Every company that sells products to other businesses faces the same fundamental challenge: how do you figure out what makes a salesperson effective? Sales managers invest heavily in hiring, training, and compensating their teams, but the question of which specific skills actually matter for performance has been surprisingly difficult to pin down with hard data.
A study published in the Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing set out to test a framework identifying seven distinct skill dimensions that salespeople need in business-to-business (B2B) settings. The research, led by Nils Høgevold of Kristiania University College in Oslo, Norway, surveyed 236 sellers across a range of product-oriented industries. The resulting framework groups seller skills into four broad areas and seven specific dimensions, and the study found that all seven held up as valid and reliable categories when tested against real-world data.
The gap the study aimed to fill
Previous research had long identified seller skills as a primary driver of sales performance. Two well-known meta-analyses, one by Churchill and colleagues in 1985 and another by Verbeke, Dietz, and Verwaal in 2011, synthesized decades of sales research and pointed to skills, along with motivation, aptitude, and organizational factors, as key ingredients. A meta-analysis is a type of study that combines and summarizes results from many previous studies to identify patterns across the broader body of research.
However, as Høgevold and his co-authors, Rocio Rodriguez and Göran Svensson (both also at Kristiania University College) and Carmen Otero-Neira (University of Vigo, Spain), pointed out, those earlier meta-analyses were conceptual summaries. They organized existing findings but did not directly test the proposed skill categories using original survey data from B2B salespeople. The researchers also noted that the earlier work was largely based on U.S. markets, raising the question of whether the same framework would apply in a European context like Norway.
The seven dimensions of seller skill
The framework tested in the study organizes seller skills into four broad areas, which are then broken into seven dimensions. Here is how they break down:
Interpersonal abilities cover two dimensions. The first is presentation skills, which refers to a salesperson’s ability to understand customer concerns, convey that understanding, and deliver clear sales presentations. The second is communication skills, meaning a seller’s comfort and composure in conversations, including with people they are meeting for the first time.
Degree of adaptiveness also has two dimensions. One is the ability to modify the sales approach, which means switching to a different strategy when the current one is not working. The other is the ability to modify sales behavior, which involves adjusting personal demeanor and style depending on the customer and the situation.
Selling-related knowledge splits into product and technology knowledge on one hand, and customer knowledge on the other. Product knowledge means understanding specifications, applications, and technological developments of the company’s offerings. Customer knowledge means understanding buyer motivations, industry trends, and the ability to distinguish between different types of customers and their needs.
Sales technology use is the seventh dimension. It captures how salespeople use technology tools to record customer information, plan territory management, and prepare customized sales presentations.
How the study was conducted
The research team used a questionnaire survey distributed to 315 product-oriented companies in Norway. These companies were selected from the Standard Industrial Classification system (SIC 2007) to represent a range of industries and company sizes. The team intentionally excluded service-oriented companies because prior research suggested that the type of product being sold, whether a physical good or a service, influences how different skill categories relate to performance.
The survey targeted people who were actively involved in selling and who had budget responsibility. This included sellers, team leaders, sales managers, key account managers, and regional managers. The questionnaire was distributed digitally through Qualtrics, and follow-up reminders were sent by email or telephone at one, two, and three weeks after the initial request. Out of 315 companies contacted, 236 returned completed questionnaires, resulting in a response rate of 74.9 percent.
Each of the seven skill dimensions was measured using three survey items. Items used a five-point scale, where 1 meant “strongly disagree” and 5 meant “strongly agree.” For example, under the product knowledge dimension, one item read: “I know the specifications of my company’s offerings.” Under sales technology use, one item stated: “I use technology to plan territory-management activities.”
To check the experience level of the respondents, the survey included screening questions about total years of sales experience and years in the current company. The average total sales experience was 20.4 years, with a median of 20 years. The average tenure at the current company was 10.9 years.
What the analysis revealed
The researchers used a statistical technique called exploratory factor analysis to determine whether the survey responses actually clustered into the seven predicted skill dimensions. Factor analysis is a method that looks for patterns in how people answer groups of questions. If several items tend to receive similar responses from the same people, they likely represent a single underlying concept, or “factor.”
The analysis started with all 21 items (three per dimension) and applied a method called varimax rotation, which helps produce cleaner groupings by minimizing overlap between factors. The final solution retained 19 of the original 21 items. Two items from the interpersonal skills area were dropped because they did not fit cleanly into their expected groupings.
The refined seven-factor solution explained 73.4 percent of the total variation in the data, which the researchers described as satisfactory. Internal consistency measures, reported as Cronbach’s Alpha values, ranged from 0.59 to 0.82 across the seven dimensions. Cronbach’s Alpha is a common statistic that indicates how closely related a set of survey items are as a group; values above 0.60 or 0.70 are generally considered acceptable in exploratory research. The researchers concluded that all seven factors showed acceptable levels of validity and reliability.
What this could mean for sales managers
The study’s authors outlined several ways the framework could be applied in practice. One key point is that the seven skill dimensions are distinct from one another. A salesperson who excels at communication does not necessarily excel at presentation. Someone with deep product knowledge may lack customer knowledge. This distinction matters for how companies approach hiring, training, and evaluation.
The researchers suggested that companies should assess their salespeople against each of the seven categories individually, rather than treating “selling skill” as a single, undifferentiated concept. Training programs could then be tailored to address specific gaps. For instance, if a salesperson scores well on adaptiveness but poorly on technology use, the training investment could be directed accordingly.
Recruitment and screening processes could also benefit from the framework. Rather than looking for a generically “skilled” candidate, hiring managers could evaluate applicants across these seven specific dimensions to find the best fit for their particular industry and customer base.
The study also noted that compensation structures could be linked to skill development across all seven categories, giving salespeople incentives to improve in areas where they are weakest.
Important limitations to keep in mind
The study was conducted entirely in Norway, a country with a specific business culture and compensation structure. Norwegian B2B salespeople tend to have higher education levels than their counterparts in many other countries, and their pay is largely fixed with relatively small variable components like commissions or bonuses. These characteristics could influence how skills relate to performance in ways that may not transfer to other markets.
The study focused exclusively on product-oriented companies and did not include service firms. The researchers acknowledged that service selling involves more intensive buyer-seller interaction, which could change the relative importance of different skill dimensions. They suggested that future research should test the framework in service industries and in consumer-facing (B2C) contexts.
It is also worth noting that the study validated the framework’s structure but did not measure actual sales outcomes. The research confirmed that the seven skill dimensions exist as distinct, measurable categories, but it did not directly test whether higher scores in any particular dimension lead to higher sales numbers or customer satisfaction. The authors positioned their work as a foundation for that next step, suggesting future studies should examine how these skill dimensions relate to both objective measures (like sales figures) and subjective measures (like manager evaluations) of performance.
Finally, the framework was developed primarily from Western research traditions and tested in a Western European country. The researchers noted it would need further assessment in non-Western business settings, such as those in Africa and Asia, before it could be considered broadly applicable
