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The purpose of this paper is to understand the main drivers of change in the relational approaches adopted in business-to-business (B2B) companies as an effect of the digital transformation processes boosted by COVID-19 pandemic.

The methodology includes a qualitative study based on an abductive approach. Twenty-eight semistructured interviews and two focus groups have been carried out with sales and marketing professionals from different industries.

The research defines a conceptual framework that describes what the main changes of B2B relational approach are in a context affected by the pandemic, as well as its effects. The framework is constituted by three dimensions, namely, efficiency of the interaction, coordination and digital trust, and seven subdimensions.

This research also contributes to managerial practice, defining some directions to be fulfilled in a business context affected by the COVID-19 emergency to improve efficiency, coordination and trust.

Academic literature has greatly analyzed the transformation of the B2B scenario; less studies have explored how the relational approach is changing due to the digital acceleration caused by COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to understand marketing–sales–service (M-S-S) interface from the point of how social media marketing (SMM) platforms are prioritized and associated business-to-business (B2B) sales process influence. This study also seeks to understand whether effective triadic alignment is achieved between marketing, sales and service.

This study combines literature review and the analytical hierarchy process model. In total, 30 M-S-S managers of a multinational electronics firm situated in Africa and the Middle East participated in this study. The authors collected data from M-S-S managers during training sessions on marketing, sales, service alignment and SMM role in sales process.

In their drive for customer orientation and improved organizational performance, marketing, sales and service managers view understanding the customer as the most important sales process attribute. Considered second most significant sales process attribute is needs discovery, whereas approaching the customer is ranked the least important. From the ratings of sales process attributes evaluation and rankings of SMM platform alternatives, the results show a significant hierarchical influence of Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter on sales process. The results also show an enabling influence of SMM activity on M-S-S interface alignment.

This study has a twofold limitation. First, it explored only one major B2B firm in the electronics industry. Second, only the African and Middle East settings are considered in this study. These limitations could be addressed in future research.

This paper provides practical insights into how M-S-S managers may leverage social media to enhance customer orientation and boost organizational performance. The use of SMM can help M-S-S managers of the focal firm to predict purchase behavior of customers more accurately and as a result effectively manage and improve sales performance. In that drive of using SMM-based competitive intelligence to deliver superior customer experience and enhance sales performance, B2B marketing-oriented firms can also leverage the interdependence (information sharing and involvement) in the M-S-S interface during the SMM activity to enhance triadic alignment.

This study contributes to the literature by developing a framework for modeling SMM influence on M-S-S and B2B sales process to deliver superior customer experience and drive business performance.

This paper aims to explore how business-to-business (B2B) salespeople use social media and emulate value creation strategies used by social media influencers.

Using 28 interviews with salespeople, this paper develops six propositions and a conceptual framework that outlines when and how B2B salespeople use social media in value-creating sales.

This study’s findings provide a critical analysis of when social media are most effective and beneficial in supporting salespeople’s value-creating sales in various stages in the sales process (e.g. prospecting, opening relationships, qualifying prospects and serving accounts) and when they are less effective (e.g. presenting sales messages and closing sales).

This research yields a substantive understanding of the evolving role that social media play in B2B sales by examining B2B salespeople’s value creation strategies through the lens of social media influencers’ practice and outlines ideas for future research on B2B salespeople’s social media strategies.

The findings of this research can be used by B2B organizations to structure the training of B2B salespeople to use social media to the fullest extent by aligning specific strategies with different parts of the sales process.

This paper contributes by summarizing the B2B sales literature on social media and integrating recent insights from the social media influencer literature; empirically identifying how B2B salespeople use social media to create value, thus validating previous findings and extending understanding by offering a set of six theoretical propositions; and delineating B2B salespeople’s social media practice into 11 value creation strategies that are critically explored for their place in the sales process.

Building on the expectancy value theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of word-of-mouth (WOM) and customer value (i.e. functional value and ease-of-doing-business value) on B2B business performance in the B2B sales process.

The authors develop a framework to understand how B2B WOM and customer value influence supplier sales performance. This model was tested using structural equation modeling with a sample of 220 suppliers on Alibaba.com.

The empirical findings demonstrate that B2B WOM valence and volume have positive influences on the number of quotations and the number of transactions, respectively. Additionally, B2B WOM volume mediates the relationship between operational performance and the number of transactions. Response rate mediates the relationships between response time and both the number of quotations and the number of transactions, respectively.

This study contributes to the industrial marketing of B2B sales on the digital platform by investigating two influencers on sales performance: WOM and customer value.

This study aims to explore challenges and opportunities in the digitalization of the business-to-business (B2B) customer journey in different buying situations. It also investigates where in the customer journey digital marketing is most efficient.

This research adopts a single case study approach to examine a B2B company that implemented digitalization in its customer journey in different buying situations. Data were collected through semistructured interviews, complemented by internal documents and information from the company’s website and social media, to identify reasons for and against the decision to digitalize the B2B customer journey.

Digitalization can offer firms a cost-effective and value-creating way to interact with customers in a B2B context. The B2B buying situation, however, plays a significant role in decisions on how to implement digitalization. Moreover, in the prepurchase phase, digital marketing is more effective in building awareness; in the purchase phase, personal selling is more effective in addressing customers’ needs.

The use of a single case study cannot produce results directly generalizable to other contexts. However, the findings are applicable to the digitalization of B2B customer journeys in similar industrial contexts.

To successfully implement digitalization in the customer journey, B2B firms should choose digital tools according to different buying situations and phases in the customer journey, segment buyers by their needs rather than individual characteristics and integrate the sales and marketing functions.

This study contradicts prior research that claims that digital marketing can be used in a similar way in both B2B and business-to-consumer contexts. It further shows that the relevant demarcation is not between personal sales and digitalization but between automated digital marketing and individualized personal sales, regardless of medium.

The purpose of the study was to benchmark meta-analytical conceptualizations of business-to-business (B2B) seller skills against empirical evidence in services firms.

The study is based on a deductive approach and questionnaire survey focusing on a range of services firms from different industries and corporate sizes. A total of 389 questionnaires out of 732 were returned, generating a response rate of 53.1%.

The study aims to provide empirical evidence and structures relating to B2B sellers' capabilities in a seven-dimensional conceptualization, all of which can be used in services firms to improve their seller efficiency. Each seller skill dimension performs a different function in the sales services process.

The authors conclude that the verified meta-analytical conceptualizations of B2B seller skills seem valid and reliable in services firms. Nevertheless, further research needs to be carried out, based on other company characteristics as well as industries.

It reduces the risk perceived by customers in B2B services settings through cultivating the sellers' capabilities, based on the seven-dimensional evidence of seller skills to enhance sales performance.

The study contributes to existing theory and previous studies by offering a foundation on which to structure sales performance indicators in services firms. Specifically, it contributes to structuring B2B seller skills across a selection of principal dimensions in B2B services settings.

This paper aims to propose a conceptual model that will guide development of mobile applications to support value-added business-to-business (B2B) sales activities.

The paper reviews the concepts of context-aware applications and context-marketing, then examines B2B selling and the creation of value, utilizing Terho’s model of value-based selling, and presenting the potential role of context-aware B2B selling in creating value. Terho’s model is then combined with a taxonomy of context modeling to produce step-by-step a conceptual model for developing context-aware B2B sales applications (CABS).

By mapping the context-aware application development taxonomy against each stage of Terho’s “value-based selling” model, the CABS model is proposed. This model provides a platform for the B2B salesforce, their customers and information technology (IT) staff to work together in developing requirements and prototypes for mobile B2B context-aware applications.

The CABS model would require empirical testing to assess its viability and suitability. This would initially be done via focus groups in targeted sales organizations.

The CABS model could utilized by sales staff and their customers to develop requirements for mobile context-aware applications to support B2B activity. In addition, the CABS model could be utilized in joint application design processes to enable sales and IT staff to work together in developing prototype mobile applications.

While context-aware applications are beginning to transform business-to-sale (B2C) sales activities, it is clear that B2B sales could also benefit from these types of applications, but little progress has been made in understanding or developing their potential. The CABS model enables B2B sales staff and their customers to recognize these benefits and facilitate working with IT staff in defining requirements and developing prototypes.

The purpose of this study is to develop a sales process framework to facilitate business-to-business (B2B) customer reacquisition. A comprehensive CRM process needs to include reacquisition strategies. Yet, very few firms have formal procedures to guide reacquisition efforts. This gap in the sales process reflects the relatively sparse literature on B2B customer reacquisition models. The present research intends to fill this gap and creates a sales process model to guide salespeople to regain B2B lost customers.

Using critical incident technique (CIT), this study conducted in-depth interviews with 54 B2B salespeople. Each salesperson reported one successful and one unsuccessful reacquisition incidents. A total of 108 critical incidents were collected for analysis.

A four-step sales process model to regain B2B customers was developed and empirically supported, including: Segment lost customers; Assess reasons for loss; Develop reacquisition activities; and Implement reacquisition strategies.

This study is qualitative and exploratory in nature; future research should develop dyadic surveys to validate the results.

This four-step reacquisition process allows sales firms to identify essential elements and establish protocols/policies to train and motivate salespeople. The framework can facilitate salespeople develop problem-focused solutions to correctly diagnose the situation and effectively re-negotiate with defected customers. Thus, this process may help reduce inefficiency in the reacquisition process and increase reacquisition ratios.

By considering justice/fairness from customer’s perspective, sales firm may properly recover lost business relationship, and do so in ways that are considered both just and ethical.

This is one of the first studies to examine the reacquisition of lost B2B customers. It expands on the traditional sales process to include four steps that enable a sales reacquisition process.

The purpose of this paper is to test the direct effect of B2B sellers' skills on relative and absolute sales performance.

Based on a questionnaire survey and deductive approach. A total of 236 useable questionnaires out of 315 are returned, generating a response rate of 74.9%.

Only one out of twelve hypothesized relationships in the research model of the direct effect of B2B sellers' skills on relative and absolute sales performance turned out to be significant.

Indicate that the researchers’ current understanding of the effect of sales performance indicators on sales performance, based on B2B sellers' skills, is narrow and simplistic.

Results indicate that there are skills other than the tested ones (i.e. interpersonal, adaptiveness and selling-related knowledge), that can have direct effects on B2B sellers' relative and absolute sales performance.

Sheds light on the ambiguous direct effect of B2B sellers' skills on sales performance and the almost non-existent direct effect on B2B sellers' relative and absolute sales performance.

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact that systematization of sales activities through sales process management has, at the firm level, on profitable sales growth in business‐to‐business (B2B) companies. The research aims to compare companies focusing on service offerings to those focusing on product offerings.

The study is based on survey data.

Despite the emergence of service‐dominant logic, B2B service and product companies still differ in how sales process management contributes to firm performance.

The findings suggest that differences between service and product firms in their sales process management stem from the different underlying modes of interaction. The findings are generalizable to B2B companies.

The findings help businesses differentiate between productive sales process management practices in product and service firms.

The study contributes to the wider need of operationalizing ideas about sales process management at the level of organizations and business units.