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This paper aims to understand an emerging paradigm for business-to-business selling, Sales 2.0, which connects various enabling technologies within leading sales processes to drive improved business and relational outcomes. In the context of Sales 2.0, this paper addresses the need for buyer–seller dyadic sales research in the literature and highlights the importance of understanding buyer and seller perspectives regarding technology expectations and relationship-building performance.

This research utilizes a dyadic (salesperson–customer) data collection methodology, involving 74 matched salesperson and customer responses (37 dyads) to an online survey. Existing salesperson (self-report) measures of customer technology expectations and relationship-building performance with customers were utilized and adapted to provide dyadic measures to test for buyer–seller perceptual differences.

The dyadic data analysis supports the presence of significant perceptual differences between the salesperson and their customer, respective of customer technology expectations and relationship-building performance measures. In particular, the analysis reveals bidirectional perceptual differences for the two measures, whereas the salesperson underestimates the importance of their customer’s technology expectations, but overestimates their relational performance relative to their customers.

As technology continues to transform salesperson interactions with customers, the value of capturing a deeper understanding about those interactions increases. This study uses matched salesperson–customer dyads from a health-care sales organization to provide researchers and practitioners with insightful findings with respect to buyer–seller interactions and perceptual differences. Further, the research uniquely advances dyadic measures of customer technology expectations and relationship-building performance with customers to advance sales research in the context of Sales 2.0.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an integrative review of coaching research from different contexts (e.g. athletics, executive coaching, project management and sales), delineate professional sales coaching from other developmental activities and develop a research agenda for stimulating research on professional sales coaching. Professional sales coaching is considered an important sales force developmental program by both sales practitioners and researchers. Yet, research on sales coaching remains fragmented in the extant literature.

An extensive literature review of extant research and theoretical perspectives on coaching as well as insights gathered from exploratory, in-depth interviews of ten sales managers were used to develop the research agenda.

The review and research agenda identify a number of sales coaching-related topics that warrant further research. Specifically, the research agenda addresses salesperson characteristics, sales manager and coach characteristics, selling organization characteristics, sales coaching approaches, nature and effectiveness of the sales coaching process and, finally, outcomes of sales coaching. For each topic, extant research, relevant insights from exploratory interviews and directions for future research are discussed.

This paper is the first integrative review of coaching-related research in the sales literature. It offers an updated conceptualization of sales coaching and identifies opportunities for future research.

This study aims to examine the role of salespeople’s skills in relative and absolute SP in business-to-business (B2B) settings of services firms. This conceptual logic reported in meta-analytical works, that salespeople’s skills relate directly to their sales performance (SP), is questioned.

his research relies on existing theory and previous studies on SP drivers and SP measures. The literature identifies a set of common denominators on the role of salespeople’s skills regarding their SP, all of which are tested in this study. Based on a deductive approach and questionnaire survey, 732 service firms in Norway were targeted. A total of 389 questionnaires were returned, generating a response rate of 53.1%.

A total of 10 out of 12 hypothesized relationships in the research model dealing with the relationship between SP drivers and SP turn out to be non-significant. The hypothesized relationship in the research model between relative and absolute SP is also supported.

The results reported in this study, based on a large sample of service firms, empirically confirm that the direct effect is generally overestimated. Empirical evidence is provided that sheds additional light on the role of salespeople’s skills in relative and absolute SP in B2B settings of services firms.

This study offers meaningful and relevant insights into the monitoring of SP drivers to practitioners in B2B sales settings of services firms. Salespeople need to learn about gathering knowledge in training programs about each customer and their specific situation. Firms should strive to recruit salespeople who possess the appropriate skills, taking into consideration their customers and specific situations related to them, such as experiences from competitors. Salespeople may be organized around similar customers and similar customer situations, rather than geographical assignments.

Overall, this research contributes insights into the role played by salespeople’s skills in relative and absolute SP in B2B settings of services firms. In particular, the research contributes additional insights into the non-existent role of interpersonal presentation and communication skills, adaptiveness of sales approach and sales behavior skills and product/technology-related knowledge skills in salespeople’s relative and absolute SP in B2B settings of services firms.

Seeing past research, sales managers’ encouragement of their salespeople, tailored to the demands of value-creating sales, should constitute a key success factor for implementing value-centered business models. But prior research is largely silent on sales managers’ encouragement behavior for adopting value-centered business models regarding specific sales manager encouragement behaviors. Hence, this paper aims to examine the moderating effect of in-role and extra-role encouragement by sales managers in value-centered business models on financial firm performance.

The research model was tested empirically on a sample of key informants from 209 firms working in (sales) management positions using regression analysis.

The findings suggest that in-role encouragement behavior is more effective to achieve financial firm performance in value-centered business models. Sales managers should use in-role encouragement to provide their salespeople with a clear structure as a framework for their tasks and work environment and a strategic alignment along the sales organization.

First, while the study included a variety of industries, it only covered countries from the Dach region (Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), which could limit the generalizability of the findings. To validate the results in additional countries, future research could replicate the research in a cross-country study to test whether the effects differ between countries. Second, the study surveys one key informant per firm on a firm-level leadership tendency. Although leadership culture may promote similar leadership styles or behaviors within one firm, individual leadership behaviors may still vary. Future research should validate the findings using individual sales managers data.

Firm managers must encourage sales managers in value-centered business models to engage in in-role encouragement and avoid extra-role encouragement and thus intensify their micromanagement. Micromanaging the salesforce comprises extensive guidance regarding their expectations and execution toward their salespeople’s work-related tasks and their way of thinking. Furthermore, firms must ask themselves whether their sales managers are capable of micromanaging at all and whether they have the capacity to do so. If not, they must create the appropriate capacities for this. Supplementary, firms should offer regular training for managers on the application of in-role encouragement.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study combining the two rather separately considered research streams of encouragement behavior and value-centered business models regarding the effects on firm performance outcomes.

This study aims to explore the changing nature of the inside sales role and the individual capabilities required for success. Additionally, it examines the influence of organizational structure on inside sales force capabilities. Although business-to-business firms are investing heavily in inside sales forces, academic research lags behind this evolution.

Using a two-study qualitative approach, the authors examine contemporary inside sales forces’ responsibilities and operational configurations. Study 1 uses a cross-industry sample of sales leaders and professionals to examine roles and responsibilities. Study 2 used the second sample of sales leaders and professionals to explore the impact of various organizational configurations.

The study identifies important differences between inside and outside salespeople in terms of job demands and resources; inside salespeople’s greater reliance on sales technology and analytics than outside counterparts; and existing control systems’ failure to provide resources and incentives to match with inside salespeople’s increasing strategic benefits and job demands. The study also explores four distinct inside–outside configurations. The differences among these configurations help to explain the distinct benefits and costs of each configuration regarding the company, customer and intra sales force processes, which, in turn, determine inside salespeople’s strategic benefits and job demands.

The authors discuss the theoretical implications of these findings for research on the evolving roles and capabilities of the inside sales force; antecedents and consequences of firms’ choice of inside–outside sales force configurations; and the impact of technology and the inside sales force. They propose a research agenda that includes a series of specific future research questions.

This study informs managers of the unique role of the inside sales force and how it differs from their outside counterpart. The results inform managers of the issues inherent to various inside sales configurations, helping them determine, which configuration best addresses their customers’ needs.

This research provides a detailed, updated account of the differences between inside and outside sales forces and the benefits/costs of major inside–outside sales force configurations. Drawing from job demands-resources, organizational structure and strategy-context fit theories, the authors develop research propositions about the underlying structural differences of inside-outside sales force configurations; how these differences drive the inside sales force’s increasing strategic benefits and job demands; and organizational choice of inside sales force configurations. A research agenda is then presented.

The increasingly complex business-to-business (B2B) sales process necessitates that sales managers strike the right balance between appropriate resource allocation, while also maintaining the profitability of the organization. While previous research has mainly focused on how changes in the business environment pose distinct challenges to salespeople, very little research has focused on how sales managers should react to these complex situations. Drawing upon the extant sales research, this paper aims to point to a gap in the literature of how sales managers deal with the complexity associated with the sales process and deal with the same.

Methods from the grounded theory research approach were used to conduct 18 in-depth interviews with B2B sales managers. Purposive sampling was used to identify the participants.

A taxonomy of sales situations that reflects the changing complexity of the sales function and how sales managers need to orchestrate their resource allocation decisions to ensure appropriate value capture from B2B relationships emerged within the themes. This paper highlights four fundamental tenets of sales situations that account for both the complexity of the sales process and the value appropriation challenge that sales managers face.

The taxonomy will help sales managers have a better understanding of the changing complexity in the B2B sales process and help them with decisions making. Sales managers can orchestrate their resource allocation to achieve value appropriation.

This paper develops a new taxonomy of the sales situation. It unravels the changing complexity of the B2B sales process and discusses how value appropriation can be achieved by sales managers.

Sales organizations embrace technological innovation. However, salespeople’s willingness to use new technology influences a firm’s return on investment, representing a significant concern for the organization. These concerns highlight tensions regarding the tradeoffs associated with technology implementations. The purpose of this study is to offer insights that help reduce the complexities of sales technology (ST) by exploring the changing dynamics of contemporary business relationships.

This paper synthesizes the ST literature using the service ecosystem perspective to propose the sales techno-ecosystem (STE) framework, providing new insights into organizational decision-making related to the ongoing digital transformation of sales tasks.

This synthesis of the ST literature with the service ecosystem seeks to clarify the impact of technology within the evolving nature of buyer–seller relationships by providing four unique perspectives.

Perspective 1 reviews the sales-service ecosystem framework and develops the theoretical underpinnings and relevant terminologies. Perspective 2 summarizes critical aspects of the ST literature and provides foundations for future research in the STE. Perspective 3 offers a more granular view, explicating roles and contexts prevalent in buyer–seller–technology interactions. Perspective 4 provides a set of tenets and advances research questions related to each tenet.

The culmination of these four perspectives is the introduction of five key tenants designed to help guide strategy and research.

The paper advances Hartmann et al. (2018) service ecosystem paradigm by explicating critical aspects of its ST domain to generate insights for theory and practice.

Not that long ago, half of all sales research was demonstrably if not unequivocally “atheoretical” (Williams and Plouffe, 2007). The foundational argument of this paper is that stronger theoretical development and application of theory in sales research is critical for the sales field to retain its relevancy. The purpose of this paper is to underscore that deliberate and cogent application of HWV (2018) is scant in the recent sales literature (over five years after publication in Journal of Marketing) for one or both of two reasons: scholars either do not understand the paper and/or are fearful of (mis)applying it.

More than simply introducing the articles to this special issue of the European Journal of Marketing (EJM), this paper also makes a number of important, overdue contributions. Although Hartmann, Wieland and Vargo’s JM (HWV, 2018) theoretical and conceptual paper has been well-received by the sales community, it has seen limited meaningful integration or application in sales research since its publication. This paper thus clarifies key misunderstandings and misperceptions with HWV (2018) so that sales researchers can more impactfully apply it to future sales research.

This paper identifies and then explains key aspects of service-dominant logic (S-D logic) and commonly misapplied and/or misunderstood aspects of HWV (2018) to guide future sales research. Ultimately, the overarching goal of this special issue of EJM is to focus a “spotlight” on sales theory development, while simultaneously demonstrating – through the five articles the special issue reports – that with purposeful effort, rich theoretical insights can effectively be applied to both “classic” and more current and emergent sales research topics.

Because HWV (2018) draw heavily upon S-D logic, it follows that some aspects of their article have been misinterpreted or misapplied by sales scholars. In particular, the critical concept of “crossing points” (both of the “thick” and “thin” variety) are explicated and detailed further, so as to afford sales researchers with better knowledge and insight on how to apply these key tools within HWV (2018).

The practical implications of this paper primarily revolve around further educating and clarifying for sales researchers “how” to better apply HWV (2018) to sales research, rather than simply citing it in passing. The paper also concludes by providing a summary and introduction to each of the five EJM special issue articles.

The originality and value of this paper and this special issue of the EJM is twofold. First, both this paper and the entire special issue itself emphasize the ongoing importance of advancing sales research through the meaningful and cogent application of theory. Second, the paper demonstrates that purposeful effort can lead to successful applications of HWV (2018) – as exhibited by the five articles in the EJM special issue – such that rich theoretical insights can be woven into both traditional and contemporary sales research topics.

The main purpose of this research is to understand how the sudden shift to work from home (WFH) after the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has caught several sales organizations underprepared and ill-equipped to combat emergent challenges. In this research, the authors provide initial evidence into how the WFH arrangement impacts salespeople and sales organizations. Specifically, this research is guided by two objectives: to understand how the shift to WFH environment is affecting salespeople, and to explore how organizations can mitigate dysfunctional effects of the shift to WFH practices and enhance salespeople’s commitment toward this new reality.

The authors did preliminary in-depth interviews with 13 executives operating in the business-to-business (B2B) space to identify themes that reflected the reality faced by B2B sales organizations when transitioning to WFH. The authors then conducted a quantitative study involving a survey with 130 B2B salespeople.

The findings from the qualitative research suggested that the WFH situation is quite different from the more traditional remote selling situations that B2B salespeople are used to. More specifically, salespeople experienced more anxiety because of the WFH situations. This finding was supported in the empirical study done by the authors where stress associated with WFH and job insecurity had a significant impact on salesperson anxiety.

The study primarily used subjective responses of salespeople with no objective measures. Furthermore, this study is cross-sectional in nature. Future research should build on the present work to understand the long-term consequences of WFH and factor in customer responses to the same. The impact of increased use of technology in the sales process will need further attention, including the sales management implication for the same.

Given the unforeseen nature of the COVID pandemic and how unprepared salespeople and sales organizations were to deal with it, this study is one of the first studies that documents the impact of WFH situations on salespeople.

Previous sales research remains limited to analyzing the influence of sales activities with sales agent tenure. To date, research on this subject has focused on the downstream direct or indirect impact of sales activities to sales performance, failing to consider whether sales activities impact a sales agent’s tenure. This paper aims to assess the effect of sales activities on sales performance and sales agent engagement on sales agent tenure through the lens of autonomous motivation to better understand sales activities as an overall sales process antecedent

Through the utilization of secondary sales operational data, this research demonstrates the influence of sales activities on multiple sales agent outcomes, while depicting the importance of sales managers creating an autonomous motivational climate.

This research demonstrates the direct relationship between sales activities to job engagement and sales performance. However, sales activities have a negative relationship to sales agent tenure, which require a sales manager to create an autonomous motivation to mediate the relationship between sales activities and sales agent tenure.

Organizations are provided with sample methodology and analysis to better determine how a culture grounded in autonomous motivation mediates sales activities and can be a catalyst for improving sales agent tenure. Then, provide a better understanding of the effect of actual sales activities on important sales department work outcomes.

The model is the first to test holistically the influence of sales activities on sales performance, sales agent engagement and tenure jointly by using actual secondary operational data. This study provides a glimpse of the real world balance a sales manager must consider between climate and activities. Plus, this study takes initial steps to study sales agent engagement, an under-researched construct in sales research.