Yashar Atefi, PhD

Daniels 486

303.871.5242

Evelyn and Jay G. Piccinati Associate Professor

Department of Marketing, Executive PhD

Yashar Atefi, PhD, faculty member in the Department of Business Information and Analytics at the Daniels College of Business, shown in a professional academic portrait.

Google Scholar Page

Research Area

Go-to-market strategy and sales effectiveness; growth strategy; marketing strategy; AI in sales and marketing

Industry Impact

Go-to-market strategy and sales effectiveness. Companies can use my research to design better sales compensation, incentive and quota systems, create more impactful sales dashboards and leaderboards, reduce turnover while fostering healthy competition, and get more from sales training, negotiation and forecasting.
Growth strategy. Companies can use my research on how firms organize and lead for growth to decide where growth responsibilities sit, increase firm-wide efficiencies, and orchestrate growth throughout the organization by making sales, marketing and product work together as the company scales.
Marketing strategy and effectiveness. Marketing leaders can apply my findings on how buyers and sellers interact, how to increase the overall effectiveness of their marketing organization, and where AI adds value.

Biography at a Glance

Yashar Atefi is an associate professor of marketing and holds the Evelyn and Jay G. Piccinati Endowed Chair. His research addresses how companies grow, how they build, retain, and motivate their sales force, how they organize and lead the commercial function, how they interact with their customers, and how AI is changing each. He is best known for his work on sales management, including compensation and quotas, performance feedback, training, negotiation, and the retention of top talent, and more recently for work on growth organization and go-to-market strategy. He has served as the founding director and the co-director of the Sales Leadership Center. Prior to Daniels, he was the research director of the Professional Sales Institute at Louisiana State University.

His research has been published in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science among others, has been covered by the New York Times and Fortune, and won several awards including Excellence in Research Award by the American Marketing Association’s (AMA) Selling and Sales Management Special Interest Group and Young Scholar Award by the AMA Organizational Frontlines Research group.

He works with organizations on revenue growth assessments, marketing and sales effectiveness, customer and revenue analysis, pricing and packaging, go-to-market and sales organization design, and sales compensation and quota design. He sits on the editorial boards of multiple marketing academic journals, has delivered keynotes and talks to executive audiences including WorldatWork and SAP, and has written for practitioner outlets such as the Incentive Research Foundation.

Education

PhD in Business Administration/Marketing, University of Houston

Awards and Honors

2026 Best in Track Paper, AMA Summer Academic Conference, Marketing Strategy & Management
2024 Best Paper Award, AMA Winter Academic Conference, Sales Management & OFR Track
2024 Winner, AMA Organizational Frontlines Young Scholar Research Competition
2023 Emerging Scholar Award, Daniels College of Business, University of Denver
2022 Best Paper Award, AMA Summer Academic Conference, Sales Track
2022 Sales Education Foundation Grant
2021 Excellence in Research Award, AMA Selling and Sales Management SIG
2020 Invited Faculty Fellow, Marketing Strategy Consortium, University of Texas
2020 Keynote Speaker, World at Work Conference on Sales Compensation
2019 Excellence in Research Award, AMA Selling and Sales Management SIG
2019 Young Scholar Award, AMA Organizational Frontlines Research
2018 Invited Faculty Fellow, Marketing Strategy Consortium, University of Missouri
2017 Finalist, Mary Kay Dissertation Award Competition
2017 Outstanding Reviewer, International Journal of Research in Marketing
2017 Recognized Reviewer, International Journal of Research in Marketing
2016 Winner, AMA Sales SIG/USCA Dissertation Proposal Competition
2015 Best Paper Award, AMA Winter Academic Conference, Sales & CRM Track
2015 Sheth Foundation Grant
2015 Teaching Excellence Award, University of Houston
2014 Department of Marketing Commendation Letter for Excellence in Teaching
2011–2013 Presidential Graduate Fellowship, University of Houston