Sales · Qualitative empirical study combining interviews and multiple case studies
Sales digitization and sales process optimisation for firm performance: Evidence from European firms
Technological Forecasting and Social Change · 2025
Summary
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.
For your marketing
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.
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.
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.
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.
Research sources
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.