Which influence tactics lead to sales performance? It is a matter of style

The application of influence is a key behaviour set at the heart of the sales role. But we know little about how or whether influence tactics affect salespeople's actual job performance. We extend existing research on salespeople's use of influence by: (1) showing that influence tactics can be used to predict objective sales performance (and delineating which tactics are most predictive); (2) demonstrating that the effect of tactics on performance varies across salespeople, and these patterns of influence effectiveness allow us to identify different influence 'styles' and (3) revealing that the influence styles our data uncover are not consistent with existing theoretical classifications of influence tactics. The article concludes with a discussion of theoretical and managerial implications, and directions for future work.