Abstract
The accountancy, tax and management consultancy professions of the United Kingdom are dominated by a number of major international firms. This professional world has experienced a number of changes, which are presented throughout. One outcome of this has been the increasing demand for each individual professional within these firms to be more actively involved in ongoing business development, not only with existing clients but also with potential clients (prospects). This thesis explores the professional's reaction to these demands for sales activity and in particular, the resistance that this exposes in many individuals. This is defined as 'sales reluctance'. Using a personal construct, phenomenological perspective and qualitative methods, with extensive triangulation, it explores the sales reluctance of a group of professionals from different disciplines, from four firms in two locations. Extensive pilot work focused the subsequent flow of the study. This was a study consecutively of organisational influences, training influences, personality influences and finally, the influence of mental images in sales activity. It is argued that the prevailing culture in which professionals have chosen to operate has a pervasive influence on behaviours. It highlights the discrepancies between espoused and practised values and shows that professionals are often behaving as a logical reaction to the dominant forces operating on them. It begins with the views of sales reluctance presented by professionals themselves. These are regarded as socially and professionally acceptable arguments. Later, five themes are presented which suggests underlying, socially and professionally unacceptable, forces. A new personality profiling approach - the Language and Behaviour Profile [LAB] - is used for the first time as a research tool. Within the perspective of mental imagery, descriptive approaches from the discipline of neurolinguistic programming [NLP] are used. No other academic research has been discovered which has approached sales activity from the specific focus of sales reluctance as defined here.