Customized sales strategies for international subsidiaries : A strategic approach for medium-sized B2B organizations of the HORECA supply industry

This study investigates the influence of customized sales strategies on salesperson performance and business success as well as the corporate framework needed to successfully apply such strategies in the German hotel, restaurant and catering supply industry.

Even though that the business world has changed and has become more individual and volatile over the last years, many organizations are still using centralized sales strategies that must be applied by every subsidiary to have full strategic and operative control on the global business. Many researchers have recognized the importance of sales strategies for business success; however, little is known about the benefits and risks of customized sales strategies in the business-to-business B2B field that are developed, implemented, and executed at the subsidiary level. There has been almost no research on the opportunities and challenges of customized sales strategies for international subsidiaries of B2B organizations, nor possibilities to overcome resistance to central strategies among local subsidiaries and internal divisions. This thesis examines environmental factors and their effects on local sales strategy performance by focusing on the influence on sales performance and sales strategies in dynamic and challenging times where local requirements differ from the global needs.

Data for the research were collected through in-depth interviews with 20 executive managers and sales managers from the hotel, restaurant, and catering supply industry. All participating organizations are part of the German Mittelstand and have annual turnovers between 50 million and 1 billion Euro. The interviews were conducted during the Covid-19 pandemic and provided insight on the influence of customized sales strategies before and during the pandemic as well as an outlook on the importance of customized sales strategies for the future.

The findings expand the knowledge about B2B sales strategies, reduce the knowledge gap between theory and practice in the field of strategy implementation and contribute to deeper knowledge about individual factors on sales strategies in a single industry. Furthermore, the thesis confirms that sales strategy has a positive influence on salesperson and organizational performance and that this effect can be bolstered with a customized sales strategy. This thesis demonstrates the influence of customized sales strategies on salesperson performance based on a multi-level model of sales strategy and explores the influence of customized mid-term sales strategies for international subsidiaries on business success in a single industry. Moreover, it shows, that organizations and their subsidiaries must reach a certain level of maturity to significantly raise the likelihood of success of the strategy development and implementation process.

To evaluate an organization's level of maturity and to expand the current literature, a model for practice was developed. It was designed to help German medium sized B2B organizations determine when it would be useful to develop individual sales strategies for international subsidiaries based on their corporate strategy rather than relying on a centralised strategy and should therefore help to close the gap between theory and practice.