COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND RELATIONAL OUTCOMES: THE MEDIATING IMPACT OF CUSTOMER ORIENTATION

As boundary spanners, salespeople play an important role in communicating with customers and building strong relationships with them. Communication skills play an important role in personal selling to achieve desired outcomes. In consultative selling, higher customer orientation by sales people can lead to mutually beneficial relational outcomes. This research analyses the direct effect of communication skills on buyerseller relationship and the mediating effect of customer orientation of sales people. The study based on the Social exchange theory attempts to help in understanding the importance of relational outcome in sales. The results indicate that communication skills combined by higher customer orientation enables building customer relationship, achieving customer advocacy and enhanced selling opportunities. In a study carried out among sales staff in the Banking and Financial Service Industry, The findings suggest prioritizing communication skills as the antecedents of customer orientation to enhance the relationship building process between sales people and customers.