Workers in sales might roll their eyes when they deal with a micromanaging boss. But many customers actually appreciate it if a store manager offers to help when they’re mulling over a purchase, whether it’s a dishwasher, a tablet or a lawnmower.

That’s the main finding of a new study I co-authored.

As a scholar of sales and pricing, I delved into this question, along with fellow researchers Molly R. Burchett and Brian Murtha, by analyzing data from a massive field study involving more than 5.5 million real-world exchanges at a Fortune 500 company, in addition to six related experiments.

We found that this kind of intervention does pay off – to a certain extent. Sales teams that included a manager outperformed teams without one by 5% to 13%, which meant an extra US$13 million in yearly revenue at the company in question. The biggest lift came when a manager joined a sales teams dealing with new customers – and assumed a supportive role rather than taking a lead.

We were somewhat surprised by the lift from managers taking a back-seat role, so we ran........

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