Posted: December 30th, 2015

Success Factors in B2B Sales Organizations in Goods-dominant and Service-dominant Businesses

• Review of generic Servitisation Literature: drivers for change; strategies to cope with this change; necessary organisational alignments; services as differentiator / competitive advantage; goods-dominant logic vs. service-dominant logic / hybrid organisations / Product-service systems; criteria for successful shift from products to services / solutions; servitisation within the B2B context; pro’s and con’s of shift towards services; product vs. service vs. solution, etc.

• About 30% B2B Sales
  • Review of B2B Marketing and Sales Literature with focus on B2B sales organisations: historic development B2B in the area of sales and marketing in general; different sales approaches – transactional to value based selling / solution selling; review of sales management practices; sales processes – review of different views and what makes a successful one; criteria for successful sales organisation / sales people; assessment of performance and how to manage sales organisations (should cover the Piercy Paper http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/abs/10.1108/03090569810197480 and put it into the context of others forms of management processes), challenges in B2B sales from e-Commerce or other developments; Pro’s and Con’s of Sales Automatisation / Social Networks and their impact on sales approaches
• About 20%: Role of Sales (and Marketing) within the Change Process resulting from servitisation: necessary structural alignments within the organisation, role of the customer in value creation / service creation and its impact on the organisation (the sales people); the shifting role of a product sales man vs. a services / solution selling guy; how to create value for the supplier and the customer; how to create a competitive advantage within a service culture; change within sales organisations; sales performance within a service / solution context; solution selling – status quo and difficulties for sales organisation; how is a service sales organisation integrated into the organisation; sales processes for services / Solutions; differences between traditional sales and service / solution sales; services and solutions provide a solution to a customer problem rather than just delivering boxes

about 10%: Selection and Development of (Sales) Personnel: which methods are used for hiring people or how are is personal development structured (