Improving Relationship Selling Through Failure Analysis and Recovery Efforts: A Framework and Call to Action

Despite widespread recognition that relationship selling should focus on long-term, mutually satisfying buyer–seller relationships, current conceptualizations overlook two important components: salesperson failure analysis and recovery efforts. This paper proposes that salespeople should be trained in five intertwined skill set areas of failure analysis and recovery efforts: failure identification; failure attribution; recovery strategy selection; recovery implementation; and tracking, monitoring, and evaluating effectiveness. This paper is intended to (1) stimulate empirical investigations regarding these two important areas of study and (2) provide a framework to facilitate sales training in failure analysis and recovery efforts.

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