Towards a contextual understanding of B2B salespeople's selling competencies – An exploratory study among purchasing decision-makers of internationally-oriented technology firms

ABSTRACT Towards a contextual understanding of B2B salespeople’s selling competencies − an exploratory study among purchasing decision-makers of internationally-oriented technology firms The characteristics of modern selling can be classified as follows: customer retention and loyalty targets, database and knowledge management, customer relationship management, marketing activities, problem solving and system selling, and satisfying needs and creating value. For salespeople to be successful in this environment, they need a wide range of competencies. Salespeople’s selling skills are well documented in seller side literature through quantitative methods, but the knowledge, skills and competencies from the buyer’s perspective are under-researched. The existing research on selling competencies should be broadened and updated through a qualitative research perspective due to the dynamic nature and the contextual dependence of selling competencies. The purpose of the study is to increase understanding of the professional salesperson’s selling competencies from the industrial purchasing decision- makers’ viewpoint within the relationship selling context. In this study, competencies are defined as sales-related knowledge and skills. The scope of the study includes goods, materials and services managed by a company’s purchasing function and used by an organization on a daily basis. The abductive approach and ‘systematic combining’ have been applied as a research strategy. In this research, data were generated through semi- structured, person-to-person interviews and open-ended questions. The study was conducted among purchasing decision-makers in the technology industry in Finland. The branches consisted of the electronics and electro-technical industries and the mechanical engineering and metals industries. A total of 30 companies and one purchasing decision-maker from each company were purposively chosen for the sampling. The sample covers different company sizes based on their revenues, their differing structures – varying from public to family companies –that represent domestic and international ownerships. Before analyzing the data, they were organized by the purchasing orientations of the buyers: the buying, procurement or supply management orientation. Thematic analysis was chosen as the analysis method. After analyzing the data, the results were contrasted with the theory. There was a continuous interaction between the empirical data and the theory. Based on the findings, a total of 19 major knowledge and skills were identified from the buyers’ perspective. The specific knowledge and skills from the viewpoint of customers’ prevalent purchasing orientations were divided into two categories, generic and contextual. The generic knowledge and skills apply to all purchasing orientations, and the contextual knowledge and skills depend on customers’ prevalent purchasing orientations. Generic knowledge and skills relate to price setting, negotiation, communication and interaction skills, while contextual ones relate to knowledge brokering, ability to present solutions and relationship skills. Buying-oriented buyers value salespeople who are ‘action oriented experts, however at a bit of an arm’s length’, procurement buyers value salespeople who are ‘experts deeply dedicated to the customer and fostering the relationship’ and supply management buyers value salespeople who are ‘corporate-oriented experts’. In addition, the buyer’s perceptions on knowledge and selling skills differ from the seller’s ones. The buyer side emphasizes managing the subject matter, consisting of the expertise, understanding the customers’ business and needs, creating a customized solution and creating value, reliability and an ability to build long-term relationships, while the seller side emphasizes communica- tion, interaction and salesmanship skills. The study integrates the selling skills of the current three-component model− technical knowledge, salesmanship skills, interpersonal skills− and relationship skills and purchasing orientations, into a selling competency model. The findings deepen and update the content of these knowledges and skills in the B2B setting and create new insights into them from the buyer’s perspective, and thus the study increases contextual understanding of selling competencies. It generates new knowledge of the salesperson’s competencies for the relationship selling and personal selling and sales management literature. It also adds knowledge of the buying orientations to the buying behavior literature. The findings challenge sales management to perceive salespeople’s selling skills both from a contingency and competence perspective. The study has several managerial implications: it increases understanding of what the critical selling knowledge and skills from the buyer’s point of view are, understanding of how salespeople effectively implement the relationship marketing concept, sales management’s knowledge of how to manage the sales process more effectively and efficiently, and the knowledge of how sales management should develop a salesperson’s selling competencies when managing and developing the sales force. Keywords: selling competencies, knowledge, selling skills, relationship skills, purchasing orientations, B2B selling, abductive approach, technology firms

Myyjien tietämyksen jakaminen organisaatiolle osana myyntiprosessia

Diplomityön tavoitteena on tutkia myyjien tietämyksen jakamista ja sen yhteyttä myyntiprosessiin. Tutkimus on toteutettu systemaattisena kirjallisuuskatsauksena. Työssä pyritään löytämään kirjallisuuden pohjalta yhteydet myyntiprosessin vaiheiden ja vaatimusten sekä myyjien tietämyksen jakamisen väliltä. Teoreettisena taustana esitellään myyntiprosessin kuvauksia, vaiheita ja haasteita yleisellä tasolla, jotta löydetään tehokkaan prosessin edellyttämät tekijät. Lisäksi tutkitaan tietämyksen vaikutusta myyntitehokkuuteen ja etsitään tietämyksen jakamiseen ja hyödyntämiseen vaikuttavia tekijöitä yleisesti ja myyntityöhön liittyen. Työn soveltavassa osuudessa tarkasteltiin tietämyksen kannalta tärkeitä myyntiprosessin vaiheita: asiakasvalinta, esivalmistelu, presentaatio ja neuvottelu sekä kaupan päättäminen. Jokaisessa vaiheessa todettiin olevan hyötyä myyjien tietämyksen jakamisesta. Läpikäydyn aineiston pohjalta tehtiin kaksi keskeistä huomiota. Ensinnäkin myyjien tietämyksen jakaminen on johdettavissa suoraan osaksi myyntiprosessia ja tietämyksellä on merkittävä rooli myyntityössä. Toiseksi myyntiprosessi ja myyjien tietämyksen jakaminen edellyttävät monia samoja asioita. Asiakas ja asiakkaan tarpeet ovat molemmissa keskiössä ja molempiin linkittyy henkilökuntaa yli osastorajojen. Tietoa on olemassa paljon joten on tärkeää suunnata resurssit oleelliseen. Tietotekniikan kehitys auttaa myyntitoiminnan jäsentämisessä ja tietämyksen jakamisessa, mutta on syytä pitää mielessä, että tietotekniikan rooli on tukitoiminto. Molemmat ovat turhia jos sovittuja pelisääntöjä ei noudateta. Lisäksi onnistunut implementointi edellyttää johdon sitoutumista ja riittävän laajaa henkilökunnan osallistamista.

Construction de l'Est et de l'Ouest : vers des compétences interculturelles. Un exemple de recherche à Hong-Kong en situation de mobilité académique

Numerous scholars have already stressed the need to prepare students prior to academic mobility (Abdallah-Pretceille, 2003; Jackson, 2013, for example) in order to face hypermodernity (Aubert, 2004). As per the new mobilities paradigm (Urry, 2007), this implies considering individuals at the centre of political and institutional issues. Furthermore, the multiplicity of terminology of references towards academic mobility, and intercultural competences, justifies this research. The theory, for this doctoral dissertation, applies “renewed interculturality” (Dervin, 2012), a move away from a culturalist approach. Intercultural competences are therefore defined as a stepping back from discourses on the Other that may emerge during encounters. In order to collect the data, six focus groups have been organised with two batches of students from a Higher Education Institution in Hong-Kong, an “education hub” (Dervin & Machart, 2014) that is striving to be competitive particularly in increasing the number of incomingand outcoming students. Training and education to interculturality have been implemented prior to academic mobility in order to observe the impact on participants’ discourses before and after the mobility. Theories of enunciation and dialogism represent the methodology allowing us to compare and analyse the reported voices in the participants’ discourse and their prosodic realisation (Martin & White, 2005) before and after the experience of academic mobility. I have attempted to observe the dialogic space available to welcome the Other during encounters in the participants’ discourse. The results seem to underline the increased number of reported voices in participants’ discourse after study abroad, but as the space opened for negotiation is instable and depends on the interlocutors and the voices addressed, consequently, further research appears necessary to study the influences of a preparation prior to mobility on the contraction or expansion of heteroglossia. All in all, this doctoral dissertation aimed to renew preparation