Picture two financial advisors at the same firm. Both have clients who say they are devoted to the company and plan to stick around for years. Yet one advisor’s loyal clients keep adding to their accounts, while the other’s loyal clients stay put but spend far less. Same loyalty, different results. What explains the gap?
That question sits at the center of a study published in the Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management. Sales organizations treat customer loyalty as one of the most dependable signals of future revenue, since loyal customers tend to buy more often, spend a larger share of their money with the firm, and resist competitors. But the researchers point out that even among loyal customers, the amount of revenue they generate varies widely. Their investigation looks at whether the salesperson standing between the loyal customer and the firm helps explain why.
The study was conducted by Ashish Sharma of the University of Arkansas, Jeff S. Johnson of the University of Missouri-Kansas City, and Scott B. Friend of the University of Dayton. Rather than testing established theories about what makes a good salesperson, they took an approach that starts with observations from the field and works toward theory afterward, a sequence the authors call “empirics-first.”
Where the unusual traits came from
The starting point was a series of conversations with leaders at a large U.S. financial services firm. During those talks, three salesperson traits kept surfacing as things that seemed to shape whether loyal customers spent more or less: bluntness, quirkiness, and creativity. These are not the qualities sales research usually studies. Most of that work focuses on traits like trustworthiness, expertise, and the ability to adapt to a customer’s needs.
The examples the firm shared were specific. One advisor invited clients to a hands-on, messy wine-making event in his office, the kind of distinctive behavior the managers described as “quirky.” Others were said to be “overly honest” with clients, and the managers wondered whether that bluntness helped or hurt their numbers. These traits caught the researchers’ attention because their effects seemed genuinely uncertain. Bluntness might come across as refreshing candor or as off-putting. Quirkiness might make an advisor memorable and endearing or strike clients as unprofessional. Creativity might produce tailored solutions or distract from reliable execution.
To make sense of these mixed possibilities, the authors lean on a framework called expectancy violations theory. The basic idea is that when someone behaves in a way that breaks from what we expect, the surprise can land positively or negatively depending on the person and the situation. Because the three traits run counter to the polished, warm, by-the-book image people often expect from salespeople, the researchers saw them as a natural fit for this lens.
How the study was built
The team partnered with the financial services firm to gather information from three sources at once: the advisors, their customers, and the company’s own records. Financial advising offered a useful setting because it involves long-term relationships. In the dataset, the average advisor-customer relationship ran nearly seven years.
The data collection happened in stages. From a randomized list of 4,082 advisors, 599 completed usable surveys. The researchers then surveyed customers tied to those advisors, eventually matching valid responses into advisor-customer pairs. After dropping cases with missing information, the final dataset included 502 advisors and 1,781 customers, an average of about 3.55 customers per advisor.
Customers rated their advisors on the three traits using survey scales, two of which (bluntness and quirkiness) the researchers developed from scratch following standard procedures, since no existing measures fit. Customers also reported their loyalty to the firm, meaning their intention to keep and expand the relationship. The revenue measure came not from opinions but from company records: the total revenue each customer generated in the six months after the survey.
The analysis accounted for a long list of other factors that could influence spending, including customer age, education, and income, how much the customer already knew about the firm, whether they also held accounts with competing providers, the advisor’s experience and workload, and the length and depth of the customer-firm relationship. Because customers were grouped under individual advisors, the researchers used a statistical model designed for that nested structure. They also applied a correction technique to address the concern that loyalty and revenue might influence each other in ways that muddy the results.
What the numbers showed
The analysis points to a clear split among the three traits. Quirkiness and creativity each strengthened the connection between customer loyalty and revenue, while bluntness weakened it.
The size of these patterns is worth spelling out. When the researchers compared advisors high on a trait to those low on it, they found the effect of loyalty on revenue was up to 37.5 percent stronger for highly quirky advisors and up to 61.4 percent stronger for highly creative ones. Bluntness ran the other direction: loyalty’s effect on revenue was up to 40 percent weaker for highly blunt advisors compared with those low on bluntness.
The authors interpret the quirkiness and creativity findings as evidence that loyal customers respond well to a sense of authenticity and uniqueness. Quirkiness, they argue, involves a degree of vulnerability and relatability, letting clients see personality that falls outside the norm. Creativity reflects breaking from convention with fresh ideas. Both seem to add value to a relationship a customer is already committed to.
The bluntness result pushes against a popular sales philosophy known as the “challenger sale,” which encourages salespeople to challenge a customer’s thinking and create productive tension. The researchers suggest that this approach may not suit every situation. With loyal customers in particular, they argue, behaviors that prompt a client to reconsider the relationship can backfire. As they put it, blunt and challenging approaches “may have merit in some sales roles (e.g. new business development),” but “are counterproductive in other sales roles that focus on working with incumbent, loyal customers.”
What it might mean for sales teams
The authors offer some guidance for managers, framed as starting points rather than firm rules. They suggest encouraging salespeople to let loyal customers see their distinctive personalities and interests, citing hobbies like homebrewing, woodworking, or amateur magic as examples of the kind of originality that can register as quirkiness. For creativity, they point to giving salespeople challenging scenarios and tracking creativity as a topic for ongoing discussion.
On bluntness, the advice is one of restraint. The researchers suggest managers warn salespeople who tend to come across bluntly to soften their tone with loyal customers and adopt a more consultative manner.
Several caveats deserve attention. The data come from a single setting, business-to-consumer financial services, and the authors are direct that they cannot say how well the findings travel to other industries. They note, for instance, that more professionally focused business-to-business customers might read quirkiness as unprofessional rather than endearing. The study also measured the traits in straight-line terms, leaving open the possibility that too much quirkiness could eventually tip into seeming strange or unstable. The researchers frame their work as a first look meant to open a line of inquiry, not a final word, and they invite other scholars to test these ideas in new contexts.
