Sales-service ambidexterity has become an integral part of any sales job. Extant literature investigates how these dual requirements - exhibiting excellence in selling to and servicing the customer - affect salespeople performance. We build on these notions and argue that, depending on the type of job a salesperson does, different levels of intensity of sales and service provision are required. For example, certain sales jobs are more consultative in nature and, as such, pose higher expectancies for service provision. There also might be instances in which high levels of both selling and servicing are expected from salespeople. Considering that sales jobs indeed vary in the intensity with which salespeople engage in selling to or servicing the customer, the first question that arises relates to the role of service provision in satisfying the customers across different types of sales encounters. That is, does service provision universally contribute to customer satisfaction regardless of the level of selling intensity involved in the encounter? Engaging in both sales and service provision during sales encounters represents two conflicting demands, each on its own competing for employees’ limited resources (e.g. time, emotional capacity and cognitive capacity). Therefore, the second question of how job demands for service provision affect salespeople, their work and their health (e.g. stress) across sales jobs with varying levels of selling intensity is long overdue. In response to this we run three studies (7276 salespeople and 254 customers) to investigate the contribution of service provision to customer satisfaction and salespeople performance across sales jobs with varying levels of selling intensity.

Our research makes at least three critical theoretical contributions. First, we add to the sales literature by showing that sales provision intensity (low, medium and high) can be used as a criterion for distinguishing between sales job types. Our results indicate that employees across the three groups of sales jobs exhibit differing levels of stress as a function of increasing job demands. Second, we also show that depending on the selling intensity of the sales encounter, customers value the service provision differently. This points to the necessity of considering sales-service ambidexterity effectiveness from customer's and selling situation’s perspective. Third, we gain a more fine-grained insight into of the unique role of each of the constituent of sales-service ambidexterity in influencing salespeople and their performance above and beyond their aggregated effects. Our results imply that demands for service provision might be regarded by salespeople as a hindrance or a depending on the sales job type and the extent to which salespeople engage in service provision.