The shift that changed everything about selling
For decades, business-to-business selling was built on handshakes, in-person meetings, and relationships forged across a conference table. A salesperson’s ability to read body language, build rapport face to face, and maintain personal connections was the bedrock of long-term customer partnerships. Then digital communication tools, e-commerce platforms, and a global pandemic arrived in rapid succession, fundamentally altering how sellers and buyers interact.
Today, B2B customer relationships might begin with an online chat, develop through video calls and email, and only much later, if ever, involve an in-person meeting. This raises a practical question that sales managers and business leaders are grappling with: What kind of communication competence do salespeople need when so much of their work now happens through screens and keyboards?
A doctoral dissertation by Jonna Koponen at the University of Eastern Finland set out to answer that question. Published as part of the university’s Dissertations in Social Sciences and Business Studies series, the research introduces a new concept called “sales communication competence” and maps out what it looks like in practice across digital and in-person channels. The work is based on three separate studies that together draw on interviews with 86 sales professionals and analysis of 157 real online chat conversations between salespeople and their customers.
Why existing research fell short
Koponen, whose work was supervised by professors Anu Puusa and Raija Komppula at the University of Eastern Finland’s Business School, identified several gaps in what researchers already knew about B2B sales communication. Previous studies had examined individual pieces of the puzzle. Some looked at adaptive selling, which is the ability to change one’s sales approach depending on the customer. Others focused on listening skills, emotional intelligence, or cultural sensitivity. But no study had assembled these pieces into a complete picture of communication competence suited to the modern B2B environment.
That environment, as Koponen describes it, is defined by several characteristics: rapid technological change, global competition, customers who actively seek information on their own before ever speaking to a salesperson, the growing importance of providing solutions and value rather than simply products, and the need to communicate across many channels at once. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated all of these trends. A 2021 McKinsey survey cited in the research found that a majority of B2B decision-makers preferred digital self-service or remote human interaction over traditional in-person sales calls.
Koponen also noted that while plenty of research had examined how B2B customer relationships develop over time, most of it focused on the organizational level, looking at relationships between firms rather than between individual people. Yet it is salespeople, as individuals, who are most directly in contact with customers and most responsible for building those relationships.
Three studies, three angles on the same problem
The dissertation is structured around three separate but connected studies, each using a qualitative approach. Qualitative research, unlike survey-based quantitative research, focuses on collecting rich, detailed data through methods like interviews and text analysis to understand how and why something happens, rather than measuring how often it happens.
The first study aimed to define interpersonal communication competence for B2B salespeople. Koponen and her co-authors conducted 39 expert interviews with international salespeople, sales managers, and sales educators. The interview transcripts were then analyzed using a method called theory-driven theme analysis, which means the researchers used existing theories about communication competence as a starting framework but remained open to new themes that emerged from the data.
This analysis produced a new four-part framework. Sales communication competence, the study proposed, consists of a behavioral dimension (the observable actions salespeople take, like asking questions and adapting their style), a cognitive dimension (the knowledge and thinking processes behind those actions, such as understanding the customer’s business), an affective dimension (the emotional and motivational aspects, such as empathy and the willingness to engage), and what Koponen calls “sales acumen,” which captures the business-specific knowledge and intuition that experienced salespeople develop over time.
The second study shifted focus to digital sales communication, specifically online text-based chat. Koponen and co-author Saara Rytsy analyzed 157 real online chat conversations between salespeople and B2B customers at a case company. They examined these conversations through the lens of “social presence,” a concept from communication research that describes the degree to which people feel they are interacting with a real person rather than a machine or an impersonal system. Think of it as the warmth, personality, and human connection that can come through even in a text-based exchange.
The findings showed that the level of social presence in these chats varied depending on where the customer was in their relationship with the company. New customers used the chat differently than established ones. The purposes customers had for initiating a chat also shifted depending on their relationship stage. For newer customers, chats tended to serve more informational functions, while longer-term customers used them in ways that reflected a deeper existing connection.
The third study examined how long-term B2B customer relationships evolve at the personal level between individual salespeople and buyers. Koponen and co-author Saara Julkunen interviewed 47 sales professionals and analyzed the data through the framework of social penetration theory. This theory, originally developed by psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor in 1973, proposes that relationships deepen over time as people gradually share more personal information about themselves, a process called self-disclosure. Whether a relationship deepens depends on each person’s ongoing evaluation of whether the relationship’s rewards outweigh its costs.
The study found that long-term B2B customer relationships evolve through three distinct phases at the interpersonal level: becoming business partners, becoming collaborative partners, and becoming collaborative and personal partners. In the earliest phase, conversations between salespeople and buyers stayed focused on general business topics. As the relationship progressed, salespeople began sharing more strategic business information and some personal details about their lives. In the most advanced phase, the exchange became more intimate, with both parties sharing private information and developing what amounted to a genuine personal bond alongside the business relationship.
The type of rewards that salespeople associated with the relationship also changed. Early on, the perceived benefits were strictly business-related, such as revenue or efficiency. Over time, the rewards became increasingly relational, including things like mutual understanding, personal satisfaction, and a sense of partnership. The research also found that for a relationship to deepen, the self-disclosure had to be reciprocal. If only the salesperson shared personal information without the customer doing the same, the relationship did not advance to a deeper phase.
A new framework for sales communication competence
By combining the findings from all three studies, Koponen constructed what she describes as a comprehensive understanding of sales communication competence in the modern B2B relationship selling context. The framework goes beyond the traditional four dimensions identified in the first study. It incorporates insights about how communication competence looks different in digital channels versus in-person settings, and how the skills required shift depending on the stage of the customer relationship.
For instance, communicating effectively in an online chat requires a different set of abilities than managing a face-to-face negotiation. Creating a sense of social presence through text alone demands specific skills like using personalized language, responding promptly, and recognizing where the customer is in the relationship. Meanwhile, the ability to calibrate self-disclosure appropriately, sharing enough personal information to build trust without overstepping boundaries, emerges as a key competence for managing long-term relationships across any channel.
What this means for sales organizations
Koponen outlines several practical implications for businesses. First, sales training programs may need to be redesigned. Traditional sales training often focuses heavily on product knowledge and closing techniques. This research suggests that training should also address communication skills specific to digital channels, the ability to project social presence online, and the interpersonal skills needed to deepen relationships over time through appropriate self-disclosure.
Second, sales managers may benefit from understanding that different stages of a customer relationship require different communication approaches. A one-size-fits-all communication strategy is unlikely to work when a company’s customer base includes new prospects interacting through online chat and long-standing partners who communicate across multiple channels including video calls, phone, email, and occasional in-person meetings.
Third, the findings highlight that even as B2B sales become more digital, the human element remains central. The ability to create personal connections, even through technology-mediated channels, appears to be linked to the progression of customer relationships from purely transactional to deeply collaborative.
There are important caveats to keep in mind. This is qualitative research, meaning it provides depth and detail about the experiences and perceptions of the specific participants studied, but it does not establish statistical generalizations that can be applied across all industries or markets. The studies were conducted with sales professionals operating primarily in international B2B contexts, and the online chat analysis came from a single case company. Different industries, company sizes, or cultural contexts might yield different results. The research also relies heavily on salespeople’s own accounts of their experiences, which may not always align with how customers perceive the same interactions.
Still, for businesses navigating the ongoing shift toward digital sales communication, the framework offers a structured way to think about what good selling looks like when the old playbook no longer fully applies.
