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Pricing and the Sales Force

Introduction

Book to be edited by Andreas Hinterhuber and Stephan Liozu; Chapter proposal deadline 30 Apr 2014

PRICING AND THE SALES FORCE
A Hinterhuber & S Liozu (Editors)
Routledge, 2015

Overview

Pricing practices evolve – companies are increasingly implementing pricing strategies that are known to drive profits, such as value-based pricing or other forms innovative pricing approaches. While many companies thus master price setting, price getting is a largely unexplored area for most companies.

Price getting relates to the ability to convert list prices into actually realized prices. This is strictly the domain of the sales force. This book is structured into five sections exploring how selling and the sales force creates value in the context of a company’s pricing strategy:

  • sales force capabilities: the skills to communicate and capture value
  • sales force structure: best practices for deciding how to structure the sales force and sales territories
  • selling processes: designing and implementing due process to obtain sales personnel commitment
  • sales force compensation: insights into how to align sales force incentive schemes
  • sales force support systems: tools and instruments to enable the sales force to perform.

Key sections

PART I: INTRODUCTION
The role of the sales force in enabling price getting: summary overview

PART II: SALES FORCE CAPABILITIES
A framework for assessing sales force capabilities
Matching sales force capabilities to customer needs
Value-based selling and sales negotiation:
Value-based pricing and price communication

PART III: SALES FORCE STRUCTURE
To centralize or to decentralize? Empirical results
Sales force organization, delegation and performance – empirical results
Sales territory alignment and pricing

PART IV: SELLING PROCESSES
The role of due process in pricing: the impact of fair processes in driving sales force performance
Best practices in building robust selling processes

PART V: SALES FORCE COMPENSATION
The role of incentives to drive sales force performance
Best practices on how to change sales force incentive systems
Case studies

PART VI: SALES FORCE SUPPORT SYSTEMS
Tools and methods to enable the sales force to perform
Dashboards, metrics and other IT-based solutions
Case studies

PART VII: SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS
Conclusions: building the high-performing sales force

Format

We are looking for approximately 20 academic and practitioner papers. Academic papers are empirical and original, ca. 15 pages; practitioner papers 10 pages. We kindly refer you to the books already published (see Appendix II) for examples of what we are looking for. The process is competitive, we will accept the most promising contributions after a short (double-blind) review process. The key question we ask for both types of paper is:

  • What is interesting, counterintuitive about this paper?
  • How does this paper advance the current theory and/or current practice of pricing and sales force management?

Next steps

  • 30 April 2014: send expression of interest (=tentative title) to Editors
  • 30 August 2014: send final papers to Editors; review process starts
  • 30 November 2014: notification of acceptance to authors; minor changes possible
  • 30 December 2014: final papers sent to publisher
  • 2Q 2015: “Pricing and the sales force” is published (Routledge)

Editor contacts

Please contact the Editors for any questions you may have. Before starting to work on your submission, please contact us: We will send out formatting guidelines to prospective authors. We look forward to receiving your thoughts and submissions!