokes the need for creativity research in the
sales context. Although practitioner-oriented
sales literature emphasizes the need for creative,
problem-solving sales practices as markets
evolve and technology advances (Wang and
Netemeyer, 2004), very little attempt has been
made to inform best sales practice based on the
conceptual, empirical and theoretical literature.
To address this gap, the current paper attempts
to provide new insights for the practicing
managers and salespersons regarding the role of
creativity in developing customer solutions and
satisfaction, and in securing customer delight
and profitable relationships (Zoltner, Sinha and
Lonmer, 2008).
The remainder of this paper begins with a brief
literature review to define creativity and an
overview of the state of creativity research as it
may relate to professional selling today. It then
explores why creativity is so important in selling.
Following this, a matrix of the role creativity
should be taking in the selling organization is
developed that contains pragmatic suggestions
for practicing sales managers.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Creativity has been defined in many ways, such
as an individual trait, a cognitive process, a multi
-level process, an outcome, a component of
problem-solving, and even an organizational
outcome. As a cognitive process, for example,
Summer 2009 21
Koestler (1964) defined it as a “bisociative
process,” the connecting of two previously
unrelated matrices of thought to produce a new
insight. Alternatively, creativity can be
conceptualized as a syndrome with a number of
elements including cognitive, personality, and
motivational, as well as contextual factors
(Mumford & Gustafson, 1988). Ackoff and
Vergara (1981) defined it as the ability to break
through constraints imposed by habit and
tradition so as to find new solutions to
problems, strongly connecting it to problemsolving. In sales it has been more connected to
the number of new ideas or different behaviors
(Wang & Netemeyer, 2004). A summary of
some of the key definitions in each area is
included in Table 1. For our purposes, it is a
process of connecting contextual variables to
environmental cues to find new solutions to
problems, generate new ideas, and/or perform
the sales job uniquely.
It is probably worthwhile to consider the role of
creativity in problem-solving explicitly. This is a
controversial topic, with arguments on both
sides: that creativity is a special case of problemsolving and that problem-solving is a special
case of creativity. Despite this, most agree that
the core processes required for creative problem
solving are problem identification and
construction, identification of relevant
information, generation of new ideas, and the
evaluation of these ideas (Basadur, Graen, and
Green 1982). Creative problem-solving has
three different phases (problem finding,
problem solving and solution implementation).
In each phase, a two step thinking process of
ideation-evaluation occurs. Ideation is the
generation of options, different points of view,
and perceptions of facts and ideas with out
critical judgment. This constitutes the
Vol. 9, No. 3
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Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
divergent aspect of the process. On the other
hand, evaluation is the judgment and selection
of these thoughts. This is the convergence
aspect. These are two opposite kinds of thinking
skills that are synchronized throughout the
process. Given that creativity’s definitions and
role in problem-solving are accepted, we then
Approach to Creativity
Creativity as Individual
Trait
Creativity as Individual
Cognitive Processes
Creativity as Multilevel Processes
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need to consider what is known and accepted in
the sales literature about creativity.
Limited work in the academic sales arena has
specifically explored creativity among
professional salespeople. Moncrief (1986)
concluded that preliminary evidence existed
that creativity affects performance. Weilbaker
Table 1
Existing Definitions of Creativity
Definition
References
In its narrow sense, creativity refers to the abilities
that are most characteristic of creative people. Creativity is a continuous trait in all people; those individuals
with recognized creative talents simply have “more of
what all of us have” (p.446)
People with an innovative problem-solving style approach, consider, solve, and apply problems differently from those with adaptive styles
Guilford, J.P. (1950)
Insight and productive thinking arise when the thinker
grasps the essential features of a problem and their
relationships to a final solution
Wertheimer, M (1945)
Creativity involves “bisociative process” – the connecting of two previously unrelated “matrices of
thought” to produce a new insight or invention
Koestler, A. (1964)
The creative mind is skilled in “lateral” or associative
thinking, in which thought can leap from category to
category rather than following preexisting paths of
cognition
de Bono, E. (1991)
Creative engagement is a process in which an individual behaviorally, cognitively, and emotionally attempts
to produce creative outcomes
Kahn, W.A.( 1990)
Individual Level: engagement of an individual in a
creative act
Organizational Level: a process that maps when
creative behavior occurs and who engages in creative
behavior
Drazin, R., M. A. Glynn
and R. K. Kazanjian
(1999)
Individual Creativity: activities undertaken by individual employees within an organization to enhance
their capability for developing something which is
meaningful and novel within their work environment
Organizational Creativity: extent to which the organization has instituted formal approaches and tools,
and provided resources to encourage meaningfully
novel behavior within the organization
Bharadwaj, S. and A.
Menon (2000)
Kirton, M. (1989)
Academic Article
Creativity as
Outcome
Table 1—continued
Existing Definitions of Creativity
Creative product is anything that produces “effective surprise” in the observer, in addition to a “shock of recognition” that the product or response, although novel, is entirely appropriate
A product or response is creative to the extent that appropriate observers
independently agree it is creative. Appropriate observers are those familiar
with the domain in which the product was created or the response articulated. Thus, creativity can be regarded as the quality of products or responses judged to be creative by appropriate observers, and it can also be
regarded as the process by which something so judged is produced.
A product or response will be judged as creative to the extent that
a) it is both novel and appropriate, useful, correct, or valuable
response to the task at hand and
b) the task is heuristic (including problem discovery) rather than
algorithmic (straightforward)
Products, ideas, or procedures that re a) novel or original and b) relevant
and useful
Creative outcomes are those that are novel and valuable
Combined:
Internal and
External
Systems
Approach to
Creativity
Creativity as
Organizational Performance
Creative
ProblemSolving
Creativity in
sales
Componential Approach: Components of creative performance include:
a) domain-relevant skills: knowledge, technical skills, talent (cognitive abilities, education)
b) creativity-relevant skills: cognitive style, heuristics for generating novel
ideas, conducive work style (training, experience, personal traits)
c) task motivation: attitudes toward the task, perceptions of own motivation (intrinsic vs. extrinsic interplay)
Creativity can be conceptualized as a syndrome with a number of elements: individual cognitive processes, personality, and motivational variables to facilitate application of cognitive processes, and contextual variables such as climate, evaluation, and culture.
Any creative idea is affected by three main shaping forces: the field (social
institutions selecting the ideas to pursue), the domain (knowledge base and
culture disseminating new ideas), and the individual (bringing about creative change).
Organizational creativity means deliberately changing procedures to make
new, superior levels of quality, quantity, cost, and customer satisfaction
possible
Creativity is the generation of a valuable, useful new product, service, idea,
procedure, or process by individuals working together in a complex social
system
Summer 2009 23
Bruner, J. (1962)
Amabile, T.
(1982)
Amabile, T.
(1983)
Oldham, G. and
A. Cummings
(1996)
Ford, C. M.
(1996)
Amabile, T.
(1983)
Mumford, M.D.
and S.B. Gustafson (1988)
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1988)
Basadur, M. and
P. A. Hausdorf
(1996)
Woodman, R.
W., J. E. Sawyer
and R. W. Griffin (1993)
Definition of creativity: ability to break through constraints imposed by
habit and tradition so as to find new solutions to problems.
Ackoff, R. L.
and E. Vergara
(1981)
Salesperson Creative Performance: the amount of new ideas generated
or behaviors exhibited by the salesperson in performing his/her job activities
Wang, G. and R.
G. Netemeyer
(2004)
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Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
(1990) explored the cognitive and perceptional
selling abilities for missionary salespeople.
Creativity was one of nine abilities identified as
important by salespeople, sales managers, and
their customers. He was particularly concerned
with creativity as it relates to how salespeople
identify customer needs and innovate the ways
to approach customers. In 1997, AtuaheneGima noted that salespeople selling new
products require a high level of creativity to
facilitate the product launch in the market place.
He foun that salespeople with an intuitive
problem-solving style are more likely to adopt
the new product and better support the selling
effort associated with it (Atuahene-Gima, 1997).
Perhaps the most focused creativity research in
sales has been conducted by Wang and
Netemeyer (2004). They proposed that creativity
is essential to such tasks as finding new
prospects, identifying real needs of a customer,
and seeking tailored solutions to customer
problems. Their findings supported the notion
that customer sales depend on understanding
problems and tailoring solutions. When
salespeople integrate greater creativity into their
sales activities, they may be more likely to
provide prospects or customers with innovative,
useful and thus more desirable solutions
through which their problems can be solved and
situations improved (Wang and Netemeyer,
2004).
The problem-solving approach to selling that
has been accepted for sometime (e.g., Weitz,
1981) relies on the findings that problem-solving
increases the likelihood of sales and long-term
relationships (Eliashbrg, Lilien and Kim, 1995).
As the psychological literature has
demonstrated, successful problem-solving is also
strongly correlated with creative problemsolving (Amabile, 1998). Today’s salesperson
often must coordinate many needs across
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multiple functions in both the buying and selling
organization (Plouffe & Barclay, 2007). She or
he needs to be able to balance two separate sets
of objectives and develop win-win alternative
solutions so that both parties are satisfied. This
salesperson then becomes an integrator of the
two firms, not boundary spanning in the
traditional sense (Piercy and Lane, 2005), but
serving as a conduit for a seamless system of
problem-solving. The ability to identify
information or problems and generate
alternative solutions becomes very important,
escalating the need for creativity.
One other clearly relevant generalized change is
arising within the sales profession. Market
sensing requires that successful salespeople be
capable of looking beyond their typical role and
day to day operations, and understand what is
happening in the external environment that is
important to the selling firm, much like creative
thinkers must sift and sort multiple levels of
information to “sense” out what is relevant to
the problem at hand (De Bono, 1993). Also, in
the midst of integrating multiple functions,
salespeople should be able to both sense
relevant information, and develop multiple
alternatives that meet a variety of differing
criteria if they are to be successful. This requires
high levels of creativity that can manifest in
various ways.
A distinction, for example, is made between ‘real
-time’ and ‘multi-stage’ creativity (Drazin, Glynn
and Kazanjian, 1999; Ford, 1996). Real-time
creativity eventuates - largely spontaneously during the brief time frame in which salespeople
operate in the actual presence of customers. By
contrast, multi-stage creativity unfolds more
deliberately. There, sufficient time exists for
more judicious generation, evaluation and
selection of creative ideas and approaches
Academic Article
through which any resulting solutions are
presented to customers more creatively. Since
the real-time creativity is largely spontaneous
and individualized, this paper focuses on the
multi-stage creativity that is more amenable to
managerial input and training and is consistent
with the view of sales as more strategic in
planning and value creation (Piercy & Lane,
2005; Geiger & Guenzi, 2009).
Imagine a Tier 1 automotive parts manufacturer
selling to a Big Three manufacturer. Perhaps this
particular salesperson has one purchase agent
with a specific model that represents most (or
all) of her customer base. She discovers they are
revamping the model and has to coordinate her
engineering staff with the automotive
manufacturer’s product line managers in both
organizations. She also needs to bring together
finance, training, operations individuals, and
others. She must be good at sensing the needs
of the remodel, developing various alternatives,
creating solutions that will “work” from an
engineered perspective, but also create greater
value for her customer than does the
competitor’s proposal. She also has to create
the proposal in such a way that it repositions the
original offering in an appealing and persuasive
manner. This salesperson is likely relying on
multi-stage creativity processes. Of particular
note, the expanded time frame should enable
salespeople and managers to manage the
creative process more strategically and
effectively.
A second distinction that may be relevant within
the sales arena is between the two distinct
categories of divergent and convergent thinking
(Woodman et al., 1993). Divergent thinking
encompasses the intellectual predilection and
applicable abilities of salespeople to create (i.e.,
originate) numerous inventive, fully-elaborated
Summer 2009 25
and diverse ideas. Convergent thinking
encompasses the intellectual discipline and
applicable abilities of salespeople to rationally
evaluate, critique and identify those best ideas
from any batch created during the divergent
creative stage (Woodman et al., 1993). Divergent
thinking appears essential to ensuring the
novelty and appeal of creative sales solutions.
Yet as a necessarily complementary factor,
convergent thinking may be every bit as essential
as a means to ensure the appropriateness and
practical suitability of any ideas selected for
pursuit. This harks back to the idea of the two
types of thinking aligning in creative problemsolving discussed earlier. It makes sense for sales
as it is an iterative process with clear decision
making stages. In addition, one practical
approach to the sales process, Conceptual
Selling (Miller & Heiman 2005) –explicitly deals
with these concepts, divergent and convergent
thinking, as an important constructing the
practice of personal selling.
While few sales professionals are likely to
innately possess the intellectual, functional or
temporal prerequisites necessary to engage
naturally and optimally in divergent and
convergent creativity, purposive management of
the creative processes could ensure that most
sales professionals develop the necessary
creativity-related skill sets (Epstein, Schmidt and
Warfel, 2008). While managers could be more or
less creative in their own thoughts and activities,
their role is critical insofar as they influence the
performance of salespeople who report to them
(Deeter-Schemltz, Goebal and Kennedy, 2008).
Additionally, sales managers could consciously
lead or execute through methods and
approaches that facilitate or inspire greater
original ideation and more creative selection
processes amongst members of their sales
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Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
forces.
managerial implications are derived.
MULTI-LEVEL SALES CREATIVITY
MATRIX AND ITS IMPLICATIONS FOR
MANAGERS
Methods for Stimulating Idea Generation:
Divergent Thinking
Proposition 1: Sales Managers who construct
intersections will improve idea generation for themselves
and their sales forces.
By combining the concepts of divergent and
convergent thinking processes at both the sales
manager and salesperson level, Figure 1 depicts
the Multi-Level Sales Creativity Matrix that
results when the two relevant organizational
creativity levels and creativity processes are
combined in a unifying scheme. The figure
demonstrates sales manager specific examples of
both divergent (idea generation) aspects of
creativity important to the sales manager’s job,
as well as convergent (idea evaluation) aspects.
It also shows the salesperson convergent and
divergent applications of creativity. Finally,
management interaction creativity, which may
have components of both convergent and
divergent thinking are also identified. Based on
the Matrix (Figure 1) and the extant creativity
literature, in the discussion that follows a
number of broad propositions and specific
One strategy for sales managers to encourage
creative idea generation might be to deliberately
create teams that force intersections between
individuals with different perspectives to offer.
This strategy involves the formation of managed
intersections between sales team members or
salespeople and their managers. Amabile (1988,
1998) conceived such intersections as
interactive, iterative processes where individuals
develop ideas, present each to the group, work
further in solitude on successfully vetted issues
and then return to the group to further modify
and polish surviving ideas.
Managed intersections could be devised either to
identify unique customer problems or to create
new-to-world customer solutions. Such
intersections can be established through a two-
Divergent
Figure 1: Sales Creativity Matrix
Sales Manager
Salesperson
1.
Construct
intersection
3. Acknowledge Barriers
to Creativity
2.
Create Diverse
Cross-Functional
Teams
4. Shun Conventional
Wisdom
5. Engage in
Desirable Leadership
Behaviors
Convergent
6. Integrate Creativity
Metrics
Sales Manager
Salesperson
7. Defer Judgment
9. Answer go-no go
questions
8. Assemble Diverse
Evaluation Teams
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10. Assess Idea Risk
Academic Article
stage process. In the first, leadership could
evaluate and classify the entire set of prior
experiences and relative hard (i.e., analytical) and
soft (i.e., emotional, as in ‘emotional IQ’)
strengths that their individual sales reports bring
to their job. Likely, individuals who collectively
make-up any moderately to large-sized sales unit
have emerged from diverse backgrounds, and
feature different relative strengths and
weaknesses.
Cases where this strategy is currently used in
practice include weekly sales meetings. One
business services firm has a Friday morning
meeting every single week. Salespeople are
encouraged to share accounts they are struggling
with and brainstorming occurs. The salespeople
are asked to think about the alternatives
generated and to discuss them again at the next
meeting. Where possible, teams like this can be
assembled deliberately, with the end-goal of
maximizing the entire unit’s creativity. Still
untapped, yet highly creative, sales ideas surely
exist. By strategically facilitating such
‘intersectional exchanges’ of best-practice selling
concepts or customer experiences, managers
might uncover more creative ideas. Greater
numbers of original ideas and, ultimately,
creatively useful customer solutions, would
almost surely follow.
Proposition 2: Sales Managers who create crossfunctional teams will enhance the idea generation of their
sales force.
Strategically introducing ‘outsiders’ into
customer evaluation and sales ideation or
presentation processes, and honoring their
divergent perspectives, for example, can
promote intersectional creativity effects. To
illustrate, dependent on the challenges and
circumstances being encountered, management
might embed cost-oriented production or
Summer 2009 27
financial experts with a salesperson or within a
selling team. Consistent with Peter and
Donnelly’s position (2002), an embedded
individual’s divergent, i.e., cross-functional,
experiences could ignite intersectional effects
that stimulate more original thinking among
sales professionals.
In one author’s experience, an industrial
manufacturer required that headquarters
management personnel ride along with
salespeople on a fairly regular basis. The first
goal of this program was that the HQ managers
be exposed to the “real world” and its
customers. However, an interesting side effect
that arose was that the HQ managers often
brought a unique perspective to the field
salesperson. On numerous occasions
salespeople would end up complimenting the
ride-alongs on unique insights or innovative
solutions that they brought up. Fashioning and
honoring such an official outsider sales role,
even periodically, could keep new questions and
issues arising and intersectional perspectives
surfacing when salespeople or selling teams
encounter new or existing customer challenges.
If actual ride-alongs, or additional sales team
members aren’t viable, other methods exist
through which management might promote
powerful intersectional-stimulating and
associative barrier-dampening effects. Their
sales reports, for example, could be required to
purposefully adopt, inside their minds,
perspectives that otherwise would have to be
introduced from outside sources. Specifically
focused training or continuing education
sessions could facilitate this exact result. What
sorts of original insights might be inspired if
salespeople were required to identify, critically
evaluate and resolve emergent customer
problems from wholly open-minded
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Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
perspectives?
Proposition 3: Salespeople who acknowledge barriers to
creativity will improve their idea generation.
Extremely creative salespeople might frequently
encounter the need to overcome the opposition
of others, such as sales managers or senior
associates, who rather reflexively reject original
ideas. Yet, the biggest obstacles to accepting and
originating truly creative ideas most salespeople
will encounter exist inside their own minds.
Johannson (2005) defined these persistent,
naturally-arising, deeply-internalized obstacles as
‘associative barriers.’ Associative barriers can act
like super-glue affixed to the wheels of
otherwise creative progress. Their presence
promotes friction, inside all our minds, friction
that impedes and inhibits otherwise more
naturally-arising creative instincts, abilities and
activities of anyone dragged down by them.
Even in collaborative, mutually supportive and
respectful sales manager-salesperson
relationships, associative barriers could emerge
readily from connections that sales managers or
experienced salespeople have already established
with their profession’s or market’s established
ideas, principles, processes or methods. Logic
dictates that the ‘better informed’ sales managers
are, or the more that experienced salespeople
‘learn about how things ought to be done
(around here),’ the more likely it is that either
group will be weighed down by associative
barriers.
Creative disadvantages may well characterize
selling firms whose managers did not encourage
salespeople to lower their associative barriers
when seeking creativity, and reward them for
succeeding. Both managers and salespeople
should be trained to recognize associate barriers,
and cautioned to not buy-in to the status quo or
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the “way we’ve always done it.” In addition,
rewards can be generated that recognize original
idea generation so that the tendency to bury
anything too different may be overcome.
Proposition 4: Salespeople that shun conventional
wisdom will improve their idea generation.
Following precedent often makes sense.
Conventional thinking is unlikely to become
precedent unless it worked in the past. But
things can change. And in myriad modern sales
environments, many things are changing. In
such situations, excessive adherence to
conventional thinking might prove an
unfortunate framework for evaluating the
suitability of original ideas. One example of this
attachment to conventional wisdom comes to us
from a risk management firm that made a
commitment to update their processes and
focus on relationship development. The
investment was made in thorough retraining and
several national kick off meetings. Yet, six
months later the business development manager
reports that many of the more experienced yet
more moderately successful salespeople insist on
holding on to the traditional techniques that
aren’t working but that they “know” work for
them.
Salespeople can be encouraged to think out of
the box. Creativity training can be valuable and
show that it is valued in the sales team’s
environment. Salespeople can be challenged by
goals and incentives to develop more new ideas.
Sales meetings can dedicate time to generating
new ideas to typical problems. These practices
are often used in some of the best sales forces
and can be adapted to help salespeople to look
at doing things other than according
toconventional wisdom.
Academic Article
Methods for Managing for Improved
Creative Ideation and Evaluation
Proposition 5: Sales Managers who engage in desirable
leadership behaviors will encourage both more idea
generation and better idea evaluation among their
salespeople.
Sales managers can be mindful to reward
creativity in their sales force. Few desirable
workplace behaviors arrive completely
independent from effective managerial
leadership behaviors (Deeter-Schmelz et al.,
2008). Managers should materially, equitably and
visibly reward creative ideas or solutions.
Specifically, the tactic entails a conscious
managerial decision to display leadership signals
reflecting confidence that creative approaches
exist through which current customer challenges
or market opportunities can be resolved. But
those same behaviors should be devoid of any
dogma regarding how the salespeople who
report to such managers might achieve the
designated creative task. If their managers
displayed such behaviors, salespersons might
logically conclude that opportunity exists for
them to be self-starting, fully engaged, and more
creative (Langer, 1989).
While any feedback provided to their
salespeople could stimulate idea generation
efforts, the actual process of attempting to
answer questions should also facilitate more
creative managerial insights, as well. New
questions often stimulate new perspectives.
These new perspectives provide substantial
information and interpretation to manager
‘respondents.’ If managers extend themselves
just a bit, by asking questions of the salespeople,
both groups should grow more creative. When
managers make it clear they accept occasional
deviation from routine selling methods, more
naturally creative salespeople seem more likely
Summer 2009 29
to step up, create and contribute. In this regard,
managers probably should encourage more than
incremental improvements in the creative
solutions developed by their salespeople and
should clearly model creative problem-solving
for their salespeople.
Proposition 6: Sales Mangers that integrate creativity
metrics will encourage both more idea generation and
better idea evaluation among their salespeople.
Given the “ambiguity” surrounding creativity,
managers may steer away from establishing clear
metrics for idea generation and evaluation
among their salespeople, but this need not be
the case. For the sales manager that establishes
clear and measurable creativity goals, and
actually measures creative performance,
increases in both creative idea generation and
quality of creative solutions should follow,
bringing along the rewards. Because creativity is
not always well defined or understood in the
sales force, managers should probably work
closely with their salespeople in establishing
metrics. Firms can also encourage sharing
creative approaches and the rewards they
generated across divisions or regions. When
open conversation about the importance and
value of creative ideation and evaluation occur,
and then metrics are set, and measured,
improvement in overall selling creativity should
be expected.
As creativity becomes a rewarded behavior, sales
managers must make sure to also acknowledge
failure and make sure that salespeople are
prepared to learn from it. Sales personnel who
are capable of creativity will also understand that
those who generate more ideas would
experience more failures.
This simple
relationship should be publicly acknowledged by
management. Management should encourage
salespeople to learn from their creative failures,
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Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
and upgrade processes and outcomes as a result.
Management should likewise emphasize that
making occasional mistakes by expanding their
creative vision is acceptable, but that repeating
the same mistake is not. False steps, and
occasional mistakes, are necessary to lower
associative barriers, stimulate intersectional
thinking, create and blend new perspectives, and
ultimately, generate new ideas. Over the longer
term, the best solutions result from the most
stretched imaginations (Cummings and
O’Connell, 1978).
Methods for Ensuring Effective
Evaluation: Convergent Thinking
Idea
Proposition 7: Sales Managers who defer judgment will
improve idea evaluation by their sales force.
Sales Managers should avoid hurried judgments
of any creative ideas or solutions developed by
their sales force. Deferring judgments can prove
emotionally challenging for many sales
managers, as highly qualified managers’ minds
tend to judge quickly because they already enjoy
deeply rooted field sales expertise. Yet, by
judging too hastily, the risk of automatically
discarding genuinely original ideas by comparing
them to solutions already known to work
expands significantly. Thus at this stage creative
minds should judge original ideas leisurely to the
extent possible. This is especially true in modern
markets where customer demands or
competitive initiatives can change so rapidly.
Ideally, the sales manager would always have the
leisure to consider but this is not viable. While
sometimes quick decision-making is needed, it is
never too late to revisit a new strategy which
may have value in other situations.
Proposition 8: Sales Managers who exploit naturallyarising inequities will improve idea evaluation in their sales
force.
Northern Illinois University
The composition of any evaluating team
employed during this process probably matters
greatly. In any unit, some people excel at
divergent – or original - thinking. Others may be
better at critically evaluating ideas. Likely, few
could truthfully claim mastery over each skill set.
Thus certain inequities probably exist within
most moderate sized or larger sales forces. That
‘diversity’ is subject to exploitation. And for
creativity evaluation purposes, it should be.
When assembled, creativity identification teams
should be constructed such that more robust
divergent thinkers complement stronger
convergent thinkers. Then, when charging any
evaluative team with the task of identifying the
most effective ideas or sales solutions,
management would not have to encourage team
members to blend their diverse perspectives in
arriving at their best choice. Instead, the
assorted identification team members would
naturally do it themselves.
By exploiting
evaluative team inequities, evaluative team
combinations featuring diverse thinkers will
yield the best outcomes (Pinto, Pinto and
Prescott, 1993).
Proposition 9: Salespeople who answer “Go-No Go”
questions will improve their idea evaluation.
As idea generation increases, the salespeople
themselves need tools to help them with idea
evaluation. Following are some sample
questions that can be shared with salespeople to
the various ideas that they are generating for any
given customer problem/ selling scenario. Each
question should be answered with respect to
each original sales idea created during the initial
creativity process. Responses should be
compared for each now-competing idea. As
each idea is being evaluated, the salesperson
should remain vigilant of any unique
environmental circumstances, competitive
Academic Article
challenges or customer opportunities that their
firm is currently confronting. Such questions
might include:
• Were this specific sales idea pursued by our
firm, and purchased by the focal customer or
customer firm, would execution
requirements mesh with our firm’s existing
or potential capabilities?
• Would successful execution of this specific
idea fulfill the exact purposes for which it is
intended with respect to both our firm and
the customer firm?
• If the firm acts based on this idea, would it
be pursuing more creative endeavors than
can be effectively managed?
• Would focal salespeople be able to believe
with their hearts and minds in the value of
the customer solution?
Assuming the idea is presented effectively, is it
reasonable to believe focal customers could be
educated so that they eventually discern the
unique value of the solution?
No matter how seemingly attractive original
sales ideas (solutions) are generated during the
idea generation process, the prospect of ultimate
sales failure will increase markedly unless the
ideas identified by the firm for actual execution
fit with existing production, marketing or
customer constraints. Nor should ‘successful’
ideas ever require a selling firm to acquire new,
enabling resource advantages at too high a cost
(Crawford and DiBenedetto, 2006). Clearly,
answering each question affirmatively, in the
order presented, might lessen the likelihood that
a deficient creative sales solution is selected.
Directly answering each question should
pointedly require evaluators to visualize how
and whether each idea being evaluated could be
Summer 2009 31
integrated into a sales approach, and executed
successfully. Customization of the questions, to
account for unique constraints that might be
encountered in particular selling situations, is
also clearly possible.
Proposition 10: Salespeople who assess idea risk will
improve their idea evaluation.
Salespeople need to evaluate risk for the ideas
that they generate. Even when each question is
answered positively for an idea, final choices will
still be accompanied by various types of
unmitigated risk. (These risks include the risk of
choosing nothing at all.) Thus the risks
associated with vetting ideas still surviving at
this point should themselves be evaluated from
a psychological perspective that increases the
prospect that the true ‘best’ original sales idea is
selected – despite its risk. To achieve this result,
salespeople should evaluate the risks associated
with actually choosing any still competing idea
from a properly balanced risk perspective.
Perhaps the key precondition for continued
success at this point of the identification process
is mindful avoidance of certain highly
predictable psychological traps. Because such
‘traps’ are predictable, they are generally
manageable. By avoiding these traps, sales
professionals will have attained a more balanced
view of risk. Such a balanced risk perspective
can prove crucial, insofar as successfully
managed risk and genuine creativity are likely to
rise or fall in concert. Absent a proper risk
perspective, otherwise original ideas could be
eliminated from further consideration because
they were wrongly deemed too risky.
Unique choices, such as any decision to choose
and pursue a boldly innovative sales idea, may
generate, at the outset, unique consequences. To
account for this predictable phenomenon, the
key consequences that would likely ensue from
Vol. 9, No. 3
32
Journal of Selling & Major Account Management
both the sales firm’s and focal customer’s
perspective if each of the creative sales ideas still
in play after the go/no go question have been
answered should be mapped out. For instance, a
salesperson could estimate the negative or
positive values associative with the outcomes
presumed to be associated with implementing
each sales idea, as well as the probability that
each outcome would occur.
David Strutton
Professor of Marketing
Director, New Product Development Scholars
Program
P.O. Box 311396
University of North Texas
Denton, TX 76203-1396
Strutton@unt.edu
SUMMARY
Creativity does not come easily or naturally to
many people, and the best approach to ideabased creative selling would likely be different
on a firm-by-firm and customer-by-customer
basis. No one-size-fits-all creative customer
solution could ever exist. But these facts do
nothing to degrade the lasting, universal value,
of creative selling, and the need to pursue and
exercise it properly. Based on modern empirical
evidence and historically-verified creative
approaches, the Sales Creativity Matrix may
facilitate additional, more effectual and more
effectively managed sales creativity within sales
organizations.
It can facilitate ‘divergent’
creative activities within sales units, and allow
those same units to engage more effectively in
‘convergent’ creative activities. These ‘divergent’
activities should promote the generation of
greater numbers of creative ideas within any
sales unit. In turn, the ‘convergent’ activities
should facilitate the identification of the best/
most useful ideas from amongst any batch
stimulated as a result of the divergent process.
Iryna Pentina
Assistant Professor of Marketing
University of Toledo
2801 W. Bancroft St., MS 103
Toledo, Ohio 43606
ipentin@utnet.utoledo.edu
Ellen Bolman Pullins
Professor of Marketing
Schmidt Research Professor of Sales & Sales
Management
University of Toledo
2801 W. Bancroft St., MS 103
Toledo, Ohio 43606
Ellen.pullins@utoledo.edu
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