B2B growth and sales · Qualitative empirical study combining interviews and multiple case studies
Sales digitization and sales process optimisation for firm performance: Evidence from European firms
Fabio Oliveira, Maksim Belitski, Rodrigo Perez-Vega (2025). Technological Forecasting and Social Change.
Plain-English take
The paper identifies four pathways: digital skill endowment, marketing ownership of the sales process, strategic implications, and value creation. SEPs improve intra-firm collaboration and customer insight, reduce costs, increase flexibility, and align sales, marketing, and management. For a founder, use this as a question to test in your own context, not a universal playbook.
How much weight to give this
3.5/5 Useful evidence with meaningful caveats
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.
The described design supports the question, but it does not establish causal effects beyond the reported setting.
The reviewed source reports a sample or corpus size (27); size alone does not establish representativeness.
The comparison structure is limited or depends on the paper's model/context.
Firecrawl retrieved a full paper or full-text publisher page for this annotation.
Double-blind? Blinding was not established from the captured source; it may not apply to this study design.
Research question
What the authors investigated
How does adoption of sales enablement platforms influence stages of the B2B sales process and firm performance in medium-sized companies?
Design
In-depth interviews with CEOs and sales directors, thematic analysis, and three European medium-sized firm case studies; the publisher provides full article sections, participant table, results, appendices, and limitations.
Sample and setting
27 chief executive officers and sales directors plus three European medium-sized firms; case appendices cover Cynergy Bank, Kooth, and Optomed.
Reported result
What the study found
The paper identifies four pathways: digital skill endowment, marketing ownership of the sales process, strategic implications, and value creation. SEPs improve intra-firm collaboration and customer insight, reduce costs, increase flexibility, and align sales, marketing, and management.
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 publisher exposes a limitations/future-research section, but the accessible page extract does not state its contents in the abstract; conclusions are therefore bounded by the qualitative, interview/case-study design and European medium-sized-firm setting rather than generalized to all firms.
Possible founder application
Treat this as evidence for the specific b2b growth and sales question studied. Compare the setting and sample to your company before changing a growth decision; use a local experiment where the paper does not match your context.
Evidence access
Full text retrieved from publisher or linked open repository
Strong direct publisher evidence: ScienceDirect full text exposes method/sample, highlights, abstract, results structure, case appendices, and a dedicated limitations section; no sample size or result was inferred beyond the page text. Correction notices were not separately verified in this collection; consult the current publisher record before applying the findings.
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.