Sales technology within the salesperson's relationships: A research agenda

Tanner, John F.; Shipp, S.

doi:10.1016/j.indmarman.2004.09.011

Cited by 33 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 14 publications

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“…However, there is very little information available regarding how B2B sellers can tailor relevant information to prospects and thereby evaluate which prospects sales representatives should contact. Previous studies show that selecting sales leads from prospects can be facilitated and sales force productivity increased using IT platforms (Ahearne, Hughes, & Schillewaert, 2007;Eggert & Serdaroglu, 2011;Moncrief & Marshall, 2005;Tanner & Shipp, 2005), and it is thus reasonable to assume that nurturing and qualifying prospects via content marketing would also benefit from the use of IT tools such as marketing automation. Ideally, sellers could employ automation to search for signals of interest in the seller's products.…”

Section: From Prospects To Leadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing marketing automation for B2B content marketing

Järvinen

Taiminen

2016

Industrial Marketing Management

268

197

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a b s t r a c tThe growing importance of the Internet to B2B customer purchasing decisions has motivated B2B sellers to create digital content that leads potential buyers to interact with their company. This trend has engendered a new paradigm referred to as 'content marketing.' This study investigates the organizational processes for developing valuable and timely content to meet customer needs and for integrating content marketing with B2B selling processes. The results of this single case study demonstrate the use of marketing automation to generate highquality sales leads through behavioral targeting and content personalization. The study advances understanding of the organizational processes that support content marketing and shows how content marketing can be combined with B2B selling processes via marketing automation in ways that achieve business benefits.

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Section: From Prospects To Leadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Harnessing marketing automation for B2B content marketing

Järvinen

Taiminen

2016

Industrial Marketing Management

268

197

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“…This can lead to sales staff allocating most of their time to back up tasks such as reporting and monitoring to the detriment of their core tasks that are organizing visits and visiting customers. Tanner and Shipp (2005) pointed out that as customers become more technologically aware and adept, their expectation of service levels and speed of information delivery times are increasing and may even outpace the salesperson's ability to provide such services, thus leading to tension in the relationship. Related to time management, this study also supports the earlier findings (e.g.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Barriers to the use of mobile sales force automation systems: a salesperson’s perspective

Sinisalo

Karjaluoto

Saraniemi

2015

Journal of Systems and Information Technology

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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the barriers associated with the adoption and use of mobile sales force automation (SFA) systems from a salesperson’s perspective. Design/methodology/approach – A qualitative investigation of two business-to-business companies was conducted. Data collected from ten semi-structured interviews with directors or sales managers were analyzed to understand the main barriers to SFA system adoption. Findings – The study confirms the existence of three barriers (customer knowledge, quality of information and the characteristics of mobile devices) to a mobile SFA system use and identifies two additional barriers: lack of time and optimization issues. Research limitations/implications – The explorative nature of the study and the qualitative method employed limit the generalizability of the results. The propositions could be further validated and tested with a wider population. Practical implications – Organizations wishing to speed the adoption of a mobile SFA system should evaluate the importance and significance of the five identified barriers to adoption, and plan how to overcome them. It is important for the providers of the mobile SFA systems to focus on developing systems that can exploit the different characteristics of each channel and, in parallel, overcome the inherent limitations of any single channel. The content of an SFA system should be customizable for each type of mobile device. Originality/value – Ever increasing mobility has led to a rise in the use of smartphones and tablet PCs (tablets) in business and the consequent growth in the use of SFA systems. Although SFA systems have been studied for roughly 30 years, little is known of the impact of newly developed mobile devices on sales management and sales personnel.

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“…Many salespeople voluntarily use sales technology to analyze information and to share the resulting market knowledge through mutuallybeneficial solutions specific to customer needs (Hunter & Perreault, 2007). Yet, some organizations introduce sales technologies intended to monitor salesperson activities and make their use perfunctory (Tanner & Shipp, 2005). Thus, expectations (i.e., norms) of salespeople to use technology vary across organizations and tools from perfunctory to voluntary.…”

Section: Moderating Effects Of Sales Force Intelligence Normsmentioning

confidence: 99%