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The digital transformation is dramatically changing the business-to-business (B2B) sales environment, challenging long-standing views regarding the critical competencies required of salespeople. This paper aims to explore the personal traits associated with sales performance in a digital selling environment.

Using template analysis, the researchers captured and coded over 21 h of in-depth, semi-structured interviews with senior sales leaders from various industry sectors, exploring their perceptions of the personal traits now required of B2B salespeople in the digital landscape.

The research identifies three high-level trait types critical to sales success within a digital selling environment: “analytical curiosity” – the natural motivation and ability to gather and synthesize sales-related knowledge, “empathetic citizenship” – the ability to establish initial rapport while building long-term trust and “disciplined drive” – the exertion of selling effort in a highly focused and methodical manner across all stages of the sales process.

The present data came from interviews with sales leaders in Canada. A more global sample may lead to additional insights. Moreover, the sample was drawn from long-cycle B2B sales environments; conclusions may differ for short-cycle or business-to-consumer markets.

This paper presents a framework for hiring and developing salespeople in the digital sales environment, identifying personal trait types that sales leaders should look for when hiring: analytical curiosity, empathetic citizenship and disciplined drive. The paper identifies how these trait types influence sales success, suggesting that sales leaders could coach and educate their teams to make the best use of them.

This paper presents a conceptual framework for hiring in the digital sales environment and introduces the trait of analytical curiosity not previously discussed in the literature.

This paper aims to explore whether, how and when influencers’ value co-creation behavior in a post – influencers investing operant resources to enhance the value gained from using the product – shapes consumers’ responses toward an influencer’s recommendation. Based on value co-creation theory and consumer inference, this paper proposes that consumers infer influencers have more expertise with and more favorable attitude toward the product from value co-creation. Consequently, such behavior can foster consumer engagement and favorable attitude toward the recommended product.

The authors collected real-world data and conducted four sets of experimental studies. In the experimental studies, the presence of an influencer’s value co-creation behavior (i.e. co-creation vs. control) was manipulated to test the causal effect and mechanisms of co-creation on engagement and product attitude.

Results show that influencers’ value co-creation behavior positively affects consumers’ engagement and attitudes toward the product. These effects are driven by perceived influencer’s expertise with and favorability toward the product (Studies 1 and 2). Co-creating utilitarian value is more effective than co-creating hedonic value (Studies 3A and 3B). In addition, influencers with a larger number of followers benefit more from co-creation behavior than those with fewer followers (Study 4).

This research adds to the literature on value co-creation by investigating how, why and when influencers’ value co-creation enhances consumer responses to the post. Our investigation concretizes value co-creation behavior in the context of influencer marketing and demonstrates its signaling effect with nuanced role of value type in shaping the effect. The findings provide a novel cue that influencers can use to enhance consumer responses to their posts.

Brands should encourage influencers to focus on value-in-use co-creation when promoting their products. While emphasizing value co-creation in influencer partnership, brands should also carefully consider the type and size of influencers they collaborate with based on the nature of their products and target audience. The research findings also provide practical implications for influencers, offering guidance on how they can optimize their content creation strategies and enhance their effectiveness in influencer marketing collaborations.

This research enriches understanding of value co-creation in the context of influencer marketing and the role of content specifics in influencers’ posts. The findings provide a novel cue that influencers can use to enhance consumer responses to their posts.