Customer capital spillovers: evidence from sales managers in international markets

Expanding their customer base is crucial for firms to grow. This paper leverages sales managers’ job-to-job transitions to better un- derstand how buyer-seller relationships form. Combining unique French firm-to-firm trade data with matched employer-employee data, we carry out an event-study analysis that exploits the tim- ing of sales managers’ transitions from one firm to another for identification. We find that recruiting a sales manager increases by 36% the probability to export to the buyers of her former firm. The expansion of the firm’s customer base comes at the expense of the buyer’s former suppliers. Yet, business stealing is only partial, and thus job-to-job transitions are not zero-sum.