Profile Information

Profile

BRIEF BIO

Ryan Mullins is an award-winning author, professor, and consultant focused on helping organizational leaders improve sales force performance. Ryan greatly enjoys industry collaborations and has conducted multiple research and consulting projects with Fortune 500 companies, providing data analysis, recommendations, coaching, and training interventions. He has consulted with companies, both domestic and international, across industries such as hospitality, technology, consumer packaged goods, industrial goods/services, media advertising, construction, and logistics. This real-world engagement has helped Ryan be recognized as a noted researcher, an insightful speaker to sales organizations, and also enabled the delivery of innovative teaching in the classroom.



AWARDS


2024 Clemson Powers College of Business Senior Research Scholar Award

2020 Clemson Watt Fellowship for the study of Artificial Intelligence in Sales Education

2019 Clemson University Provost's Innovation Fellowship

2018 Neil Rackham/Sales Education Foundation Research Grant Award

2018 Sales Service Summit | Best Paper Award | 'Understanding How to Activate the Ambidextrous Sales Force'

2017 James M. Comer Award for Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory | Do Sales and Service Compete?

2015 University of Houston Bauer College of Business 'A Hit' Research Team Award

2015 AMA Sales SIG Excellence in Research Award

2015 Clemson College of Business Emerging Scholar Award

2014 SMA Conference Sales Track | Best Paper Award

2014 AMA Summer Conference, Services Track | Best Paper Award

2013 AMA Sales SIG Winner | Best Dissertation Award

2012 SMA Conference, Sales Track | Best Paper Award

2012 AMA Sales SIG Winner | Best Dissertation Proposal Award



SERVICE


Dr. Mullins also serves the field through his associations with marketing journals across domains. Ryan actively serves on the editorial review boards at the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Ryan is also an ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research and several marketing-related conferences and peer-reviewed competitions. He is also co-editor of a special issue on 'Sales Team Theory and Practice' for Industrial Marketing Management.



TEACHING


As director of Clemson's Sales Innovation Program, Ryan also works closely with students and sales industry leaders on recruitment, training, and performance challenges. Integrating his work into the classroom, Dr. Mullins teaches Introduction to Professional Selling, Applied Selling, and Sales Management at the undergraduate level, and also teaches Sales Leadership at the MBA level. Ryan is also a co-author on the textbook Professional Selling which is used in curriculum across numerous sales programs around the country.



In his free time, Ryan enjoys spending time with his wife and 3 kids in the Greenville, SC community where they live.

Research Interests

• Ryan's research focuses on the role of sales force management and marketing strategy to improve firm, team, and individual performance. His work in these areas has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Service Research, Industrial Marketing Management, and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Ryan's research has received great acclaim across the sales and marketing field including the AMA Sales SIG Sales Excellence in Research Award in 2015, the 2017 James M. Comer Award for Best Contribution to Sales Management Theory, and the 2018 SEF/Neil Rackham Research Grant Award. Additionally, 7 of his research articles appear in the Financial Times Top 50 business journals in the world. Ryan is also the co-author of the academic textbook, Professional Selling, used in sales programs taught across the country.

Research Publications

• Mullins, Ryan, Chase, Kevin S., & Friend, Scott B. (2023). Buyer-seller uncertainty: a systematic review and future research directions. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 1-15.
• Panagopoulos, Nikolaos G., Bulent Menguc, & Ryan Mullins (2023). Will you speak up for me? Inducing retail store managers’ engagement with MNCs’ brands across cultures. Journal of International Business Studies, 1-34.
• Mullins, Ryan, Swain, Scott, & Friend, Scott (2023). How and should firms motivate salesperson effort across a Multi-Brand Portfolio?, Journal of Business Research, 158.
• Mullins, Ryan and Raj Agnihotri (2022), "Digital selling: Organizational and managerial influences for frontline readiness and effectiveness," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
• Forkmann, Sebastian, Ryan Mullins, Stephan C Henneberg, and Thomas L Baker (2022), "Choreographing salesperson face-to-face visits with a buyer organization: a social network perspective," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
• Mullins, Ryan, Bulent Menguc, and Nikolaos Panagopoulos (2020), “Antecedents and Outcomes of Value-based Selling in Sales Teams: A Multilevel, Systems Theory of Motivation Perspective,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(6), 1053–1074. [Lead Article]
• Mullins, Ryan, Raj Agnihotri, and Zach Hall (2020), “The Ambidextrous Sales Force: Aligning Salesperson Polychronicity and Selling Contexts for Sales-Service Behaviors and Customer Value,” Special Issue on the Sales and Service Interface at Journal of Service Research, 23(1), 33-52.
• Singh, Jagdip, Karen Flaherty, Ravipreet S. Sohi, Dawn Deeter-Schmelz, Johannes Habel, Kenneth Le Meuneir-FitzHugh, Avinash Malshe, Ryan Mullins, and Vincent Onyemah (2019), "Sales Profession and Professionals in the Age of Digitization and Artificial Technologies: Concepts, Priorities, and Questions," Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 39(1), 2-22.
• Bachrach, Daniel G., and Ryan Mullins (2019), "A Dual-Process Contingency Model of Leadership, Transactive Memory Systems and Team Performance," Journal of Business Research, 96(3), 297-308.
• Mullins, Ryan and Nikolaos Panagopoulos (2019), "Understanding the Theory and Practice of Team Selling: An Introduction to the Special Section and Recommendations on Advancing Sales Team Research," Industrial Marketing Management, 77(1), 1-3.
• Panagopoulos, Nikolaos, Ryan Mullins, and Panagiotis Avramidis (2018), "Sales Force Downsizing and Firm-Idiosyncratic Risk: The Contingent Role of Investors' Screening and Firms' Signaling Processes," Journal of Marketing, 82(6), 71-88.
• Hall, Zachary R., Ryan Mullins, Niladri Syam and Jeffrey P. Boichuk (2017), "Generating and Sharing of Market Intelligence in Sales Teams: A Social Economic Perspective," Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 37(4), 298-312.
• Ogilvie, Jessica, Adam A. Rapp, Daniel G. Bachrach, Ryan Mullins & Jaron Harvey (2017), "Do sales and service compete? The impact of multiple psychological climates on frontline employee performance," Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 37(1), 11-26. [Winner of 2017 James M. Comer Award for Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory]
• Bachrach, Daniel G., Ryan Mullins, and Adam A. Rapp (2017), "Intangible Sales Team Resources: Investing in Social Capital and Transactive Memory for Market-Driven Behavior, Norms, and Performance," Industrial Marketing Management, 62(April), 88-99.
• Mullins, Ryan, Daniel G. Bachrach, Adam A. Rapp, Dhruv Grewal, and Lauren Bietelspacher (2015), "You Don't Always Get What You Want and You Don't Always Want What You Get: An Examination of Control-Desire for Control Congruence in Transactional Relationships," Journal of Applied Psychology, 100(4), 1073-88.
• Mullins, Ryan, Michael Ahearne, Son K. Lam, Zachary R. Hall, and Jeffrey P. Boichuk (2014), "Know Your Customer: How Salesperson Perceptions of Customer Relationship Quality Form and Impact Account Profitability," Journal of Marketing, 78(6), 38-58. [Winner of the 2015 AMA Sales SIG Excellence in Research Award]
• Rapp, Tammy, Dan Bachrach, Adam A. Rapp, and Ryan Mullins (2014), "The Role of Team Goal Monitoring in the Curvilinear Relationship between Team Efficacy and Team Performance," Journal of Applied Psychology, 99(5), 976-87.
• Baker, Tom, Adam A. Rapp, Tracy Meyer, and Ryan Mullins (2014), "The Role of Brand Communications on Frontline Service Employee Beliefs, Behaviors, and Performance," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 42(6), 642-57.
• Mullins, Ryan and Niladri Syam (2014), "Manager-Salesperson Congruence in Customer Orientation and Job Outcomes: The Bright and Dark Sides of Leadership in Aligning Values," Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 34(3), 188-205.
• Lam, Son K., Mike Ahearne, Ryan Mullins, Babak Hayati, and Neils Schillewaert (2013) "What Sizzles May Turn Brittle: Examination of the Antecedents to Consumer Brand Identification," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41(2), 234-52.
• Weinstein, Luke and Ryan Mullins (2012), "Technology Usage and Sales Teams: A Multilevel Analysis of the Antecedents of Usage," Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 32(2), 245-59.

Links

• Check out my research on Google Scholar
• or on Research Gate
• Click to view the Sales Innovation Program