Abstract
The study aims to investigate and empirically test what the decision-making process for buying professional services looks like and which factors influence the buying behavior. Soft factors like trust, prestige, and sympathy as well as more factual-based aspects like price, commitment or a professional sales process play an important role. The particular focus lies on the role of the marketing function to support the sales teams in their efforts. It turns out that forms of reference, recommendation, and relationship marketing are explicitly suitable for building trust and communicating credibility for the successful marketing of complex and investment-intensive services. Social networks are overestimated and marketing communication should support sales teams to build rapport.
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Förster, A., Gronover, S. (2022). Sales Enablement through Marketing Communication in the Buying Environment of Complex and Investment-Intensive B2B Services. In: Westphal, J., Görne, J., Schmitz, C. (eds) Sales Enablement als Fundament des Vertriebserfolgs. FOM-Edition. Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-37614-7_16
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