The capabilities and performance of ambidextrous sales organizations

We define ambidextrous sales organizations as characterized by the simultaneous ability to successfully manage both hunting and farming processes. We also identify three key sales capabilities for ambidextrous sales organizations: reward and control, opportunity management, interfunctional coordination. We then develop and test a model analyzing the links among sales capabilities, sales ambidexterity and objective performance (measured by sales growth and return on sales). Our findings, based on data gathered from senior sales managers in a major European country, demonstrate that sales ambidexterity positively affects sales growth. In turn, sales ambidexterity is positively affected by all three types of sales capabilities as well as by the combination of reward and control capabilities, on the one side, and segmentation and interfunctional coordination capabilities respectively