Value-based selling: a multi-component exploration
Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
ISSN: 0885-8624
Article publication date: 11 October 2018
Issue publication date: 12 March 2019
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate factors that affect the use of value-based selling and the subsequent influences on salespeople’s sales performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Industrial salespeople from five steel manufacturers were surveyed. Scales measure three components of value-based selling: comprehension, crafting and confirmation. Partial least squares path analysis tested the conceptual model.
Findings
Salespeople’s learning orientation has the greatest impact on the use of value-based selling. Managerial support exerts a positive effect on crafting. Salespeople’s experience has a positive impact on comprehension and confirmation. The implementation of value-based selling has a positive effect on sales performance.
Research limitations/implications
The research is cross-sectional, with a small sample size (n = 60). The data were collected from a single source (i.e. salespeople).
Practical implications
The results suggest that value-based selling is a multi-component sales process that requires balancing managerial actions among individual and organizational factors.
Originality/value
This paper presents a broad evaluation of measures and assessments of value-based selling in business-to-business sales settings. The findings provide new elaborations on the theoretical and practical implications of value-based selling and reveal which individual and organizational factors affect the usage of value-based selling.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This paper forms part of the special section “Closed to new submissions challenger sale – future of selling?”, guest edited by Talai Osmonbekov.
The authors gratefully acknowledge financial support from Torsten Söderbergs Stiftelse, Sweden (grant no. E24/14) and the Swedish innovation agency (VINNOVA). The authors thank Christina Grundström for valuable comments on an earlier version of this article. The authors are also grateful for the helpful suggestions by the anonymous reviewers and the editor.
Citation
Kienzler, M., Kindström, D. and Brashear-Alejandro, T. (2019), "Value-based selling: a multi-component exploration", Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, Vol. 34 No. 2, pp. 360-373. https://doi.org/10.1108/JBIM-02-2017-0037
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited