305. IJRM. B2B Sales & Dealing with Dissent.
March 7, 2024
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In today's podcast interview, we delve into the complex world of business-to-business (B2B) sales dynamics with Dr. Jeff Johnson, Associate Professor of Marketing at UMKC's Henry W. Block School of Management. The focus of our discussion centers on the challenges B2B salespeople face when selling into a buying center, especially when encountering dissent among group members. His insights shed light on the intricate dynamics of B2B sales and offer practical guidance for navigating dissent within buying centers. By understanding the nuances of dissent and employing adaptive strategies, sales professionals can enhance their effectiveness and drive successful outcomes in B2B sales engagements.
Key Discussion Points:
Navigating Internal and External Dissent: The discussion distinguishes between dissent within the organization and dissent encountered externally. Salespeople face unique challenges when addressing dissent across organizational boundaries.
Social and Emotional Intelligence: Salespeople leverage social and emotional intelligence to assess dissenting behavior, prioritize dissenters, interpret manifestations of dissent, and extrapolate underlying motivations. These skills enable salespeople to tailor their responses effectively.
Empathy and Moderation: While empathy is essential in understanding dissenters' perspectives, excessive empathy can impede effective resolution. Moderation in empathetic responses is crucial to navigating dissent successfully
Tailored Responses to Dissent: Salespeople must adopt a nuanced approach to dissent, considering contextual factors such as the dissenters' hierarchy within the organization, the nature of dissent manifestations, and underlying motivations.
Management Implication: Organizational support can be provided to salespeople through strategies like shadowing and group role-playing exercises. These initiatives help sales teams develop diverse approaches to handling dissent and enhance their effectiveness in real-world scenarios.
Click here for the Research Article
The Up Next podcast’s access to this content is courtesy of the International Journal of Research in Marketing, an international, double-blind peer-reviewed journal for marketing academics and practitioners. IJRM aims to contribute to the marketing discipline by providing high-quality, original research which advances marketing knowledge and techniques. As marketers increasingly draw on diverse and sophisticated methods, IJRM‘s target audience is comprised of marketing scholars, practitioners (e.g., marketing research and consulting professionals) and policymakers.
IJRM aims to be at the forefront of the marketing field with a particular emphasis on bringing timely ideas to market. The journal embraces innovative research with the potential to spur future research and influence practice. Hence, it welcomes contributions in various aspects of marketing. The editors, while accepting a wide array of scholarly contributions from different disciplinary approaches, especially encourage research that is novel, visionary or path breaking.
Dr. Jeff Johnson (Ph.D. University of Nebraska-Lincoln) is the Valentine Radford/Missouri Associate Professor of Marketing at UMKC’s Henry W. Bloch School of Management. Prior to academia, Dr. Johnson worked in inside sales, field sales, product management, and division management at Union Pacific Railroad in Omaha, NE and Los Angeles, CA.
Since joining UMKC in August of 2013, Dr. Johnson has published over 30 articles in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, MIT Sloan Management Review, Industrial Marketing Management, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Journal of Service Research. Dr. Johnson’s research has been presented at many national and international conferences. For his research performance, Dr. Johnson received UMKC’s top award for research excellence by an assistant professor (UMKC Trustees’ Faculty Scholar Award) in 2017.
Dr. Johnson also greatly enjoys teaching sales and marketing courses and has been recognized for his teaching by the Bloch school (Elmer F. Pierson Good Teaching Award 2016 and 2021) and the university (Chancellor’s Early Career Award for Excellence in Teaching 2016).
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International Journal of Research in Marketing