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The purpose of this paper to explore the value creation expectations of salespeople and buyers for initial sales meetings and to investigate how such expectations align.

The authors applied expectancy disconfirmation theory and conducted a qualitative study among 12 B2B service salespeople and 12 buyers. The data includes 46 in-depth interviews collected during 2 separate interview rounds.

The authors discovered that buyers’ and sellers’ expectations differ and that buyers’ expectations are not reasonably satisfied. Buyers expect more business acumen, innovativeness, future orientation, long-term relationships and responsiveness to their specific situation from sellers. As salespeople´s salespeople´s expectations to create value for customers primarily stem from the solutions they sell as well as from their personal skills and behavior, there is need for sellers to focus on the gaps indicated in this study.

The paper introduces expectancy disconfirmation theory to the B2B buyer-seller literature.

Identifying where expectations are being met and where they are being negatively disconfirmed can assist in hiring and training salespeople who are better able to meet, or exceed, buyer expectations.

The authors believe that these findings can benefit sales organizations in how they create value with new customers and how salespeople can align their actions with customers more effectively.

Although organizations are investing heavily in digital transformation (DT) of the sales function, implementation and exploitation at the sales force level are ongoing challenges. As sales managers serve as conduits of influence between top management and the sales force, the success of strategic initiatives, such as DT, hinges heavily on leveraging their influence to promote change adoption at the sales force level. Accordingly, this research is guided by the research question: how can sales organizations secure the buy-in of sales managers and induce their championing behaviors directed toward the sales force?. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how organizational and psychological resources influence sales managers' DT change champion through their change readiness.

Construing DT in sales as an organizational change that creates contextual job demands, the theoretical framework offers several hypotheses linking organizational and personal resources with sales managers’ change readiness and championing behaviors. The perceived impact of change is included as a moderating variable. Using data from a sample of 176 business-to-business sales managers, the hypotheses are tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The authors demonstrate that two change-related organizational resources (change communication and change mobilization) and a personal psychological resource (psychological capital) facilitate sales managers’ emotional and cognitive change readiness, which, in turn, enhances their championing behaviors toward DT initiatives. Further, the authors find that perceived change impact augments the effects of organizational and psychological resources on change readiness, thus highlighting the importance of effective positioning of the outcomes of change.

This study provides practitioners with actionable guidance on securing the buy-in of sales managers for change initiatives such as DT. Specifically, communication and mobilization are critical inducements. Managers who score high on psychological capital can be targeted as change agents. Further, the impact of change needs to be framed positively, as the resultant perceptions magnify the effects of organizational resources.

While prior research has examined salespeople’s response to change, very little is known about the antecedents of change readiness and championing behavior among sales managers. Based on the results, the authors identify theoretical and managerial implications as well as future research directions.