Building initial relationships: the emerging tasks of sales in new business development

Contemporary textbooks on sales management acknowledge that the content and task of the sales function varies according to the circumstances, from a simple order taker to the creative selling of intangibles. However, the role of sales in the literature tends to be about the content of the formal sales function in established businesses where the product or service is given and ready to be sold. The role of sales is described as a function that contributes to conceiving, producing, and delivering customer value by understanding customers’ and/or sellers’ needs and fulfilling them with the bundle of goods and services fitting those needs (Weitz & Bradford, 1999). When new products/services are developed, the role of sales is said to be to identify customers’ needs and wants, often in collaboration with the marketing function (Ernst, Hoyer, Rübsaamen, 2010). At its broadest the scope of the sales function is defined as developing and managing customer relationships (Anderson, 1996; Jackson et al., 1994; Wotruba, 1996). When new business venture is developed, as an independent start-up or part of an ongoing concern, new customer relationships must be established and the circumstances are not the ones traditionally assumed in the sales literature. The product or service is not a given and the new venture starts from a product/service concept that needs to be translated into an actual solution and embedded in a series of arrangements (necessary for carrying out the first transactions), which tends to be done jointly with the customer. Since the new venture tends to start as a “pre-organizational” structure (Gartner, 1985) a formal organization unit sales tends to be absent. The question addressed in this paper is: what is the role of sales in developing the initial customer relationships of a new business venture, what are the critical tasks and how are these carried out?