Social media in B2B sales: Why and when does salesperson social media usage affect salesperson performance?

The importance of social media usage by B2B salespeople has been well documented in the sales literature. In particular, a B2B salesperson's use of social media to prospect for customers and adapt their sales approach have primarily been shown to explain sales performance. However, an increasing body of literature in the sales domain has called for B2B salespeople to be ambidextrous by engaging in service activities aimed at helping their customers. We argue that by giving B2B salespeople an opportunity to communicate directly with their customers, social media is used by salespeople to proactively service their customers and hence can play a critical role in driving sales performance. Drawing from the Task-Technology Fit theory, we develop and test a conceptual model in which B2B salesperson social media usage affects salesperson performance indirectly through value-oriented prospecting and proactive servicing. Additionally peer social media usage was a key moderator in the relationship between B2B salesperson social media usage on the one hand and value-oriented prospecting and proactive servicing on the other hand. We test the model with data from 171 B2B salespeople and find that salesperson social media usage relates positively with proactive servicing and value-oriented prospecting. While we did not find support for the relationship between social media usage and adaptive selling, we did find support for the impact of all three sales activities salesperson performance. In addition, results show that peer social media usage has positive moderating effects on the B2B salesperson social media usage and value-oriented prospecting/proactive servicing relationships.     

How Do Interaction Activities among Customers and between Customers and Firms Influence Market Performance and Continuous Product Innovation? An Empirical Investigation of the Mobile Application Market

Mobile application markets (MAMs) significantly differ from other existing marketplaces at least in two aspects. First, customers (app users) and firms (app providers) frequently interact with each other in real time, which is not common in the conventional marketplaces. Second, many app providers incorporate customers’ opinions or suggestions into their software upgrades, representing one of the most unique and interesting aspects of MAMs. Therefore, it has become critical to understand the impact of interaction activities not only among customers, but also between customers and firms on the market performances of new products in MAMs. One of the most significant issues firms face is whether firms reflect on customers’ postpurchase interaction activities, and the next interesting question is how firms respond to them. This study explores the effects of customer‐to‐customer (C2C), customer‐to‐firm, and firm‐to‐customer interaction activities on market performance. In addition, this study investigates how communication activities influence a firm's tendency to pursue continuous product innovation through research and development (R&D). Using data obtained from a major MAM, T store, three models that are respectively related to product sales, product lifetime, and a firm's R&D activity for product upgrades, are applied to empirically test hypotheses concerning the effects of interaction activities. In our analyses of market performance, a hierarchical log regression model with 10,840 weekly transactions data set related to product sales (model A) and 291 aggregate transactions related to product lifetime (model B) is used. Results indicate that C2C and customer‐to‐firm communication activities have a positive impact on sales, but little relationship with product lifetime. However, a firm's continuous product R&D has a positive impact on both sales and lifetime performance. Our analysis of a firm's R&D (model C) shows that C2C and customer–firm communication increases a firm's R&D activity. Taken together, these results have important implications for customer–firm interactions, market performance, and R&D strategies.     

How institutional pressures and systems characteristics shape customer acceptance of smart product-service systems

This research examines how institutional pressures (mimetic, normative, and coercive), which provide shared expectations of and norms for legitimate behavior, and system characteristics influence business-to-business (B2B) customer acceptance of smart product-service systems (PSSs). This is important because many B2B customers are still reluctant to adopt smart PSSs. Drawing from a cross-industry survey with 160 managers of B2B firms and controlling for other major adoption drivers (e.g., privacy risk, organizational innovativeness), we find a non-linear effect of normative pressure on customers' intention to adopt smart PSSs. Furthermore, normative pressure particularly increases adoption intentions when customers perceive a high relative advantage from smart PSSs. Mimetic pressure positively affects adoption of customer input-oriented PSSs, whereas this effect is highly non-linear (U-shaped) for customer output-oriented PSSs. We extend adoption literature by analyzing non-linear effects of institutional pressures as well as its context dependence. From a managerial perspective, these findings show how suppliers can adapt their sales and communication efforts to effectively market smart PSSs.     

Customer involvement in new product development in B2B: The role of sales

Developing new products, and customer involvement in the process, have been frequent topics in the management literature. Focusing on the benefits and risks of customer involvement, prior research mostly black-boxed the process through which customers are involved. Little has been reported on the activities and timing related to customer involvement in new product development (NPD), and the literature provides limited guidance for how to orchestrate customers' involvement. Building on a longitudinal case study of the development of a new product over five years, we offer a comprehensive model of customer involvement in the NPD process, and elaborate on the role of sales in customer involvement. The contribution of this paper is threefold: first, we develop the concept of customer involvement as a pattern of interactions at the interface of the customer and supplier organizations. Second, we posit that NPD in a B2B context is an iterative process consisting of various parallel sub-processes. Third, we demonstrate that in a B2B context, sales function plays a central part in interfacing the supplier and customer organizations. Based on our findings we identify organizational capabilities critical for developing an effective customer-supplier interface.     

Social media,customer engagement,and sales organizations: A research agenda

Organizations continue to make investments in social media with the hope that it will help their sales force in improving engagement with customers. The academic literature on social media use in business markets has supported the growth and utilization of such technology; however, much more work is needed. This article, building upon the recent scholarly advances and considering a managerial perspective, offers suggestions to guide future academic research examining the links between social media use and customer engagement within the B2B sales domain. Several research questions are presented under the four broad topics, namely utility of social media technologies, context matters, social media pitfalls, and futuristic social media applications.     

Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B sales

Social media have changed how buyers and sellers interact, and increased involvement through social media may yield positive results for sales organizations if salespeople utilize it in facilitating their behaviors. Through the perspective of value creation, we test the mediating effects of salesperson information communication behaviors between social media use and customer satisfaction. Using salesperson-reported data, within a B2B context, we empirically test a model using structural equation modeling. Salesperson's use of social media is found to impact information communication behaviors, which enhance salesperson responsiveness and customer satisfaction. Also, salesperson responsiveness is found to have a positive relationship with customer satisfaction. Findings suggest that social media plays an important role in communicating information to customers, but as an antecedent enhancing salesperson behaviors to increase customer satisfaction rather than a direct factor. This encourages managers to carefully assess goals related to social media use of their sales force.     

Adoption of digital sales force automation tools in supply chain: Customers' acceptance of sales configurators

Digitalization changes both buying processes and sales processes and, consequently, the dynamics and division of work between buyers and suppliers in the supply chain. This has major implications for industrial marketing and supply chain management. In this study, we analyze the impact of sales configurators, which are used to create valid configurations of market offerings that fulfill customer requirements. The usefulness of sales configurators can be investigated from both the sellers' and buyers' perspectives. In this research, we focus on the latter, and we specifically investigate the antecedents of customers' acceptance of sales configurators in a supply chain. In our analysis, we concentrate on system-level antecedents, which have been neglected by the existing literature. Our research yields better knowledge of how digital sales technologies can be used by customers for improved effectiveness and perceived value. The results demonstrate that ease of use and system adaptability contribute strongly to the perceived effectiveness, and eventually to the perceived usefulness, of sales configurators. Yet, surprisingly, perceived enjoyment is identified as having the most significant effect on perceived usefulness.     

Churn analysis for an Iranian mobile operator

To survive in the challenging environment of a global market, organizations must recognize and analyze customer attitudes. To be competitive, organizations must recognize and forecast customer preferences and behaviors to maximize customer retention before their rivals do so. This research identifies factors that affect customer churn, the single most valuable of an organization's assets. One year's data from call log files relating to 3150 customers were selected randomly from an Iranian mobile operator call-center database. Binomial Logistic Regression was the method of analysis used in this research. The results of this research indicate that a customer's dissatisfaction, their amount of service usage and certain demographic characteristics have the most influence on their decision to remain or churn. The results also imply that customer status (active or inactive status) mediates the relationship between churn and the cause of churn. The Iranian government's current plan to privatize the telecommunications industry without deregulation leads to a non-square competition environment. Deregulation in favor of delegating more authorities of customer care is necessary in order to develop a square private competition environment in the Iranian mobile telecommunications industry.     

How salesperson perceptions of customers' pro-social behaviors help drive salesperson performance

By conceptualizing customers' organizational citizenship behavior as a communication cue, a customer evaluation criterion, and a sales performance facilitator in a relational selling context, the authors empirically demonstrate the effect of salespeople's perceptions of their customers' voluntary, prosocial behavior on three components of sales performance. The authors first hypothesize and confirm that salespeople can perceive their customers to exhibit organizational citizenship behavior, and that this important customer cue can serve as a customer evaluation criterion. The authors then demonstrate how salespeople can respond to their perceptions of customers' organizational citizenship behavior in performance-enhancing ways. Results from a sample of 628 business-to-business salespeople suggest that customer-involved sales performance fully mediates the relationship between customers' organizational citizenship behavior and salesperson behavioral performance, and that salesperson behavioral performance partially mediates the relationship between customer-involved sales performance and salesperson outcome productivity. These findings highlight the important role customer-involved sales performance plays as an antecedent to a salesperson's individual performance. Support for the notion that salespeople's perceptions and interpretations of their customers' organizational citizenship behavior can facilitate personal selling and augment sales performance has implications for sales training, salesperson evaluation, and customer evaluation. The authors discuss these and other implications for B2B researchers and practitioners.     

Understanding salespeople's learning experiences through blogging: A social learning approach

Social media has changed the way many salespeople work and interact with their customers and coworkers. We examined 200 salespeople's blogs using netnography method. Drawing on social learning theory and real salespeople's blogs, we illustrate how and why salespeople can learn by reading and writing blogs. Our findings show that writing and reading blogs can be a helpful learning tool for many salespeople and the findings also suggest that companies should consider using blogging as a sales training tool. Our research contributes to marketing and sales literature two ways. First, our study provides a theoretical foundation for future work on social learning theory and online learning in areas of marketing, sales, and business education. Second, our study confirms the importance and usefulness of netnography method beyond its current usage in marketing and sales management. We conclude our paper with avenues for future research.     

Advancing social media driven sales research: Establishing conceptual foundations for B-to-B social selling

Business markets are facing major changes due to an increasing digitalization trend and consequent changes in buying behaviors. Practitioners and academics alike have started to emphasize social selling as a novel way to tackle these emerging opportunities and challenges at the sales force level. Since research in this area remains embryonic and fragmented, we adopt a discovery-oriented research approach and conceptualize social selling and its key facets based on a systematic literature review and a field study involving thought leading social selling professionals. The findings indicate a need to extend the research focus from social media usage into a concept which comprehends social selling as a broader application of digital marketing principles at the individual salesperson level. Social selling leverages social and digital channels for understanding, connecting with, and engaging influencers, prospects and existing customers at relevant customer purchasing journey touchpoints for building valuable business relationships. We relate the construct to other close selling approaches and explicate its organizational strategy components as well as performance outcomes. The findings advance current understanding of the role of sales in contemporary business markets and have implications for sales and marketing theory and practice.     

B2B relationships on the fast track: An empirical investigation into the outcomes of solution provision

In academic and business literature, suppliers providing solutions to their business-to-business (B2B) customers are often described as achieving increased customer retention, higher sales volumes, and enhanced cross-selling. Yet there is limited empirical evidence to support the positive impact of solutions on these customer-related outcomes. Moreover, it is unclear whether suppliers obtain similar outcomes from buyers at different relationship life-cycle stages. This paper aims to address these two gaps and tests the contingency role of the relationship life-cycle in driving future customer outcomes. It proposes that there is a positive effect for solutions provided to recent customers (labeled as “accelerator” role) rather than to established ones (labeled as “leverage” role). Results from a longitudinal analysis of the sales database of a North American company providing solutions to its customers empirically support the “accelerator” role of solutions.     

To app or not to app: A business-to-business seller's decision

Although business-to-business (B2B) selling firms increasingly realize the benefits of adoption and usage of B2B mobile applications (apps), few studies examine this topic. Building on the technology organization environment and the technology acceptance model adoption frameworks, this research provides an integrative framework to identify and investigate the key determinants of B2B mobile apps for sellers that have not implemented B2B mobile apps for their buyers to use in their decision making. The results from 360 marketing executives at B2B selling firms indicate that perceived usefulness, top management support, and competitive pressure positively influence the decision to adopt B2B mobile apps in the near future. In addition, relative advantage and perceived ease of use indirectly affect adoption of B2B mobile apps through perceived usefulness. The research findings provide several theoretical and managerial implications related to B2B mobile apps adoption.     

It ain't over 'til it's over: Evaluating reacquisition opportunities in business-to-business markets

Using a qualitative critical incident research technique, this paper examines how sales firms evaluate defected customers in order to determine their worthiness for reacquisition. Findings from interviews with fifty professional salespeople suggest that, when sales firms assess reacquisition opportunities, these opportunities are evaluated based on the likelihood of reacquisition and the value of the customer (i.e., ease of reacquisition and value of the customer). Salespeople report that the barriers to reacquisition, leveraging remaining customer relationship and investigating their own value-adding capabilities are critical in determining the ease of reacquisition. In addition, salespeople report that account size, profitability, market influence and cross-selling potential are fundamental in determining the value of a customer. Furthermore, the importance of ease and value in reacquisition assessments varies with (1) the reason for the customer defection, (2) the formalization of a firm's reacquisition process, and (3) market opportunities. Managerial implications and future research directions are discussed.     

What drives customer Re-engagement? The foundational role of the sales-service interplay in episodic value co-creation

As existing business-to-business value co-creation (VCC) contracts approach their planned expiration, customers evaluate incumbent suppliers when forming their decisions to re-engage or defect. During this late stage of VCC, supplier sales and service personnel perform unique activities to support one another and foster VCC re-engagement. To investigate this sales-service interplay, the authors employ an exploratory inquiry consisting of 115 depth interviews across 63 customer accounts. Interviews were conducted with customers following the decision to re-engage or defect from an incumbent supplier. Findings suggest that sales' efforts to renew the VCC contract depend on tactical insights provided by service. Through their involvement with customers, service holds a tactical perspective that can extract micro-level customer insights. Findings also suggest that service's ability to influence supplier-specific knowledge stores within the customer organization depends on macro-level strategic customer directives that may be shared by sales. Further, service's activation of such knowledge stores moderates the relationship between sales' RFP response and the customer's VCC re-engagement decision. The results have implications for the industrial sales and service fields, since the integration of the sales and service teams is critical for garnering intrafirm knowledge flows that drive recurrent VCC within collaborative customer-supplier relationships.     

The Role of Sales in NPD: An Investigation of the U.S. Health‐Care Industry

The new product development (NPD) literature emphasizes that the success of new products strongly depends on a firm's capability to understand customer needs and translate them into new products. Because of their close relationships with customers, salespeople are in the ideal position to connect the firm's NPD efforts to its customers. The extant literature on the role of sales in NPD focuses on either sales’ contribution to generating new product ideas or the adoption of new products by salespeople, while a systematic study of sales’ contribution during all NPD stages is lacking. In addition, the role of sales is typically studied in isolation, while in practice, the role of sales depends on the relationship between sales and marketing. This article addresses these gaps in the literature by reporting on an empirical investigation of the role of sales during the entire NPD process in the U.S. health‐care industry, taking into account the complexities of the sales‐marketing dynamic. The article is based on interviews with 21 sales and 15 marketing informants from the U.S. health‐care industry, both pharmaceutical firms (selling drugs to physicians) and device manufacturing firms. Our findings highlight how salespeople are distant from NPD process during the discovery stage. Salespeople are focused on selling to customers, and marketing keeps sales distant from the NPD process. During the development stage, sales is still only indirectly involved in NPD through its relationship with marketing. During commercialization, however, marketing takes the driver's seat and strongly involves sales in the various (pre)launch activities. But while salespeople are mostly indirectly involved in NPD, sales managers have a closer relationship with sales and are more directly involved. The findings also show how the involvement of sales is influenced by characteristics of the health‐care industry. Thus, this article contributes to our understanding of the role of sales in NPD by integrating theoretical perspectives from the sales‐marketing interface literature into the NPD literature.     

Developing benchmarks to capture relative performance for sales force incentives decisions: Lessons from B2B insurance industry

Performance-based incentives are widely used in B2B sales; however, sales managers find it challenging to customize such incentives. In response, we propose a new methodology to assess salespeople's capability using performance history data. To evaluate relative performance, we filter out the impact of systematic factors of job characteristics (e.g., channel type, territory, and market size). Therefore, by providing appropriate benchmarks, our approach captures the idiosyncratic component of performance, allowing a direct comparison of a salesperson with other counterparts in the firm. We also account for prospective customer characteristics that let us distinguish between competent salespeople and those fortunate enough to have a customer mix with a high predisposition to buy. Using a data set of automobile insurance sales to small business owners in the U.S., we model salesperson performance as consisting of three stages: generating leads, converting leads to customers and upselling. Our output, a “grade card” for each salesperson, contains metrics that can aid managers in setting individual level performance goals, in deciding who should be rewarded or let go, and in diagnosing salespeople's strengths and weaknesses. Our easy to implement methodology is useful for a wide variety of applications, wherever relative performance needs to be judged.     

Strengthening B2B brands by signalling environmental sustainability and managing customer relationships

Resource depletion and environmental pollution concerns are forcing manufacturers to pay greater attention to environmental sustainability. This is especially so for business-to-business (B2B) manufacturing firms who intensively use natural resources in their operations and are blamed for observable impacts on the environment. Despite investments in environmental sustainability practices by B2B manufacturers, studies provide little explanation about the extent B2B manufacturers obtain a positive brand image and superior market performance through environmental sustainability. Furthermore, research has not identified organisational practices that strengthen the path from environmental sustainability to market performance. Drawing on signalling theory, the customer relationship management (CRM) literature, attitude theory, and data collected from B2B manufacturers and their customers, we show that environmental sustainability practices provide positive benefits to B2B manufacturers' brand image, which, in turn, impacts market performance. Further, effective CRM and working with business customers with positive environmental attitudes are essential boundary conditions that strengthen the path from environmental sustainability practices to market performance.     

A comparison of social media marketing between B2B,B2C and mixed business models

This paper explores the implicit assumption in the growing body of literature that social media usage is fundamentally different in business-to-business (B2B) companies than in the extant business-to-consumer (B2C) literature. Sashi's (2012) customer engagement cycle is utilized to compare organizational practices in relation to social media marketing in B2B, B2C, Mixed B2B/B2C and B2B2C business models. Utilizing 449 responses to an exploratory panel based survey instrument, we clearly identify differences in social media usage and its perceived importance as a communications channel. In particular we identify distinct differences in the relationship between social media importance and the perceived effectiveness of social media marketing across business models. Our results indicate that B2B social media usage is distinct from B2C, Mixed and B2B2C business model approaches. Specifically B2B organizational members perceive social media to have a lower overall effectiveness as a channel and identify it as less important for relationship oriented usage than other business models.     

Customer Involvement in New Service Development: An Examination of Antecedents and Outcomes*

Customer involvement has been recognized as an important factor for successful service development. Despite its acknowledged importance, a review of the literature suggests that there is little empirical evidence about the effectiveness and outcomes of interacting with customers while developing new services. Similarly, the extant literature shows mixed views about the effect of technological uncertainty on customer involvement and the effectiveness of customer involvement at different stages of the new service development process. Against this backdrop, the present study has three objectives: (1) to investigate the effects of customer involvement on operational dimensions (i.e., innovation speed and technical quality) and market dimensions (i.e., competitive superiority and sales performance) of new service performance; (2) to examine the effect of technological novelty and technological turbulence on customer involvement; and (3) to explore the moderating effect of the stage of the development process on the relationships among technological novelty, technological turbulence and customer involvement, and customer involvement and new service performance. A total of 807 firms with 75 or more employees in a varied set of industries were selected from the Dun & Bradstreet's 2004 listing of Spanish service firms. A questionnaire was mailed to the person in charge of new service development at each company. A total of 102 complete questionnaires were returned. Findings reveal that whereas customer involvement has a positive direct effect on technical quality and innovation speed, it has an indirect effect on competitive superiority and sales performance through both technical quality and innovation speed. The study also finds a positive effect of technological novelty as well as technological turbulence on customer involvement. Contrary to expectations, the study does not find any moderating effects of the stage of the development process. This study has several theoretical and managerial implications. In terms of theoretical implications, the study supports the role of technological uncertainty (novelty and turbulence) as an antecedent to customer involvement. It also provides empirical evidence of the impact of customer involvement on operational and market dimensions of new service performance. In terms of managerial implications, the study offers critical insights on how customer involvement in new service development translates into improved new service performance. Furthermore, it reveals that the importance of customer involvement in technologically uncertain contexts and its impact on new service performance are independent of the stage of the development process, suggesting that managers should involve customers throughout the entire development process.