Opportunities for value-based selling in an economic crisis: Managerial insights from a firm boundary theory

When economic crises disrupt markets and stifle sales, business-to-business (B2B) vendors are often tempted to respond by offering temporary price reductions to maintain sales and empathize with the customers' plight. This, however, may be a suboptimal strategy in plain sight. In this article, we propose an alternative approach, and suggest that value-based selling is a particularly suitable and mutually beneficial, yet often counter-intuitive strategy to selling in an economic crisis. We draw on the well-established organizational boundary theory to explain why economic crises should make customers more receptive to boundary changes that support value-based selling. Subsequently, we develop managerial insights on how vendors can capitalize on these opportunities by demonstrating how boundary changes can help customers reduce immediate costs, while retaining their competitiveness to grow when the economy recovers.