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A student participates in the 2026 University of Toledo Invitational Sales Competition in the Savage and Associates Business Complex. The competition is organized annually by the Neff College of Business\u2019 Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales.<\/p><\/div>\n
But he\u2019s no pack animal: The Lone Wolf doesn’t show up to organizational meetings or team-building activities. He doesn\u2019t care about company culture or internal politics. And he isn\u2019t likely to respond to praise or censure from his higher-ups.<\/p>\n
Faculty at The University of Toledo\u2019s John B. and Lillian E. Neff College of Business and Innovation describe these sales professionals in new research published in the peer-reviewed journal Business Horizons<\/a>. Their work challenges the prevailing wisdom that managers should be wary: Lone Wolves are actually less likely than their colleagues to bring unethical sales tactics to their customer interactions.<\/p>\n \u201cIn addition to being relatively high performers, Lone Wolves are also relatively customer-oriented,\u201d said Dr. Tyler Hancock, a co-author and associate professor of marketing at the Neff College of Business. \u201cThey tend to just be good at their jobs.\u201d<\/p>\n Hancock and his colleagues \u2014 Dr. Catherine Gilstrap, Dr. Michael Mallin and Dr. Ellen Bolman Pullins in the Department of Marketing and International Business, and Dr. Robert Yonker in the Department of Management \u2014 surveyed more than 200 business-to-business salespeople to inform their new research in Business Horizons. Then they analyzed the characteristics and behaviors of each respondent, ultimately translating their findings into recommendations as to how sales managers can best support employees who fit into each of four archetypes they identify.<\/p>\n These archetypes include one they suggest managers should watch even more closely than their Lone Wolves \u2014 the effective but not necessarily ethical Fox.<\/p>\n \u201cFoxes look good on paper, but if you look closer, you might find that they\u2019re hurting your brand image,\u201d Hancock said, using the term he and his co-authors coined for their article. \u201cWhat are they doing to make all those sales?\u201d<\/p>\n The Neff College of Business is a national leader in the development of sales professionals, with Hancock, Gilstrap, Mallin and Pullins among the standout faculty of its Edward H. Schmidt School of Professional Sales<\/a>. These faculty researchers contribute to UToledo\u2019s position among the top academic institutions in the world for lifetime sales research impact, according to the academic analytics database ScholarGPS.<\/p>\n Dr. Tyler Hancock is an associate professor of marketing and co-author of recent research published in the peer-reviewed journal Business Horizons.<\/p><\/div>\n Faculty also support professional sales<\/a> students through a comprehensive undergraduate curriculum that integrates internships and other experience-based learning opportunities, contributing to a nearly perfect post-graduation job placement rate.<\/p>\n Their latest research reflects the contemporary business environment that has seen sales teams transform with increasing opportunities for remote work. As team members enjoy more autonomy than ever as a consequence, their managers are navigating evolving concerns over how their unobserved employees balance performance with ethics.<\/p>\n The researchers categorize sales professionals into four animal-themed archetypes based on the degree to which they prefer to work independently and the degree to which they are committed to the company employing them.<\/p>\n The Lone Wolf is high on the former and low on the latter, while the Fox is comparatively more committed to his employer. Then there are Hounds, with a high commitment but low independence, and the low-on-both-factors Coyotes.<\/p>\n These archetypes become useful as the researchers layer on insights into characteristic behaviors of each: Which are routinely exceeding their sales targets? Which wouldn\u2019t think twice about misleading their customers in pursuit of a sale?<\/p>\n The researchers don\u2019t present any one archetype as better than another.<\/p>\n Instead, they offer managers of diverse sales teams recommendations for interacting with each archetype: Don\u2019t let good performance lead to lax oversight for a Fox, for example. Or consider professional development for the Coyotes, whose poor performance and ethically questionable tactics might simply be a function of inexperience.<\/p>\n As for the Lone Wolves?<\/p>\n The real risk with this relatively small number of sales professionals is to their teams, the researchers conclude. Managers should recognize that their independence is a strength while taking care to ensure that their colleagues don\u2019t emulate them to negative effect \u2014 taking their lead as a license to flout organizational expectations, for example.<\/p>\n \u201cWe wanted to reconceptualize this idea of a Lone Wolf, especially as we\u2019re seeing more and more sales teams and representatives operating remotely,\u201d Hancock said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of nuance when it comes to salespeople, and it’s important for managers to pay attention and respond to that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dr. Tyler Hancock and his Neff College of Business colleagues analyzed the characteristics and behaviors of sales representatives for the peer-reviewed journal Business Horizons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":908,"featured_media":100832,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[50,32,1,3,7],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100831"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/908"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100831"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100831\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100835,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100831\/revisions\/100835"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Dr.](\"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/Tyler-Hancock-STORY-08032020-8776.jpg\")
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