Transformational Leadership: Managing the Twenty-First Century Sales Force

In today's more diverse sales organizations, sales managers face important interpersonal challenges to achieving high-quality relationships, which result in better performance within their sales force. In this article, it is argued that cultural distance can negatively influence sales manager and sales subordinate relationships. The quality of these relationships ultimately influences the level of effort that sales subordinates exert toward achieving organizational sales goals. However, despite the potential obstacle of cultural distance, sales managers can utilize transformational leadership as a means to mitigate its adverse effects on one-to-one relationships with members of the sales force.