Exploring the influence of salesperson lone wolf tendencies on customer value co-creation: a social exchange perspective
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Purpose As business-to-business (B2B) sales organizations increasingly adopt collaborative and solution-oriented selling approaches, the lone wolf tendencies (LWTs) in salespeople require further examination due to their potential to impact salesperson–customer relationships. With shifts toward cooperative paradigms favoring value co-creation between salespeople and their customers, LWTs may act as a deterrent to building successful and mutually collaborative salesperson–customer relationships. Although the potential link between salesperson personality traits and customer reactions in B2B sales has been suggested, it is unclear how the impact of salesperson’s LWTs on customer value co-creation is. Thus, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of LWTs on value co-creation and relationship building. Design/methodology/approach A multimethod, multistudy approach was used to explore the link between salesperson LWTs and customer responses by analyzing data from B2B salespeople, customers and company sales figures, using a social exchange framework that emphasizes trust and conflict levels. Findings The results from the quantitative study indicate that salesperson LWTs reduce customer value co-creation, which can, in turn, boost sales performance while decreasing customer propensity to leave. The findings suggest that salespeople with higher LWTs are more likely to undermine customer trust and escalate conflicts with customers. A qualitative study confirms earlier quantitative results and shows how LWTs are deeply embedded in sales culture, especially in high-autonomy, high-pressure environments. While LWTs can promote short-term individual success, they also pose risks to team cohesion and long-term value – highlighting the importance of strategic management that balances independence with collaboration. Originality/value The study’s insights offer a theoretical contribution to the sales literature by revealing the mechanisms through which salesperson LWTs influence customer relationships and ultimately impact sales performance. The study offers a clearer understanding of how LWTs impact sales and behavioral performance. By advancing the knowledge of these complex dynamics, this research provides valuable insights for both academicians and practitioners.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".