STRATEGY & ORGANISATION

SALES & MARKETING

Sales is More Than Just Selling - It's Value Creation

Procurement departments often know more about the market than salespeople themselves, and this is something companies should respond to, says CBS Associate Professor Mogens Bjerre from the research project Sales of Tomorrow. The project hasn’t just shaped the sales agenda in Denmark – it’s now inspiring colleagues abroad.

By CBS Leadership Centre

The Danish research initiative Sales of Tomorrow – Denmark’s largest scientific research project on sales and sales management – was launched by CBS in 2018, in partnership with DI Trade, Business Denmark and Customer Agency. The project targets Danish B2B companies seeking to strengthen their sales efforts and achieve greater growth. A large database, built using responses from the target group, underpins the project’s findings and recommendations. This database continues to grow and has now reached another significant milestone:

“We have now gathered over 4,200 responses in our database. This makes our analysis the largest of its kind in Europe,” says CBS Associate Professor Mogens Bjerre.

But perhaps even more significant: The project is currently being replicated one-to-one in both the Netherlands and Finland, with the CBS project acting as a ‘mentor’.

“It’s relatively rare for an analysis design to be directly applied in other countries. It shows that our approach is seen as both robust and useful, especially when our findings resonate so strongly."

Mogens Bjerre, Associate Professor

Sales belongs in the boardroom

One of the key outcomes of Sales of Tomorrow has been the development of the concept of Sales Governance – applying principles from corporate governance to the sales domain. This is detailed in the book Sales Governance – Sales Management of the Future, co-authored by Mogens Bjerre and Torben Ulrich.

“With Sales Governance, we aim to elevate the discussion around sales to the executive and board level, and create greater transparency and control – just like corporate governance does in many organisations. To some extent, we have succeeded in getting Sales Governance onto the top management agenda – although there is still some way to go. In companies acquired by private equity funds, for instance, we see sales resources being rapidly integrated into boards. It makes sense, as this is fundamentally about growth. The key takeaway is that executive management and boards should start viewing sales as a route to unlocking untapped potential,” says Bjerre.

Procurement is focused on value creation - sales needs to catch up

One of the most striking realisations in recent years is not about sales – but about procurement.

“Procurement functions are rapidly evolving. It’s no longer just about price and risk mitigation – it’s increasingly about creating value, including for the customer’s customer,” explains Bjerre, who has partly drawn on experiences from the project’s long-standing collaboration with Maersk Procurement.

“A good example of value creation is when a company with strong procurement agreements can offer a customer access to these deals if the customer chooses to do business with them. In this way, procurement suddenly becomes a strategic resource for sales – and vice versa. We’re now seeing procurement departments in some firms offering their expertise to customers to help streamline their own processes. This is a completely new dynamic that sales departments can learn from.”

AI is changing the rules of the game

Digital transformation is also playing a major role – particularly in procurement, where its impact is influencing supplier selection. According to Bjerre, we are now witnessing the professionalisation and automation of procurement, with some departments managing 20-30 suppliers simultaneously through automated auction processes.

“Procurement professionals are becoming far more knowledgeable. They often know more about the market than the salespeople – and this creates a knowledge asymmetry that many sales organisations struggle to deal with. It raises an important question: As we strive for free competition, should we also examine whether procurement is creating a form of market dominance, where certain suppliers never get a chance because – for instance – they aren’t digitally accessible in the same way as their competitors?”

Sales needs to take itself seriously - or no one else will

A recurring theme in Mogens Bjerre’s work is that companies need to take their sales function far more seriously than they often do. The seven sales virtues identified by the project offer a shared language and structure for this work, but it won’t suffice if sales departments lack the necessary insights into their customers and how they can provide value for them.

“If you, as a selling company, aren’t digitally accessible in various ways, and if you’re not clear about your terms and capabilities, you won’t be invited to the table,” he says, noting that many boards still show little interest in understanding which products and customers could be the foundation for business growth.

“It’s unfortunate, but I still encounter too little curiosity in boardrooms at B2B companies. The focus is still largely on compliance and risk management – not on who our most important customers are and what we can do to make them more competitive.”

We are so customer-oriented that all our customers clearly see and appreciate the difference between us and our main competitors.

All functions within the organisation have a clear understanding of what they must contribute in order for us to succeed in achieving our sales goals.

Our sales managers lead the way in activating, enforcing and developing the salespeople’s approach to selling.

We share a common understanding of the value our sales efforts must create for our customers, and our sales training and education are always designed with a clear focus on value creation.

We make the value we create explicit – and ensure we are paid for it.

Our sales resources are closely aligned with the company’s strategic objectives, and each individual profile and resource in the sales organisation is measured by their specific contribution to these objectives.

We are better than our competitors at using internal data on customers and the market to support our customer-facing functions and create clear value for our customers.

Source: Sales of Tomorrow

Challenging the short-term mindset

So, what’s the key piece of advice for companies? Mogens Bjerre is unequivocal.

“You can’t cut your way to success. You have to grow the top line. And that requires understanding what value you’re creating for your customers – and where in their business that value makes a long-term difference. Is it in their logistics? Their warranty systems? Their operations?”

Mogens Bjerre, Associate Professor

This is a point that Bjerre and Ulrich have been emphasising for over 15 years – and finally, he’s seeing a shift in interest.

“Some companies have caught on. There’s a shift happening in the way people think.”

The future of Sales of Tomorrow

The next step for Sales of Tomorrow is to collect more international data and possibly secure new funding.

“We have a grant in the pipeline, which would allow us to continue the work. It’s incredibly motivating to see our method being directly replicated in other countries,” says Bjerre.

The long-term ambition is to create new conceptual frameworks for how we think and talk about sales – and possibly even start a collaboration in the US.

“Traditionally, senior management in the US has a different view of sales than we do here. It would be fascinating to explore what we could learn from each other. But first, we aim to expand the European horizon – especially among those who still believe that it’s all just about price.”

Mogens Bjerre is an Associate Professor at the Department of Marketing. He holds a PhD in marketing from CBS and has served as a Visiting Professor at HEC Paris.
His primary research interests include customer service and customer experience, sales and sales management, strategic customer insight and the application of governance concepts in a commercial context. He is the initiator and project lead of the Sales of Tomorrow research project.
Internationally recognised for his work at the intersection of strategy and marketing, he was one of the first to introduce Sales Governance as a systemic approach to managing sales organisations.
He has published in both national and international journals and is co-author of several books on sales, business development and relational marketing.

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Sales is More Than Just Selling - It's Value Creation

“It’s relatively rare for an analysis design to be directly applied in other countries. It shows that our approach is seen as both robust and useful, especially when our findings resonate so strongly."

The seven sales virtues

“You can’t cut your way to success. You have to grow the top line. And that requires understanding what value you’re creating for your customers – and where in their business that value makes a long-term difference. Is it in their logistics? Their warranty systems? Their operations?”

About the researcher

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