Empowered Selling Teams: How Shared Leadership Can Contribute to Selling Team Outcomes

Abstract

Customer demands and an increasingly complex environment can make team selling critical to strategy implementation, profitability and competitive advantage. The increased use of selling teams has not been matched by an increased understanding of how to foster enhanced selling team effectiveness. In this article we define empowered selling teams and the shared leadership process within such teams. We develop a limited model of selling team effectiveness where team member characteristics, and vertical leadership, influence shared leadership and shared leadership indirectly and directly influences selling team effectiveness.