Research On Organizational Driving Factors Of Value-Based Selling And Its Impact On Sales Performance

In B2B marketing,due to product market saturation,increasing competition,eroding margins,increasing pressure to reduce costs,and customer’s skepticism about the value-added promise,providers must deliver tangible monetary value proof for customers.Therefore,service delivery and solution sellers are increasingly using value-based selling(VBS)methods,which is really solving customer business and meet customer needs by understanding customer business model,formulating value propositions,and communicating customer value.Thereby improving firm’s sales performance.However,the successful implementation of VBS is not easy.B2B sales generally face large customers,sales cycles and processes are complicated,depending on the organization’s powerful "back-end" construction.Firms also realize the importance of serving their internal customers well before selling value to external customers.Creating a supportive service climate for internal customers may be the way to success of VBS.Therefore,it has important theoretical value and practical significance to research the internal service climate of the organization and its impact mechanism on VBS.First of all,in the B2B marketing environment,this research reviews the solutions business model,value-based selling,and service climate and other related literature.Conceptualizing the internal service climate within organization and identifying its five key elements:leadership commitment to service quality,service-oriented HR practices(service-oriented training,incentive,and empowerment),internal collaborative practices(supervisor support,co-worker support,and inter-departmental support),service technology support,and internal processes and service standards.The value-based selling is divided into four processes:understanding customer business,crafting solutions,communicating customer value,and verifying value-inuse.Secondly,based on social exchange theory and internal marketing theory,this research constructs theoretical model and proposes some hypotheses.Thirdly,this research takes B2B sales activities as the empirical research background,conducts a questionnaire survey among 343 sales personnel from product and service providers in China,and uses the statistical analysis software SPSS26.0 and MPlus7.4 to test the hypotheses of this paper.The conclusions of the empirical research are as follows:(1)the five key factors of the internal service climate have a significant positive impact on VBS;(2)the VBS behaviour has a significant positive impact on sales performance;(3)competitive intensity,customer adaptiveness,and the complexity of customer needs positively moderate the relationship between VBS and sales performance.Then,this paper summarizes the limitations of this research and provides suggestions for future research about VBS.Finally,in conjunction with the management practice of large manufacturing enterprises such as Huawei,Baosteel,this paper puts forward some management enlightenment for VBS managers and salesmen on how to efficiently sell product and service.