Sales Effectiveness Under Digital Monitoring Examined
Digital and online technologies have reshaped the modern workplace, making daily routines faster, more connected, and often more efficient. At the same time, these tools have quietly expanded another capability: the ability for managers to closely monitor employee behavior. From time-tracking software to GPS-enabled devices, worker surveillance has become increasingly common. But a key question remains unresolved—does this kind of monitoring actually improve performance, especially in roles that rely heavily on autonomy and judgment, like sales?
A recent academic study by researchers Brad Greenwood and Ioannis Bellos from George Mason University’s Costello College of Business takes a deep dive into this issue. Their work focuses specifically on sales effectiveness under digital monitoring, an area that has received surprisingly little real-world research attention despite its importance.
Why Sales Monitoring Is a Special Case
Past research on employee surveillance has produced mixed conclusions. Some studies suggest monitoring can boost productivity and accountability, while others point to downsides like stress, reduced trust, and lower job satisfaction. However, most of this research has been conducted in controlled lab environments or office-based settings.
Sales work is different. Salespeople—especially those working in the field—often operate with a high degree of independence. Their performance depends not just on effort, but on how they allocate time, which clients they prioritize, and how they balance multiple tasks during each visit. Greenwood and Bellos argue that these nuances make sales a critical, yet underexplored, context for understanding the true impact of monitoring technologies.
The Company and the Natural Experiment
The study centers on a China-based B2B company that supplies baby products such as diapers and infant formula to small retail stores. The company employs hundreds of salespeople who regularly visit physical stores. Their responsibilities go well beyond simple order-taking. They assist store owners with promotions, upselling strategies, merchandising decisions, and even broader operational challenges tied to the product line.
In 2019, the company introduced GPS-enabled smartphones for its salesforce. These devices tracked how often salespeople visited stores and how long they stayed at each location. Importantly, the monitoring program was not secretive. Employees were clearly informed that their movements during work hours would be tracked.
A technical glitch during the rollout meant that not all salespeople received the phones at the same time. While unintended, this staggered deployment created a rare opportunity for researchers. It allowed them to compare monitored and unmonitored salespeople working under the same conditions during the same period, resulting in unusually clean and credible data.
Immediate Behavioral Changes After Monitoring
Once GPS monitoring began, the effects were noticeable almost right away. Salespeople who were monitored started:
- Making more frequent store visits
- Spending longer periods of time at each store
- Engaging in a broader range of tasks during each visit
On the surface, these changes looked like a success. The company saw an increase in overall sales performance, measured as gross merchandise value (GMV). On average, GMV rose by about 4.75% compared to pre-monitoring levels. From a managerial standpoint, this initially appeared to confirm the idea that monitoring encourages employees to work harder.
A Closer Look Reveals a Split Outcome
However, when the researchers examined the data more closely, a more complex picture emerged. The positive average effect masked a significant divide between lower-performing and top-performing salespeople.
Salespeople who had previously underperformed showed clear improvement after monitoring began. The presence of GPS tracking seemed to motivate them to increase effort and engagement. In simple terms, monitoring acted as a push to become more active and visible, which translated into better results for this group.
The experience of top performers was very different.
Why Top Performers Struggled Under Surveillance
For salespeople who were already delivering strong results before monitoring, performance actually declined after GPS tracking was introduced. This happened even though they, like everyone else, increased their activity levels.
The issue was not effort—it was misdirected effort. High performers had developed effective routines over time. They knew which clients were most profitable and how to structure their visits for maximum impact. Once monitoring began, these salespeople started adjusting their behavior to match what they believed management wanted to see—more visits, longer stays, more visible activity.
This shift led to diminishing returns. Instead of focusing on their most valuable clients, top performers spread their time across a larger and less profitable set of stores. Their skills were diluted, and overall sales outcomes suffered as a result.
The Hidden Risks for Companies
The findings highlight a potential long-term risk for organizations. When top performers see their commissions decline or feel their expertise is being second-guessed by surveillance tools, their engagement can drop. Over time, this may lead to disengagement, dissatisfaction, or even employee turnover—especially among the most valuable members of the salesforce.
For companies, losing high-performing salespeople can have consequences far beyond short-term sales figures. These individuals often hold deep client relationships and institutional knowledge that is hard to replace.
The Importance of Individual Differences
One of the study’s key takeaways is that employees are not interchangeable. Monitoring can improve average performance while simultaneously harming critical subgroups. Treating the workforce as a monolith makes it easy to miss these trade-offs.
Greenwood and Bellos emphasize that whether monitoring helps or hurts depends heavily on who is being monitored and how the system is implemented. Blanket surveillance policies may look efficient on paper but can quietly undermine the very performance they aim to improve.
Communication and Clarity Matter
The researchers also point to the role of clear communication. When employees are unsure about how monitoring data will be used, they are more likely to guess and adjust behavior in unproductive ways. This is especially true in jobs with high task diversity, like sales, where success depends on judgment rather than simple metrics.
Explaining the goals of monitoring, what behaviors truly matter, and how data will inform evaluations can reduce confusion and help employees align their actions with meaningful outcomes rather than superficial indicators.
What This Study Adds to the Bigger Picture
This research stands out because it uses real-world field data rather than laboratory simulations. It provides rare empirical evidence on how technology-enabled monitoring plays out in a complex sales environment. The study also adds to a growing body of work showing that more data and more control do not automatically lead to better performance.
As monitoring technologies become cheaper and more sophisticated, companies will likely continue adopting them. This study serves as a reminder that the human side of work—experience, autonomy, and trust—still matters deeply.
Research Reference
Lu, Y., Bellos, I., Greenwood, B. N., & Huang, L. (2025). Is IT That You Can’t Learn, Or You Won’t Learn? Technology-Enabled Monitoring and Heterogeneity in Sales Performance. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management.
https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2022.0613
