‘It's almost like taking the sales out of selling’—Towards a conceptualization of value-based selling in business markets

While the creation of superior customer value is regarded as fundamental to a firm's long-term survival and growth, little is known about the effective implementation of a firm's value orientation at sales force level. As the sales force plays a pivotal role in implementing marketing strategies, this study adopts a discovery oriented approach and conceptualizes value-based selling as an effective sales approach in business markets. Based on in-depth interviews with sales managers in a variety of industries, we identify and portray three salient dimensions of value-based selling, namely (1) understanding the customer's business model, (2) crafting the value proposition, and (3) communicating customer value. The selling behavior entails a mutual orientation and focuses on the value-in-use potential of the offering for the customer's business profits. We argue that value-based selling is a unique concept that differs from the established selling approaches and propose a conceptual model linking value-based selling to performance outcomes. To further advance our knowledge about the effective implementation of a firm's value orientation, we identify future research avenues embracing qualitative and quantitative research methodologies.     

Customer reference marketing: Conceptualization,measurement and link to selling performance

The use of customer references to facilitate marketing and sales in business markets has received growing interest among practitioners and academics. The importance of references has been highlighted in a wide range of contexts, such as customer relationship management, customer value management, sales, and marketing communications. Yet knowledge about the effective application of references in business remains scant, and studies have not addressed in-depth what constitutes customer reference marketing or studied its relation to firm performance. This study contributes to this important but underdeveloped business marketing topic by 1) conceptualizing customer reference marketing based on theory and an extensive qualitative field study, 2) building a measure for the construct using survey data, and 3) demonstrating its relevance by linking the construct to firms' selling performance with additional collected data. The results broaden and specify the current understanding of how to effectively deploy references in business markets and provide evidence of the hypothesized performance, as well as contingency effects. The established conceptual foundations for the phenomenon provide substantial opportunities for practitioners and theory-testing oriented business marketing research.     

Selling Value in Business Markets: Individual and Organizational Factors for Turning the Idea into Action

Modern business-to-business firms focus increasingly on understanding and selling value, as a strategic priority and to achieve marketing and sales excellence. Yet many companies struggle to implement their value orientation, without sufficient knowledge of how to translate it into sales practice. This study therefore examines value-based selling (VBS) as an implementation of value-based marketing at the sales force level. The proposed motivation–opportunity–ability framework integrates individual- and organizational-level antecedents, outcomes, and moderators in an attempt to explain the adoption and performance outcomes of VBS in business markets. Multilevel path modeling with cross-sectional survey data from 944 salespeople and managers in 43 sales organizations confirms the prediction that VBS enhances salespeople's performance, beyond that achieved with established selling approaches. However, firms need specific types of salespeople and dedicated organizational support for effective VBS implementation. A salesperson's learning orientation and networking competencies emerge as critical antecedents. Organizational value assessment tools can compensate for individual salespeople's lack of learning orientation; reference marketing efforts also strengthen the performance outcomes of VBS. Finally, VBS is most effective in organizational settings where perceived customers value demandingness is lower, enabling salespeople to use VBS as a proactive selling approach.     

Selling and sales management: An introduction to the special section and recommendations on advancing the sales research agenda

Effectively managing the sales function is a prerequisite for success in business markets. Thus, practitioners are increasingly interested in improving the performance of their sales function. However, there is evidence pinpointing that academic research in the area may be experiencing a decline in its status among other subject areas in the marketing discipline. Fortunately, advances in the field of selling and sales management as reflected in the organization of specialized conferences/meetings and the development of special journal issues hold the promise of enhancing the status of sales within marketing academia. Following this stream of activities, this IMM special section on “Selling & Sales Management” aims at stimulating the level of discourse regarding how research in our field can be advanced. The present article introduces the special section; next, it summarizes the articles comprising the special section; and, finally, it concludes with some thoughts on fruitful research opportunities in the sales area.     

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.     

The Effect of Sales Force Adoption on New Product Selling Performance

Although several studies have suggested that the sales force is a major contributing factor to new product success, few studies have focused on new product adoption by the sales force, particularly with respect to its relationship with selling performance. The present article presents empirical evidence on the impact of sales force adoption on selling performance. We defined sales force adoption as the combination of the degree to which salespeople accept and internalize the goals of the new product (i.e., commitment) and the extent to which they work hard to achieve those goals (i.e., effort). It was hypothesized that the impact of sales force adoption on selling performance will be contingent on supervisory factors (sales controls, internal marketing of the new product, training, trust, and supervisor's field attention), and market volatility. Therefore, this article also provides evidence of the conditions under which sales force adoption of a new product is more or less effective in engendering successful selling performance. The hypothesized relationships were tested with data provided by 97 high technology firms from The Netherlands. The results show that sales force adoption is positively related to selling performance. This finding suggests that salespeople who simultaneously exhibit commitment and effort will achieve higher levels of new product selling performance. Outcome based control, internal marketing and market volatility are also positively related to new product selling performance. The effect of sales force adoption on selling performance is stronger where outcome based control is used and where the firm provides information on the background of the new product to salespeople through internal marketing. Training and field attention weaken the adoption‐performance linkage. These findings may indicate that salespeople in The Netherlands interpret training as “micromanaging” and field attention as “looking over their shoulder.” We conclude with implications of our study for research and managerial practice.     

Outward-looking and future-oriented customer value potential management: The sales force value appropriation role

The management of customer relationships based on customers’ value to the selling firm has been a central topic in marketing research for decades. Yet, extant research has devoted only scant attention to the management of customer future value potential, focusing mostly on advanced statistical modeling based on firm-internal and historical data, which often lacks relevance in B-to-B settings. We employ a longitudinal intervention study, rooted in a constructive research approach, to assess the relevance of a novel customer value potential management model in business markets. The results, based on realized sales and customer portfolio dynamics, demonstrate that a firm can effectively manage customer value potential by adopting a non-statistical, sales force-driven analysis perspective. Further, the study presents evidence for the effectiveness of combinative outward-looking and future-oriented value potential criteria in value potential analysis. Finally, the findings demonstrate how a supplier can proactively manage customer portfolio dynamics in the long run by systematically enhancing its competitive position and capitalizing on customers’ organic growth at individual customer account level, through the interplay of organizational value management and sales force value appropriation efforts.     

How social media shapes the fashion industry: The spillover effects between private labels and national brands

Social media has become one of the major industrial marketing channels for companies. Because of the nature of social media, social media marketing produces a strong branding effect for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the fashion industry. This study contributes to social media analytics research by exploring the interactions between private labels and national brands in fashion social media and investigating how these interactions influence the popularity and subsequent sales of private labels. Our main findings suggest the presence of large national brands has a positive spillover effect on the popularity of private labels in fashion social media and ultimately influences sales of private label products. The results add to our understanding of the impact of Business-to-Business (B2B) social media marketing on brand competition in the fashion industry.     

The effect of social conflict on relationship loyalty in business markets

This study examines the impact of perceived social conflict on existing buyer-seller relationships. The results indicate that as the level of social conflict increases, perceptions about the loyalty of the relationship decrease. Perceived importance of the relationship had no impact on conflict or relationship loyalty. Ramifications of these findings for selling, sales management, and sales training are discussed.     

Assessing the evolution of sales knowledge: A 20-year content analysis

1012 articles appearing in 15 prominent journals over the period 1983-2002 were content analyzed in order to assess the state of published research in the domain of selling and sales management. The results provide a comprehensive, two-decade look at the key topical, theoretical, and methodological patterns prevalent at the aggregate level as well as within selected journals. Without question, the sales field has generated a considerable body of knowledge representing a range of issues, empirical approaches, and conceptual foundations. However, this review reveals several longer term trends that may challenge the sales community to consider new approaches to designing and executing sales research. Implications of these findings for researchers and industrial marketing practitioners are discussed.     

The use of social media in sales: Individual and organizational antecedents,and the role of customer engagement in social media

There is recognition that social media can benefit personal selling and sales management, especially in the B2B context. This research draws on interactional psychology theory to propose and test a model of usage of social media in sales, analyzing individual, organizational, and customer-related factors. We find that organizational competence and commitment with social media are key determinants of social media usage in sales, as well as individual commitment. Customer engagement with social media also predicts social media usage in sales, both directly and (mostly) through the individual and organizational factors analyzed, especially organizational competence and commitment. Finally, we find evidence of synergistic effects between individual competence and commitment, which is not found at the organizational level. We conduct multiple regression analysis of data obtained by surveying 220 sales executives in the United States.     

Harnessing marketing automation for B2B content marketing

The growing importance of the Internet to B2B customer purchasing decisions has motivated B2B sellers to create digital content that leads potential buyers to interact with their company. This trend has engendered a new paradigm referred to as ‘content marketing.’ This study investigates the organizational processes for developing valuable and timely content to meet customer needs and for integrating content marketing with B2B selling processes. The results of this single case study demonstrate the use of marketing automation to generate high-quality sales leads through behavioral targeting and content personalization. The study advances understanding of the organizational processes that support content marketing and shows how content marketing can be combined with B2B selling processes via marketing automation in ways that achieve business benefits.     

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.     

Interfacing and customer-facing: Sales and marketing selling centers

Organizations are turning to the collective knowledge of selling teams in order to manage increasingly complex customers and solutions. One specific cross-functional unit that organizations are commonly using when selling to business-to-business customers is a team of sales and marketing personnel. While the interface between sales and marketing has received attention in the literature, which notes the inherent advantages and challenges of incorporating both roles on a team, opportunities remain to examine sales and marketing selling centers (SMSCs): instances where sales and marketing jointly and directly interact on a relatively temporary basis in customer-facing situations. The authors utilize a discovery-oriented, theories-in-use inquiry to better understand customer-facing SMSC processes, facilitators, and outcomes. Based on insights captured from 29 in-depth interviews with informants who each served on SMSCs in both sales and marketing roles, this study extends sales research by providing a dual perspective of those working on SMSCs, thus enhancing the utility of such malleable selling teams.     

Role of big data and social media analytics for business to business sustainability: A participatory web context

The digital transformation is an accumulation of various digital advancements, such as the transformation of the web phenomenon. The participatory web that allows for active user engagement and gather intelligence has been widely recognised as a value add tool by organisations of all shapes and sizes to improve business productivity and efficiency. However, its ability to facilitate sustainable business-to-business (B2B) activities has lacked focus in the business and management literature to date. This qualitative research is exploratory in nature and fills this gap through findings arising from interviews of managers and by developing taxonomies that highlight the capability of participatory web over passive web to enable different firms to engage in business operations. For this purpose, two important interrelated functions of business i.e. operations and marketing have been mapped against three dimensions of sustainability. Consequently, this research demonstrates the ability of big data and social media analytics within a participatory web environment to enable B2B organisations to become profitable and remain sustainable through strategic operations and marketing related business activities. The research findings will be useful for both academics and managers who are interested in understanding and further developing the business use of participatory web tools to achieve business sustainability. Hence, this may be considered as a distinct way of attaining sustainability.     

Purchasing-driven sales: Matching sales strategies to the evolution of the purchasing function

The personal selling field has witnessed the emergence of various sales strategies, including relationship, value, key account, and solution selling. Despite claims about their effectiveness, recent work challenges the relevance of existing sales strategies across buying contexts. Specifically, emerging sales strategies often focus on the user in the customer organization, without being explicitly aligned with the increasingly important purchasing function. To define the critical role of the purchasing function for sales effectiveness, this study collects data from 32 firms in two markets; their purchasing departments reveal four stages of purchasing evolution: passive (price focused), independent (cost-focused), supportive (solution/innovation focused), and integrative (strategy focused). The research demonstrates that each stage of purchasing evolution then requires distinct sales strategies by selling firms and any mismatch of purchasing evolution and sales strategy may be detrimental to sales. This novel view and the supported findings offers several implications for both research and practice.     

Forecasting business needs in the telephone market

The last decade has seen substantial changes in the environment in which U.S. telephone companies operate. As regulated monopolies, telephone companies are experiencing effective competition in several areas of their operations. Additionally the consumerist movement has made regulatory agencies more aware of the requirements of the numerous markets served by the utilities. With “good” telephone service available at reasonable cost throughout the United States, users and telephone companies are more aware of secondary product attributes such as style (decorator sets) and auxiliary features (the ability to place one caller on hold and answer another call). These changes reflect the evolution of the marketing function within the telephone companies and the increasing use of marketing research for product line expansion and sales forecasting. What has caused this shifting perspective on the function of marketing? How have the utilities responded? The following discussion deals with these questions as well as the ways in which marketing research has aided the telephone company in forecasting sales to business customers.     

A sales mix model for effective industrial selling

The purpose of this article is to focus on one aspect of the marketing mix for industrial firms. Specifically, the control of promotion centers on the promotional mix, which includes personal selling, advertising, and sales promotion. The personal sales mix model (Figure 1) highlights those factors that are controllable by the industrial sales representative. Also, the uncontrollables involved in industrial selling are discussed. An understanding of the personal sales mix model should aid industrial marketers in satisfying buyer's needs through effective selling.     

Salespeople's work toward the institutionalization of social selling practices

While the use of social media has become widespread among business-to-business organizations, the diversity of the social selling practices undertaken by salespeople and the extent to which they rely on them for their sales approach remain limited. Contrary to previous studies that emphasize the benefits of top-down approaches, we adopt a salesperson-centric approach, with the belief that the salesperson's agency is a key factor in the development of new sales practices related to social media. Using the concept of practice work and building upon institutional theory, we argue that social selling practices emerge in a bottom-up way, depending on the work initiated by salespeople. Based on a qualitative study of 32 B2B sales professionals, we show that salespeople perform three kinds of practice work: promotion, reconciliation, and disruption. These efforts can diffuse but also thwart social selling practices in sales organizations. This article offers new insights into how organizations can develop salespeople's depth of social media usage, and encourages firms to support salespeople's social selling initiatives instead of controlling them.     

B2B content marketing for professional services: In-person versus digital contacts

We study whether marketing can have a new role, one that is better aligned with the sales force, by adapting content marketing (CM) in B2B professional services organizations. CM activities can be in-person events such as conferences, which involve personal contacts with clients, or digital, such as webinars (i.e., digital events) or posting firm-generated content on branded websites (i.e., digital content). Fitting random-effects negative binomial regression models with four years of panel data from a large, international, consulting service provider, we show that the number of sales leads and won opportunities from its key accounts are positively affected by the frequency of an account's employees attending digital events and consuming digital content, but not in-person events. Moreover, we find that CM affects sales leads for both low- and high-level account employees. These findings suggest that CM can be effective in bringing sales leads and won opportunities to B2B professional service providers and can play a complementary role to the existing sales force.