The effect of trust in management on salespeople’s selling orientation

In the following study, a sales rep hard-selling orientation is much more influenced by the hard-selling orientation they perceive senior management want them to adopt when (1) they trust senior management and (2) when their sales manager is perceived to take a similar position as senior management. Thus, a strong in-sync ethical signal is sent, either low or high. Trust plays no moderating role in senior management or sales managers’ influence on a salesperson’s level of customer orientation. This is because pursuing a customer orientation does not increase risk and vulnerability the way that pursuing a hard-selling orientation does, and trust is only an influential construct when there exists risk and vulnerability. In addition, no strong in-sync ethical signal effect was observed on sales rep customer orientation.