Adaptive selling in business-to-business markets: Contextual boundary of a selling strategy from retailing

Abstract

A recent study of a selling strategy adapted by some retail salespeople recommended that salespeople should expeditiously disengage from a customer interaction when they believe that a customer with whom they are interacting is unlikely to make a purchase (Cron et al. 2021). The question addressed in this study is whether this sales strategy is similarly effective for salespeople in a B2B context. The B2B context for this study is a low purchasing complexity environment where the majority of sales revenue stems from customers’ reordering current supplies and equipment. Similar to the outcomes observed in a retail environment, the results suggest that B2B salespeople’s use of an NC2 strategy (short for No Conversion, No Conversation) increases sales revenues if salespeople work in an environment characterized by time scarcity and if they are relationship building oriented. Critically, if B2B salespeople apply the NC2 sales strategy with a low relationship building orientation, results show detrimental effects of the strategy over time. This potentially harmful effect did not emerge in retail settings. Moreover, unlike the results in a retail setting the effectiveness of the NC2 sales strategy does not depend on salespeople’s experience. For practitioners in B2B settings these findings are meaningful and actionable.