Abstract
Over the last decades, businesses have been opening up more and more due to globalization tendencies. These developments introduced multiple challenges for companies, especially with regards to choosing and training people to work in intercultural contexts. The sales field is particularly impacted by these challenges because of the human dimension of sales. Intercultural salespeople are in contact with and have to establish relationships with a multitude of customers from different cultural backgrounds. However, research in the field of sales has not sufficiently studied this context and there is a lack of knowledge about performance indicators in intercultural selling.This thesis thesis adds to the literature on intercultural sales by examining the importance of Cultural Intelligence - a person's abilities and skills to adapt and interact effectively in an intercultural context - in a sales setting. To do this, a mixed methodology is used.First, an exploratory qualitative study is conducted to understand the views of practitioners working in this particular context. This study highlights the impact of key skills and behaviors needed by salespeople to perform well in intercultural contexts and suggests actions that companies can take to help them succeed.This qualitative study, together with the literature review, allows to propose hypotheses linking cultural intelligence to multiple sales skills and behaviors such as adaptive selling, active listening, authenticity or empathy. Secondly, the impact of these skills and behaviors on short-term sales performance and long-term relationship performance is investigated. Finally, this thesis also examines the impact of different company-level variables - company support and diversity climate - on the development of Cultural Intelligence of salespeople.Through three studies, conducted with salespeople in France, India and England, this work highlights the importance of salespeople's cultural intelligence. The first study, based on a sample of 198 French salespeople, highlights the impact of cultural intelligence on active listening and adaptive selling behaviors which, in turn, impact sales and relationship performance. The second study of 174 Indian salespeople extends the initial model by considering antecedents of cultural intelligence at the company level. The results show the downside of cultural intelligence, as this variable negatively impacts the perceived authenticity of salespeople. Finally, the third study (207 English salespeople) builds on the first two and examines empathy as a moderating variable in the relationship between cultural intelligence and adaptive selling.This last study confirms the results of the first two. However, empathy does not have a significant moderating effect in this study. Managerial implications, limitations and future research directions are then proposed.