Sales strategy and sales training for B2B companies

Your customers’ buying priorities are changing. Has your sales approach kept pace?

Since 2009, our Future of Selling research has followed how B2B customers buy, through more than 500 interviews with commercial leaders. We use it to help you answer two questions: what has changed for your customers, and what must change in your sales organisation as a result.

Research with Cranfield University · taught at Solvay Brussels School and Antwerp Management School.

Worked with

BNP Paribas Fortis
Odoo
Tessenderlo Group
Pfizer
L’Oréal
AG Insurance
Ricoh
ING
SAP
CGI
Barco
Bekaert

Research and teaching with

The shift

What 500+ commercial leaders tell us.

Customers now need stronger evidence of financial value, reduced risk and reliable implementation. Most suppliers still lead with product and service benefits.

When the conversation stays on the product, the decision falls back to price. Value has to be shown on five levels: financial, continuity, strategic, workforce and planetary.

Future of Selling research · Since 2009

How suppliers keep their value when budgets tighten

WORKING PAPER

How suppliers can design, prove, realise and capture value when budgets tighten, systems become more fragile and AI makes information abundant.

Régis Lemmens and Javier Marcos

Future of Selling research programme · September 2026

How suppliers keep their value when budgets tighten

Working paper by Régis Lemmens and Javier Marcos · Future of Selling research, 2026

Sound familiar?

Recognise this?

Pick the sentence that sounds most like your team. Each one points to the service that can help.

“The market has changed, and we’re not sure our offer has.”

→ Sales Strategy

“Our sales team chases every deal, and margins keep dropping.”

→ Sales Strategy

“Opportunities stall because our business case doesn’t convince.”

→ Value Propositions

“Customers challenge our price, even though our product is better.”

→ Value Propositions

“More people influence the decision, and our salespeople can’t reach them all.”

→ Value Selling

“We win the deal, but our customers never really use what they bought.”

→ Customer Success

“Implementations stall because people at the customer resist the change.”

→ Customer Success

Not sure which one applies?

→ Book a 30-minute call

What we do

Understand the change. Decide your response. Put it into practice.

Working with your leadership, sales, marketing and HR teams, we translate the insights into clear sales priorities, value propositions aligned with customer expectations, and practical tools for customer conversations, and we help your customer-facing teams make sure customers adopt what they bought.

Leadership team in a sales strategy workshop

01 · With your leadership

Sales Strategy

Define where and how to create customer value.

We work with leadership teams to turn what has changed for your customers into clear sales priorities, a sales plan and an implementation roadmap.

This aligns the organisation around the customer priorities shaping buying decisions today.

Working through a value proposition with a marketing and sales team

02 · With marketing and sales

Value Propositions

Build propositions customers choose on value, not price.

We work with marketing and sales teams to align your propositions with what customers now expect: evidence of financial value, reduced risk and reliable implementation, built into Layered Business Cases.

This gives decision-makers a clearer, more defensible reason to choose your offer beyond price.

Coaching a salesperson during a value selling training

03 · With your sales teams

Value Selling

Equip sales teams to discover, demonstrate and quantify value.

We train and coach salespeople, and the experts who sell alongside them, to discover customer priorities, build credible business cases and demonstrate value.

This equips salespeople to lead stronger value conversations from first contact to signed deal, and apply the approach independently.

Participants playing the change management business game

04 · With your customer-facing teams

Customer Success

Help customers make your solution work today, and grow the account tomorrow.

We train account managers, customer success and project teams to help customers adopt what they bought, and to develop key accounts into lasting, worthwhile relationships.

It starts where Value Selling ends: at the signed deal. This turns signed deals into real use, and real use into renewals and growth.

From the research

Research-led. Field-tested.

Our research shows buyers fall back on price when uncertainty rises, unless the supplier shows value on more than cost.

Since 2009, the Future of Selling research has examined how customer expectations and buying behaviour are changing. We have interviewed more than 500 commercial leaders across Europe, over 40 of them this year. The research is led by Régis Lemmens and Javier Marcos of Cranfield University.

Our consultants and trainers turn those findings into practical strategies, tools and training for real customer conversations.

Published and taught.

Book · 2014

From Selling to Co-Creating

Lemmens, Donaldson, Marcos · BIS Publishers

Chapter · 2014

Handbook of Strategic Account Management

Wiley

Talk · 2014

“Sales 2020”

TEDx Liège

Textbook · 2016

Sales Management

Marcos, Donaldson, Lemmens · Red Globe Press

Article · 2018

“Entrepreneurial Selling”

Harvard Business Review

Teaching

Solvay Brussels School & Antwerp Management School

The people you work with.

Prof. Dr. Régis Lemmens

Prof. Dr. Régis Lemmens
Founder · Solvay Brussels School & Antwerp Management School

Builds value propositions and business cases with leadership teams; leads the Future of Selling research.

Prof. Dr. Javier Marcos

Prof. Dr. Javier Marcos
Cranfield University · Consultant and trainer

Co-leads the Future of Selling research; specialist in sales management and strategic account management.

Marc Neyrinck

Marc Neyrinck
Consultant and trainer

Coaches sales teams to apply value selling in real customer conversations.

How we start

Start small. Build what works.

01

One issue

We focus on one important problem, often a proposition that isn’t delivering.

02

One workshop

A one-day workshop on your own propositions and live opportunities, for salespeople and the experts who sell alongside them.

03

Six to eight weeks

Managers reinforce the approach. Follow-up sessions review how it is applied and address what gets in the way.

04

Tools that stay

Printed playbooks your people keep using with customers.

What has changed for your customers?

In one focused conversation, we’ll help you see what must change: your strategy, your proposition, your sales capability or how your customers adopt what they buy. And if nothing needs fixing, we’ll tell you that too.