Drivers of Sales Innovation in Business-To-Business Firms

This paper defines the term sales innovation, offers an operationalization of the concept, and discusses antecedents of sales innovation in terms of important internal and external drivers. An empirical analysis of 409 B2B firms identifies the internal drivers of sales innovation as increased top management focus and increased resource allocation as well as increasing customer and competitor dynamics as external drivers. Despite the suggested positive impact of the degree of competitive pressure on sales innovation, the empirical results suggest a significant negative impact, i.e. competitive pressure leads to less innovation in sales. Finally the paper suggests managerial implications as well as avenues of further research in this area.