How and should firms motivate salesperson effort across a Multi-Brand Portfolio?

Firms often design solution portfolios that include multiple, integrated brands to enable customization and differentiation. Despite practitioner and scholarly interest in multi-brand sales strategies, it remains unclear how salespeople should allocate brand efforts for solution performance and what motivational models help leverage this allocation. The authors theorize a framework around the concept of salesperson brand effort allocation to address these challenges. Analysis of multisource data from a sales organization—i.e., 65 sales managers and 376 salespeople—reveals contingencies that influence the salesperson’s brand motivation-effort-performance chain. Specifically, the extent that solution incentives and brand identification compatibility explain effort allocation across all brands is contingent on whether salespeople incorporate multiple brands into their self-concept. Assessment of the performance consequences of brand effort allocation reveal a second contingency; balanced effort negatively relates to branded component solution performance, yet this consequence is overcome when salespeople possess solution selling ability (opportunity identification).