We often refer to sportspeople as being on a ‘hot streak’, when they seem to score over and over with every shot. Belief in hot streaks (and cold ones) is very common, and can be seen in many behaviours, such as sports gambling, and stock market picking. However, until recently, it was considered a human bias by psychologists. Yet, modern statistical methods and data sources have allowed us to observe that hot streaks really do exist in many contexts, from sports to the individual career outputs of artists and scientists. It seems logical then that salespeople could also go on hot and cold streaks of performance, but no one has yet observed this.
In this session, Professor Nick Lee will:
- Give the first evidence that salespeople really do experience hot and cold streak– termed positive and negative momentum - and these streaks have important impacts on their sales performance.
- Show that momentum is affected by the day of the week, and the time of the day.
- Show that the effect of momentum is augmented by the social environment that the salesperson works in – with salespeople who work in more social environments gaining the greatest benefit from positive momentum, and experiencing the least harm from negative momentum.
In today’s world of remote and hybrid working environments, these findings enable senior management to help their salespeople reach their potential by managing their time and environment better.
Dr Nick Lee co-teaches the module "Selling Value" on the newly launched Executive Diploma in B2B Marketing.
Book an Executive Diploma consultation here.
The session will be hosted by the Director of Executive Education, Professor Tim Wray.
We look forward to welcoming you to this fascinating session.