The Effect of Solution Transition on Steering the Sales Force: A Primer for New Marketing Metrics

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction:

Problem Definition:

In recent years many firms in the business to business (B2B) environment were trying to increase their market position by better product portfolios. After these products became more and more complex product oriented firms started to offer services first as a reaction on customer requirements but soon also to create additional revenue on top of the core business. This transformation included that service departments were not longer considered as a cost center but a business unit. With increasing demand for higher customer satisfaction, the recognition that customer requirements must be better understood, but also external drivers e.g. shareholders who pushed firms to focus on core competencies, the term solution was defined as a combination of products and services that are required to gain competitive advantage.

After so called solutions are now known for many years still many companies did not succeed in transforming their businesses. Even worse besides failing in the transformation they sometimes even lost core markets. Scholars work has proven that although well defined in many framework constructs the practical implications for a successful solution transition especially in the sales domain are often not implemented or even unknown. This becomes especially obvious in the metrics that are used by sales organizations today. These do typically not indicate the necessary transformation that is expected due to the solution orientation.

Objectives of This Work:

The overall objective of this thesis is to provide a metric that helps to assess the solution readiness status of a firm’s sales force. Sales is often considered to be a part of marketing. It will be analyzed to what extent this perspective is justified and how this is influenced by the emergence of solutions. As part of that an overview about the sales marketing interface will be given to create awareness for this topic. This study will furthermore increase the understanding of the reader about applied metric concepts in marketing departments that can be found in existing firms today. It will be demonstrated how shareholder value influenced their design and why these metrics are not aligned with latest research about firm value.

Scope of Work:

This work will outline metric elements that shall be applied for sales forces when moving towards solution orientation.

The structure of this thesis is split into 6 chapters and organized as […]