B2B-Vertrieb und das Social-Media-Paradox

Sven Feurer & Martin Klarmann

Sales Management Review (2016)

Internal and external price search in industrial buying: The moderating role of customer satisfaction

Christian Homburg, Jan Allmann & Martin Klarmann

Journal of Business Research (2014)

When should the customer really be king? On the optimum level of salesperson customer orientation in sales encounters

Christian Homburg, Michael Müller & Martin Klarmann

Journal of Marketing (2011)

When does salespeople’s customer orientation lead to customer loyalty? The differential effects of relational and functional customer orientation

Christian Homburg, Michael Müller &  Martin Klarmann

Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (2011)

Benefits, Discounts, Features, and Value as Communication Foci in Selling: Exploring Concepts, Drivers, and Outcomes

Klarmann, Martin and Marc Wouters

Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management (2022)

Current Projects

Sales automation. Digital transformation in B2B firms has intensified the use of sales automation technologies in B2B sales teams leading to an increased efficiency and effectiveness. The goal of this research project is to investigate new digital technologies for sales automation such as artificial intelligence applications in B2B sales. What are the consequences of technology-mediated virtual interaction between the salesperson and the customer? What role will the salesperson as a human play in an increasingly digitalized and automated business environment? Will sales automation technologies eventually replace salespeople? For further information, please contact: Anne Cordts

Value selling. It is a common recommendation that successful salespeople emphasize the economic value of their offering in customer conversations. In this research project, we analyze value selling empirically. How can value selling be measured empirically? What are prerequisites? Is value selling really linked to beneficial performance outcomes, even if other types of salesperson behavior are controlled for? Using a sample of more than 200 B2B salespeople we seek answers to these questions. For further information, please contact: Martin Klarmann or Marc Wouters

Completed Projects

Information-searching behavior of industrial buyers. Models describing organizational buying date back to a pre-internet era in which information search by purchasing managers was arguably substantially different from today. As such, the goal of this project is to illuminate how industrial buyers go about their information search in today’s technology-rich environment and what implication changes in information search behavior has for B2B selling. Further information can be found here.

Use of social media by the B2B salesforce. Social media are a game changer in many marketing context, but acceptance and use by the B2B salesforce remains low. The goal of this project is to test an overarching framework of drivers of salesperson social media use and the conditions under which social media use in turn increases customer loyalty. Further information can be found here. 

Cross functional integration of marketing, sales, and R&D. Motivated by customer demands, growing competition, and an erosion of product margins, many production-oriented firms in industrialized environments have started a transformation process from offering exclusively products or services to selling solutions over the last years. Cross-functional integration is regarded as a key success factor for solution providers. Nevertheless, one of the most challenging (and potentially frustrating) aspects of modern life as a marketer can be the cooperation between marketing and other functions such as R&D or sales caused by differences between the departmental thought worlds. To break down these barriers, this research project empirically investigates various facets of thought-world differences and their effects on cross-functional integration. Furthermore, the research project assesses the impact of integrating the R&D, marketing, and sales functions across the four stages of the solution selling process on the solution orientation of a firm. Further information can be found here .

Salespeople’s role in new product development. Salespeople’s reluctance to sell innovations is a crucial cause why new product introductions fail or new SFA systems are not used efficiently. In this dissertation project we want to investigate the role of the sales force in the innovation process and the new product development. Furthermore, we examine the importance of salesperson innovation adoption. Central methodological approaches are meta-analytic structural equation modeling, factor analysis, and multilevel regression. Further information can be found here .