Enhancing Customer-Needs–Driven CRM Strategies: Core Selling Teams, Knowledge Management Competence, and Relationship Marketing Competence

Abstract

Managing relationships with customers is often challenging because firms engage in many different types of transactions and their customers vary considerably as to their wants and needs. To meet these challenges, firms are turning increasingly to formal customer relationship management (CRM) programs. Because of their ability to enhance interfirm relationships in business-to-business marketing, firms often turn specifically to customer-needs–driven CRM strategies. These strategies focus on the use of database technology to aid in developing long-term cooperative relationships with key customers. One important resource that enables firms to more easily develop and implement customer-needs–driven CRM strategies is the core selling (CS) team. We examine CS teams’ ability to enhance the development of two competences (a knowledge management competence and a relationship marketing competence) that are important components of customer-needs–driven CRM strategy.