How salespeople adapt communication of customer value propositions in business markets

Abstract

This article explores how salespeople in business markets communicate customer value propositions (CVPs) to the different actors involved in organizational purchase decisions. As a result, the authors introduce a novel, buying-center-member-based framework of CVP adaptive communication. This framework categorizes CVP adaptive communication as an operational selling behavior among salespeople comprising three consecutive steps: (1) perceiving cues from buying-center members, (2) reacting to these cues through changes in CVP communication, and (3) addressing particular customer goals as CVP communication ends. The authors propose two complementary approaches that explain the heterogeneity in how CVP communication is adapted, building on means-end chaining and revealing that CVP adaptive communication arises from a set of 15 buying-center member perception cues. Using configurational analyses, the study reveals that salespeople identify constellations of buyer types that are consistently addressed through the same CVP communication. These configurational results indicate four buyer types: two types for whom salespeople address customers' collective value in use and two types for whom salespeople address customers' individual value in use. Generally, the study helps offer a new understanding of value communication rooted in an outside-in perspective on the CVP that considers customers as external triggers of CVP communication changes.