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The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the notion of thin crossing points from a social network perspective and to outline the concrete networking strategies that enable salespeople to foster mutually valuable resource exchange (i.e. to thin crossing points) across a selling ecosystem.

The authors integrate extant theoretical perspectives to advance a conceptual framework of sales-related networking across three key actors in a selling ecosystem: intraorganizational selling actors and actors in customers and external partner organizations.

Thin crossing points are defined as figurative transaction points at the boundary between organizations or organizational subunits at which actors engage in mutually valuable resource exchange in the process of value cocreation. To thin crossing points with key ecosystem actors, salespeople must adapt networking strategies considering the time and trust constraints inherent in a network relationship. Such constraints inform the most advantageous network centralities (degree, eigenvector and betweenness) and actions to impact key network properties (tie strength, contact diversity) that enable salespeople to efficiently develop social capital and thus to optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first social network-based exploration of salespeople’s role in thinning crossing points with key ecosystem actors. It advances a novel conceptual framework of sales-related networking strategies that foster social capital development and optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

This paper aims to explore the usage of selling influence tactics across prospective customers with differing information-related needs.

The research study uses an exploratory critical incident technique (CIT) methodology to identify and examine salesperson influence tactics.

This study identifies and explores the use of salesperson influence tactics across three information-based conditions often encountered by salespeople (i.e. information seeking customers, informed customers with information inaccuracies and informed customers making sub-optimal decisions). Regardless of condition, salespeople readily used non-coercive information exchange tactics. Whereas, recommendations and ingratiation tactics were applied by more effective salespeople when interacting with informed customers with information deficiencies. Furthermore, salespeople report executing less effectively with prospects with inaccurate preexisting information and with prospects making flawed or sub-optimal decisions.

Findings illustrate the need for a renewed focus on salesperson influence tactics, the conditions under which they are effective, and how salespeople adapt their influence tactics to various situations. The exploratory nature of this study limits the generalizability of findings.

A framework of adaptive selling strategies is proposed to help tackle new challenges faced by B2B salespeople in today’s information intensive market. When interacting with more informed customers, pre-existing information is often inaccurate and incomplete. Thus, salespeople must assess and address these flaws and gaps and can adapt their influence strategies to do so effectively.

Industrial buyers today have virtually unlimited avenues to conduct extensive research and gain supplier information without the aid of interactions with salespeople. Thus, salespeople often enter sales interactions when their prospects have significantly more information than ever before. By examining salesperson influence techniques in selling situations that vary based on prospective customer preexisting knowledge, this research provides guidance on how selling may need to change in a more information intensive era.

This chapter reviews recent developments in sustainability regarding cities of the world. Using the approach of a literature review, this chapter highlights sustainability innovations in the context of cities. The chapter identifies several indexes which assess quality of life (QOL) or prosperity in cities of the world. One web-based index which relies heavily on the inputs of citizens around the world is Numbeo. The literature review identifies ways cities have pursued climate change mitigation through encouragement of electrical vehicles and alternative modes of transportation. Innovations that have become controversial in cities are also identified. Analysis of Numbeo suggests this index shows promise of future value for researchers interested in city QOL—specifically its pollution perceptions index. As urbanization continues with more than half of the world's population now residing in cities, interest in the sustainability of cities will intensify. Sustainability indexes for cities are now being developed. Analysis of Numbeo's novel approach to gauging the pollution of cities through the reports of hundreds of thousands of individuals living around the world suggests that this approach holds promise for future development. While other disciplines have taken focus on city sustainability, this is the first study within the domain of marketing research to provide an overview of city sustainability for marketing researchers and to analyze a new way of measuring a component of city QOL—perceptions of city pollution. Results suggest that valuable results will likely be forthcoming as researches continue developing city sustainability measures and indexes in the future.