Human Leadership and Digital Transformations in Sales Leadership

What happens when high-tech selling meets human leadership?

In this episode of AMS Illuminations, host Brad Carlson talks with Dr. Nawar Chaker, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, about how sales leadership is evolving in an era of AI, automation, and remote work. Drawing on research published in top journals, they explore what effective salesperson persistence really looks like, why relational skills matter more than ever, and how leaders can navigate ethics, performance, and wellbeing in modern sales organizations.

A thoughtful, practitioner-focused conversation on balancing digital transformation with the human side of selling.

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Transcript

Brad Carlson: Welcome back to AMS Illuminations, the podcast where we connect cutting edge marketing research with the real-world challenges facing today's marketers and educators. I'm your host, Brad Carlson, and I'm glad you're here.

Today, we're closing out this season with a guest whose work lives at the intersection of psychology, ethics, and digital transformation in the sales world. I'm joined by Dr. Nawar Chaker, Associate Professor of Marketing at the Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. Nawar's work published in top journals, like the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science and Industrial Marketing Management, dives deep into the human dynamics of modern selling. From emotional intelligence and leadership, to the ethical dilemmas raised by new technologies, his research doesn't just describe what's happening in sales, it helps explain why it matters.

In this episode called Human Leadership and Digital Transformations in Sales Leadership, we explore what happens when you combine high-tech with high-touch. We'll dig into Nawar's latest work to unpack how sales leaders and organizations can adapt ethically and effectively as AI, remote work, and automation reshape the way we sell. We'll talk about what truly drives performance today, how salespeople navigate emotional and relational stressors, and what leadership looks like when you're managing from behind a screen, instead of across the table. So, whether you're a marketing scholar, a sales educator, or a practitioner trying to stay ahead of the curve, this conversation offers insight you can take straight from the classroom or the journal page into practice.

Nawar, great to have you on the pod, my friend. I've been looking forward to this for a while. You and I have crossed paths a lot across different academic and professional settings over the years, and I've always really appreciated how grounded and thoughtful your perspective is, especially when it comes to the intersection of leadership, psychology, and tech in sales. So, I'm excited to finally sit down and have this conversation, and I know our listeners are going to take a lot away from it. So, thanks for being here.

Dr. Chaker: Yeah, Brad, thank you. My pleasure. I appreciate the kind words.

Carlson: All right, let's kick things off with one of your most cited topics, salesperson persistence. So a lot of people throw around the phrase, "Don't take no for an answer," but your research takes a much more nuanced look at persistence. So what kinds of persistence actually help close deals? And when does it start to backfire? And how can managers recognize that line?

Dr. Chaker: Yeah, it's funny you asked that. It's actually the impetus for my dissertation. If you think about common wisdom and anecdotal advice, what do people say in sales, "Just be persistent. Go out and just be persistent. It'll work. You'll be successful." However, what you find is the definition or what people mean by persistence is different. For example, one manager might mean one thing, another manager might mean yet another thing. Most people, when they think persistence, they're thinking the annoying salesperson, the, "Keep being aggressive, keep asking about an order," don't back down kind of thing. And while that's certainly one type of persistence, my research really found that there's another kind of persistence, which I labeled to be nurture-focused. And the idea with nurture-focused persistence is to take more of a passive influence approach, rather than an active influence approach, which is what I call closure-focused persistence.

The nurture-focused persistence, unlike closure-focused, it emphasizes trying to remain top of mind and emphasizing ways to be persistent without appearing to be persistent. What I mean by that is, rather than directly asking for orders or following up with customers, rather what a salesperson would do is maybe reach out and send a relevant article to a customer, or maybe just check in to see if there's any new information they can provide. Maybe there's some other value-add service they could offer without having to directly ask about an order. Whereas closure-focused persistence, that's your, "Are you going to buy from me today? Are you going to be placing an order?"

What we find in the research, which is actually pretty intriguing, is there's a little bit of a countervailing effect such that one, of course, is more efficient, the other one is more effective. Closure-focused persistence, from a salesperson perspective, helps you be more efficient, right? You're able to get a yay or nay much quicker, but the trade-off is you may actually irritate customers along the way and you may burn bridges, so to speak. Whereas nurture-focused persistence, it may actually slow you down a little bit. It may not be as efficient. But long-term, it's more effective because you're not really burning bridges. You're not coming off as that annoying salesperson, fitting the stereotype that many people have.

Carlson: I feel like that also parallels the shift that hit marketing when social media came in. The traditional marketing was sell, promote the product. And with social media, if that's all you do, you're going to make customers tired of hearing your voice. Now, that also connects to something else you've written about, which is how the personal and professional blur in sales roles. So, when salespeople are expected to build relationships with customers, that can get messy. So how can leaders support their teams in managing those relationship gray areas without compromising trust or ethics?

Dr. Chaker: Salespeople generally work on their own. They're a field sales representative, in particular. You're disconnected from the corporate office, and you might work in your own territory, away from your colleagues, away from your company, right? So there's a sense of isolation that occurs. And then you have situations where COVID occur and then your customers now don't really want to meet with you, or are unable to meet with you, right? So, then, you have, "How do I manage my personal life, my professional life?" these kind of things, and then it creates a lot of stress for the salesperson and a lot of burnout, and so forth. So one way to account for that or accommodate for that is, of course, defining boundaries, giving salespeople permission to prioritize work-life balance. As you were seeing with a lot of our students, a lot of our recent graduates, people entering sales, it's something they highly value.

So, if you can establish boundaries, help salespeople, as a manager, determine those boundaries, then I think that is one way to at least help salespeople realize that it's okay to have personal time, it's okay to have professional time, "My personal relationships might look different than my professional relationships," even, in some cases, your customer may be a friend, might be someone you work with as well. So just helping salespeople navigate through how to set expectations, how to set boundaries for yourself with those that you interact with, that's certainly one way to help deal with the stress.

Carlson: So, obviously in that response, you addressed some of the recent shifts that we've seen, and another major shift we've seen in sales is the rise of inside sales. So, it's not just a new channel, it's a whole new model of interaction. Can you break down what inside sales really is and why it matters strategically in today's selling environment?

Dr. Chaker:  Yeah. It's funny you mentioned that because inside sales has had different connotations over the years. To summarize it very briefly, it's basically selling remote. Whereas outside sales or field sales, the sales representative would go out and meet the customers face-to-face, shake hands, rub elbows. Inside sales would be sitting behind a computer, maybe in some sort of a company office with other inside sellers, and they would be conducting sales by phone, by internet. Nowadays, you have digital technologies, such as Zoom and other types of things. So, as companies have realized that, "Hey, we could be equally as effective in selling inside," adding the fact also that many customers today, they actually don't want to spend much time with salespeople, and many of them have come to these engagements much more educated. They have more ideas of what they're looking for. So, if you could speed up the process, make it more convenient for the customer, and then, more importantly, save money for the organization, inside sales is a really good option.

Carlson: In your view, what's the next big research or practical question we need to answer about AI in sales? And how do we move beyond automation toward real human AI collaboration?

Dr. Chaker:  If you look at implementing AI and implementing AI in the organizational frontlines, those employees that are customer-facing, such as salespeople, there's different spectrum of how you could implement AI, right? On one extreme, it could be complete replacement, which would be more automation, just automate certain tasks, replace AI with activities that salespeople are doing. On the other end of the spectrum, you could have where, now, you replace the employee and you have AI, more of an agentic AI basically doing everything, right? And then, in that case, a human being or a salesperson might have to work with an AI as a coworker in that case, and they have to collaborate together. Other types of human AI collaborations could include things like AI and salespeople working together in terms of sales giving input to the AI so that it grows and learns over time, since AI is predicated on data and data quality and it's constantly evolving. For AI to benefit the sales team, the sales team has to help AI grow, right? So they work in tandem to grow together.

Carlson: Working remotely is becoming more common, and it has its own challenges, especially when it comes to motivation and team cohesion. So you've explored this in the context of social isolation. What impact does isolation have on sales performance? And what can leaders do to keep teams engaged and connected, even when they're not in the same room?

Dr. Chaker:  A lot of times, people don't think about the wellbeing of salespeople because it's such a performance-based job. Now, many companies, they're looking to salespeople to contribute to their bottom line, and it definitely is a job where you're an individual contributor trying to bring in sales for an organization. Of course, that comes with pressure, comes with a lot of stress, comes with dealing with things like social isolation. I mentioned earlier that you might be working out in your own territory, might be disconnected from a corporate office. So, when you think about all of these things, and then add the fact that human beings are social creatures, just the way they're wired, when you take away the ability to interact with humans, whether they're your coworkers or colleagues, even your manager, and you're not able to talk to them or not have that human interaction, it just compounds this feeling of isolation.

And isolation, we find, is different than loneliness because you can still have that human connection, work with somebody, but feel lonely. Whereas in isolation, there is a feeling of disconnect. And we find in a outside sales representative perspective, "What can we do as sales leaders to ensure that social isolation is mitigated?" Well, first and foremost, try to lower any perceptions of, "Hey, you're out there on an island. You're there by yourself. We don't value you," right? And rather, try to be more inclusive, try to have more touchpoints with your employees, try to have employees have touchpoints with other employees, have more meetings, have more even social meetings if you have salespeople that work remote, be proactive in trying to have opportunities where they're having human interaction with their coworkers, could just be attending sessions online. Other things we find at the individual level, if it's not from the manager, is, because human beings crave social interaction, or just the ability to listen or engage with other individuals, they can attend webinars, join training sessions, or whatever they can where they're feeling that there's a little bit of human connection.

Carlson: So let's talk about relational selling skills, listening, adapting, creating value. You've argued these are more important than product knowledge, or even competitive insights. So, how should sales managers rethink their training priorities? And what's the best way to build those relational muscles?

Dr. Chaker:  A lot of managers, a lot of companies, they're thinking about helping salespeople learn some of the technology skills, some of these other industry-specific trainings and knowledge. And of course, those are important, right? Product knowledge will always be important. Of course, product knowledge includes customer, industry, competitor insights as well, but the soft skills are always going to be relevant in sales, in my opinion, and that's one thing that, if you think about AI, it can't do is it can't mimic that humanness, some of these softer skills, right? The listening, communication, being adaptive, these are things that a human being can bring to a sales interaction that are going to be really hard to replace. So, having salespeople not only emphasize these types of skills, but also realize that, "Hey, these are behaviors that separate you and add value that the AI can't necessarily always do."

Carlson: Where do you see the biggest disconnect between academic and industry measures of sales success? And how can our future research help to bridge that gap?

Dr. Chaker: Did some research on this, and what you find is, in the academic circles, there tends to be a bias towards looking at what we would call objective, performance measures, outcomes. If you think about what salespeople are ultimately responsible for, they're responsible for bringing in sales, right? So, then, naturally, you would say, "Well, for us to really gauge what drives performance," for example... And you're looking at different antecedents of sales performance or drivers of performance, then you would say, "Well, for us to really be able to draw academic insights, let's look at objective, outcome measures. Let's look at revenue generator. Let's look at profit margin. Let's look at quota attained," and those are things that the numbers don't lie, right? We'll be able to draw conclusions that way.

In practice, more and more companies are realizing that more of a behavioral-based thing is super important. Now, of course, metrics like sales, revenue, profit, those are always going to be super important, right? Salespeople are measured around these things. But looking at the behaviors involved, the inputs of selling, very important as well, and this gets into the idea of something called outcome-based versus behavioral-based control systems. And one of the things with behavior-based is saying, "Hey, we can value the inputs that salespeople are doing," so more of the effort type things. Number of calls made, for example, number of presentations given, those kind of things, the more salespeople engage in those, the natural thought is that, "The more you do these, then downstream, yeah, you should be able to get more sales. You should be able to get more deals done, more revenue generated."

So I think more and more companies are realizing that measuring and incorporating KPIs, key performance indicators, around more of the inputs of selling are also not just motivating from a salesperson perspective, but it also rewards salespeople that are working hard and having salespeople realize that we should prioritize parts of the process and it's not necessarily just the end number, so to speak.

Carlson: Thanks for those insights because I think the consideration of these key metrics is going to continue to be top of mind as we see the profession shift with technology and AI and managing relationships in new ways. So, we've covered a lot of ground so far. Here's the deal, I'm going to hit you with three rapid fire questions. You've got 60 seconds for each. No pressure, just your reputation forever recorded on audio. So, let's go. Number one, tech showdown. In the next five years, which will have a bigger net impact on frontline sales performance, better CRM integration or real-time AI-powered guidance?

Dr. Chaker: The easy answer is AI guidance, for sure. More and more companies are popping up every day trying to help salespeople receive real-time information related to AI. A lot of companies are creating AI-enabled platforms and programs that are really geared towards providing salespeople with real-time guidance. AI is able to analyze data much quicker. It's able to go through data. It's able to provide salespeople with recommendations on what to possibly do. So salespeople will have this stuff more readily available so that they're more confident, more comfortable going in. Whereas CRM, some of these things may not necessarily be as easily available.

Carlson: All right. Number two, psychology meets hiring. If you could only hire a salesperson based on one psychological trait from your research, persistence, moral identity, or political skill, which one would you pick and why?

Dr. Chaker: If I was to say one that maybe captures many other ones, I would probably lean towards moral identity. A moral identity, just to clarify, isn't talking about whether someone has morals or specific types of beliefs, or anything. It's really individual level and has to do with the degree to which being a moral person is important to an individual, right? It's part of their identity. So it's more about the importance of morals to an individual, rather than specific morals. So, when you take that into account, then, of course, having high moral identity would help establish that the salesperson will do the right thing. They'll do things that are within ethical bounds. They'll look out for their customer, or they'll look out for their company, they'll look out for themselves. I'm going to go with moral identity on that one.

Carlson: Actionable insight, what is one simple immediate thing a salesperson could do today to create more value with a customer?

Dr. Chaker: I think just to go full circle on what we've been talking about, embrace AI. Go out there and do everything you can to learn how to use AI to augment what you're doing, but I will add that, in learning how to use different AI platforms... And there's a bunch of them. It's not just ChatGPT. There are very specific ones that are applied in sales context. But I would say, although learn how to use those take the time to build up the AI literacy, also think about what value you can add as a human being so that the AI doesn't devalue what you do as a salesperson. So, build up AI literacy while, at the same time, defining and establishing your human valueness.

Carlson: Nawar, this has been a powerful way to close out the season, a thoughtful, grounded, forward-looking. I appreciate the clarity you bring to such complex topics, and I know that our listeners are going to walk away with new ideas to explore in their own work. Thanks again so much for joining us and for helping us think more critically and more humanely about the future of sales.

Dr. Chaker: Thank you for having me, Brad.

Carlson: Well, that's a wrap on this season of AMS Illuminations. We've covered everything from emotional intelligence and AI in sales, to ethics, inside sales, and whether humans still have a role in selling things. Spoiler, they do, probably. Thanks to our guests for bringing real insight and clarity and for making it easy to sound like I knew what I was doing. If you missed an episode, or just want to hear smart people carry the weight while I try to keep up, they're all available wherever you get your podcasts. As always, a huge thanks to the Academy of Marketing Science for supporting this series and for continuing to foster a community where research, education, and real-world relevance come together. We'll be back next season with new conversations, new perspectives, and the same focus, learning from the people who are shaping the future of marketing. Until then, stay curious, stay generous, and please don't take marketing advice from TikTok. See you next time.