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J·BJon BishopIndependent growth marketer

B2B growth and sales · Mixed empirical design combining transactional/field data from a B2B seller with a scenario-based experiment.

B2B online sales pushes: Whether, when, and why they enhance sales performance

Vamsi K. Kanuri, Johannes Habel, Nawar N. Chaker, Deva Rangarajan, Paolo Guenzi (2022). B2B online sales pushes: Whether, when, and why they enhance sales performance. Production and Operations Management. https://doi.org/10.1111/poms.13927.

Production and Operations Management · 2022DOI: 10.1111/poms.13927 ↗

Plain-English take

Salespeople generally comply with online sales pushes because online adoption frees time for new selling opportunities; post-push effort reflects customers' prior online proclivity and potential, varies over time and by channel, and produces asymmetric carryover, cross-channel and synergistic effects on sales performance. For your marketing: Use it as a B2B mechanism or sales-process design reference. Validate the relationship in your deal size, buying committee and sales cycle.

How much weight to give this

3.5/5 Moderate evidence for a specific setting

The 1–5 evidence-check score is a practical reading aid, not a formal peer review or a probability that a conclusion is true. It combines design strength (2 points), sample reporting (1), comparison/control clarity (1), and how much of the paper could be checked (1). Access affects how confidently this directory can assess a study, not the study's underlying quality. Blinding is reported separately because it is not relevant to every design.

Design · 2/2

Mixed empirical design combining transactional/field data from a B2B seller with a scenario-based experiment.

Sample · 0.5/1

A B2B seller transitioning from an in-person field force to a direct online channel; the study examines salesperson communication effort, customer online proclivity and potential, and sales performance.

Comparison · 0.5/1

Based on the publisher-described design and comparison; see the article for complete analysis.

Can we check it? · 0.5/1

Publisher record was fetched directly; full text was not assumed open.

Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the retrieved publisher record.

Research question

What the authors investigated

Whether, when and why do B2B online sales pushes change salesperson effort and improve sales performance during hybrid-channel adoption?

Design

Mixed empirical design combining transactional/field data from a B2B seller with a scenario-based experiment.

Sample and setting

A B2B seller transitioning from an in-person field force to a direct online channel; the study examines salesperson communication effort, customer online proclivity and potential, and sales performance.

Reported result

What the study found

Salespeople generally comply with online sales pushes because online adoption frees time for new selling opportunities; post-push effort reflects customers' prior online proclivity and potential, varies over time and by channel, and produces asymmetric carryover, cross-channel and synergistic effects on sales performance.

This is a paraphrase of the source. Check the original paper for definitions, estimates, statistical uncertainty and analysis details.

Scope and transfer

Limitations to keep in view

The field evidence comes from one B2B seller and the causal/behavioral evidence includes a scenario-based experiment, so generalizability across sellers, industries, channels and real adoption settings is limited.

Possible founder application

Use it as a B2B mechanism or sales-process design reference. Validate the relationship in your deal size, buying committee and sales cycle.

Evidence access

Publisher abstract/metadata retrieved; consult the linked paper for full methods and tables.

Wiley's journal page labels the article an Early View Special Issue Article and its abstract states that the authors 'empirically investigate' the issue using data from a B2B seller and a scenario-based experiment, reporting channel- and time-varying effort and sales-performance effects. Direct publisher-page retrieval was recorded on 2026-10-09; profile summarizes the accessible record and does not claim independent review of inaccessible full text.

If only an abstract or metadata was available, the profile is limited to claims supported there. A paper's paywall does not change its evidentiary status, but it limits what we can substantiate from accessible text.

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