Profile Information

Profile

BRIEF BIO
Ryan is an award-winning author, professor, and consultant focused on helping organizational leaders improve sales force performance. He has conducted research and consulting projects with Fortune 500 companies, providing data analysis, recommendations, coaching, and training interventions. He has consulted with companies, both domestic and international, across industries such as hospitality, technology, CPG, industrial services, media advertising, construction, and logistics. This real-world engagement has helped Ryan be recognized as an acclaimed researcher, an insightful speaker to sales organizations, and also enabled the delivery of innovative teaching in the classroom.




AWARDS
2026 James M. Comer Award for Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory | Buyer-Seller Uncertainty

2024 Clemson Powers College of Business Senior Research Scholar Award

2020 Clemson Watt Fellowship for the study of Artificial Intelligence in Sales Education

2017 James M. Comer Award for Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory | Do Sales and Service Compete?

2015 AMA Sales SIG Excellence in Research Award

2015 Clemson College of Business Emerging Scholar Award

2013 AMA Sales SIG Winner | Best Dissertation Award

2012 AMA Sales SIG Winner | Best Dissertation Proposal Award



SERVICE
Ryan actively serves on the editorial review boards at the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Service Research, and the Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management. Ryan is also an ad-hoc reviewer for the Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Industrial Marketing Management, Journal of Business Research and several marketing-related conferences and peer-reviewed competitions. He is also co-editor of a special issue on 'Sales Team Theory and Practice' for Industrial Marketing Management.



TEACHING
As executive director of Clemson's Sales Innovation Program, Ryan also works closely with students and sales industry leaders on recruitment, training, and performance challenges. Integrating his work into the classroom, Dr. Mullins teaches Introduction to Professional Selling, Applied Selling, and Sales Management at the undergraduate level, and also teaches Sales Leadership at the MBA level. Ryan is also a co-author on the textbook Professional Selling, which is used in curriculum across numerous sales programs around the country.



In his free time, Ryan enjoys spending time with his wife and 3 kids in the Greenville, SC community where they live.

Research Interests

• Ryan's research focuses on sales force management, salesperson performance, and revenue leadership. His work in these areas has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, amongst others. Eleven of his research articles appear in the Financial Times Top 50 business journals in the world. Ryan is also the co-author of the academic textbook, Professional Selling, used in sales programs taught across the country.

Research Publications

• Highlighted Publications
• Mullins, Ryan, Sascha Alavi, Johannes Habel, and Bianca Richter (forthcoming), “Challenging the Customer,” Journal of Retailing.
• Beeler, Lisa, Ryan Mullins, and Johannes Habel (in-press), “Using Latent Profile Analysis to advance Job Demands-Resources Theory: An empirical demonstration in the sales context,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
• Mullins, Ryan, Chase, Kevin S., & Friend, Scott B. (2023). Buyer-seller uncertainty: a systematic review and future research directions. Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, 1-15. 2026 James M. Comer Award for Best Contribution to Selling and Sales Management Theory
• Mullins, Ryan and Raj Agnihotri (2022), "Digital selling: Organizational and managerial influences for frontline readiness and effectiveness," Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.
• Mullins, Ryan, Bulent Menguc, and Nikolaos Panagopoulos (2020), “Antecedents and Outcomes of Value-based Selling in Sales Teams: A Multilevel, Systems Theory of Motivation Perspective,” Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(6), 1053–1074. [Lead Article]
• Singh, Jagdip, Karen Flaherty, Ravipreet S. Sohi, Dawn Deeter-Schmelz, Johannes Habel, Kenneth Le Meuneir-FitzHugh, Avinash Malshe, Ryan Mullins, and Vincent Onyemah (2019), "Sales Profession and Professionals in the Age of Digitization and Artificial Technologies: Concepts, Priorities, and Questions," Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, 39(1), 2-22.
• Panagopoulos, Nikolaos, Ryan Mullins, and Panagiotis Avramidis (2018), "Sales Force Downsizing and Firm-Idiosyncratic Risk: The Contingent Role of Investors' Screening and Firms' Signaling Processes," Journal of Marketing, 82(6), 71-88.
• Mullins, Ryan, Michael Ahearne, Son K. Lam, Zachary R. Hall, and Jeffrey P. Boichuk (2014), "Know Your Customer: How Salesperson Perceptions of Customer Relationship Quality Form and Impact Account Profitability," Journal of Marketing, 78(6), 38-58. [Winner of the 2015 AMA Sales SIG Excellence in Research Award]

Links

• Check out my research on Google Scholar
• or on Research Gate
• Click to view the Sales Innovation Program