Demographic antecedents to the practice of adaptive selling

In an empirical study of the role of gender, age, sales experience, and education in the practice of adaptive selling. Levy and Sharma (1994) concluded that gender and education interact with age to affect the degree to which salespeople practice adaptive selling. In addition, as salespeople get older and more experienced, they demonstrate plateauing with regard to the practice of adaptive selling. The current study replicated and extended Levy and Sharma's work on a national random sample of industrial salespeople. Results did not find support for plateauing by salespeople, and the interactions among demographic factors were unrelated to adaptive selling. Managerial implications of the findings are discussed.