The sales representative's role in current healthcare industries is vital, as a means of establishing a long-term relationship with the medical customer who is both a sophisticated buyer and user of medical products. The sales representative establishes the relationship, determines customer needs and value expectations and then attempts to solve these with offerings from his or her company. In this manner the sales representative is the sole source of revenue for the firm. The sales representative's success and the firm's success are inextricably linked. It is therefore important for the firm and its management to better understand the keys to influencing sales representative performance.;Awareness of the importance of sales representative adaptive behavior to selling performance is increasing both in research and in managerial situations. Therefore this study was undertaken to examine the relationship of adaptive behaviors into sales representatives performance. Adaptive behavior has been studied in US firms in the past, but the performance question is international in scope and interest, and so this study explores the relationship in three countries.;Adaptive behavior is the practice of adjusting the focus, questions, responses, sales strategies, presentation methods and tactics before, during and after the sales call in order to meet the customer's needs and to close the call successfully with a sale.;This study looked at four firms, two in the United States of America, one in the United Kingdom, and one in Japan. Three of the firms were engaged in the medical diagnostics industry and one in pharmaceuticals.;A questionnaire was administered to both sales representatives and sales mangers in each company to measure adaptive behavior, and performance. The questionnaires were sent to 16 sales mangers and 220 sales representatives. Sixteen sales managers completed the questionnaires, as did 182 sales representatives, for a return rate of 100% and 83%, respectively.;The findings for the hypothesized relationship between adaptive behavior and performance were positive. The findings for specific adaptive behaviors---giving information behaviors and planning behaviors were not significant. The findings also indicated that there is a positive relationship between adaptive behavior and performance in each of the three countries.
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