We are Not on the Same Page : The Effects of Salesperson Trust Overestimation on Customer Satisfaction and Relationship Performance

Trust is critical in buyer-seller relationships and the vast literature in this area expounds on its importance. However, only recently have scholars begun to explore the role of inaccurate perceptions of trust. These inaccurate perceptions matter because salespeople are more likely to prioritize their customers in ways that do not reflect customers’ true profit potential. One critical inaccurate perception is salespeople’s upwardly biased perception that their customers trust them more than their customers actually do, a concept we call salesperson trust overestimation. We develop a framework to explore the effects of salesperson trust overestimation on customer satisfaction and, subsequently, customer account revenue and word of mouth. We test our model using surveys from matched B2B salesperson-customer dyads and objective performance data. We find that a one-unit increase in salesperson trust overestimation decreases financial revenue by $479,005 and potential annual referral attributable to the salesperson by $692,124, representing substantial negative consequences