| dc.description.abstract | The topic of employee engagement has attracted increasing attention from both scholars and practitioners given its well-recognized benefits such as higher performance and lower turnover. While ample studies were conducted to explore the antecedents and consequences of engagement, few were situated in the context of professional selling. As a result, we have limited understanding of how to engage a critical group in the workforce— inside sales representatives who are projected to be in greater demand in the coming years. For a field such as human resource development (HRD) whose core mission is developing people, no research attention has been given to inside sales professionals either. Therefore, the purpose of this study was to explore employee engagement from the perspective of inside sales representatives. Specifically, two research questions guided this inquiry: first, what are inside sales representatives’ perceptions of work engagement? and second, what engaging behaviors do inside sales representatives display at work?
To address these questions, I employed a generic, qualitative research approach. Informed by this design, I recruited 15 individuals who had experience working in inside sales roles. I conducted two rounds of in-depth, individual interviews with each participant. To collect concrete examples of engagement behaviors, I relied on the critical incident techniques (CIT) technique. The interviews generated 203 pages of data and 89 critical incidents, which I analyzed using the thematic analysis (TA) method.
This study revealed three major findings. First, what is perceived by inside sales representatives as an engagement booster does not necessarily lead to engaging behaviors. Second, engagement varies by job role. Specifically, those in the business development role were less engaged than those in the account manager role. Lastly, engagement for inside sales representatives is more extrinsically than intrinsically driven.
The findings of this study provided some major implications for HRD practice and research. For leaders, managers and HRD professionals working in inside sales organizations, this study proposed a new engagement process model with actionable strategies that can guide the effort towards effectively engaging inside sales representatives in the entry-level business development role. For HRD scholars who are interested in the phenomenon of employee engagement, this study opened the door to an uncharted territory (professional selling) and outlined a new agenda for future engagement research. | |
