In the rapidly changing landscape of B2B sales, technology, competitive intensity and rising sales support costs oblige greater attention to customer relationships. “Many companies that have an enterprise focus struggle with the concept of “owning the customer” (Weeks 2016). Given that customers are buying in different ways, firms are driven to engage customers differently. According to Cooper (2016), “customer ownership is all about creating, delivering and communicating compelling value”. In nurturing and developing customers through the B2B life cycle, multiple departments and functional units in the firm are entwined in customer relationship management (CRM). The complexity of CRM and dynamism in customers’ relationship expectations require that sales, marketing, service and support work together through the customer buying and fulfillment process. ‘The diffusion of tasks and responsibilities exposes a fundamental CRM gap: who truly owns the customer? A recent AMA Marketing News article referred to customer ownership as “the age-old battle between marketing and sales” (Qaqish 2018). The idea of who ‘owns’ the customer relationship may become ambiguous.  So, what does it mean to own a customer relationship?

Customer ownership is defined as building a level of rapport, commitment, and trust with a customer that increases dependency. The question becomes “does this dependency by the customer reside with the salesperson who they deal with regularly or with the company they purchase from?” Anecdotally consider this situation, the salesperson who you normally deal with leaves to go to another company with similar and substitutable products. Do you continue buying the same product from a different salesperson or do you buy a different product from the same salesperson you have always dealt with?

In B2B channels, most firms entrust front-line responsibilities to salespeople. Thus, the majority of customer interface occurs between salespeople and the customer which enhances the salesperson-customer bond. A convergence of personal and social forces emanates from the salesperson as well as the firm, so who owns the customer relationship, the firm or the salesperson? Gaining clarity on who owns the customer relationship is critical to maximizing customer satisfaction and the firms’ ability to develop and execute a growth strategy with the customer.

References

Cooper, D. (2016, November 22). Customer 'ownership? is about delivering 3 kinds of Value. - The Donald Cooper Corporation. Retrieved from https://www.donaldcooper.com/customer-ownership-delivering-3-kinds-value/
Qaqish, D. (2018, April 17). Who Owns the Customer Journey? AMA Marketing News. Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/ama-marketing-news/who-owns-the-customer-journey-53a2f271de25
Weeks, T. (2016, October 11). The Question of Customer Ownership. Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/question-customer-ownership-tom-weeks/

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The criticality of salespeople as linchpins within the buyer-seller relationship cannot be overstated. Given that the development of strong sales representation with customers is key to success for many industrial firms, the unique position of professional salespeople is firmly entrenched within today's global economy. Skilled salespeople are the principal sources of informational and relational resources to both the firm and its customers as well as being key to nearly every decision and in nearly every industry by helping businesses define their needs, understand and evaluate their options, make effective purchase decisions and forge enduring relationships.

In today’s everchanging B2B environment, the competitive landscape and salespeople’s role in meeting customer expectations changes rapidly. Given the complexity of the sales role, it is understandable salespeople now face unprecedented pressures in an ever-evolving global market. With increasingly changing customer-salesperson relationships, the boundary-spanning role of salespeople positions them in a precarious balance between satisfying the customer and meeting organizations’ performance expectations. According to data from the Sales Education Foundation (2017), “nearly 40% of a customer’s decision is based on the added value the salesperson brings to the relationship, far above product quality (21%) and price (18%)”.

Salespeople are in a unique position to connect organizational resources between the firm and customer. Salespeople bridge inter-organizational boundaries and increase the connectivity of human resources in each firm. While existing research has discussed the importance of relationship marketing and the growing importance of adding value to the buyer-seller exchange, there is little that examines the critical role of the salesperson as a resource within the buyer-seller relationship. As postulated by Hunt and Morgan (1995), resource-advantage theory categorizes resources as financial, physical, legal, human, organizational, informational, and relational. For an organization, salespeople can be not only a human resource but can provide informational and relational resources through their boundary-spanning role. For firms to build a sustainable competitive advantage, executives and managers must understand the criticality of their salesforce as an informational and relational resource within the buyer-seller exchange.

How do you see firms positioning their salesforce? How can a salesforce add value for a) their firm and b) their customers? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Sources:

Sales Education Foundation. (2017). Retrieved August 17, 2017, from http://salesfoundation.org/.

Hunt, S.D. and Morgan, R.M. (1995). “The Comparative Advantage Theory of Competition,” Journal of Marketing, 59 (2), 1-15.

Ricky Fergurson, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Marketing in the Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship, Nova Southeastern University. He can be reached at jfergurson@nova.edu

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