CustMaS - Customer Management Skills in Digitalizing B2B Markets

In the last decades, the European economy has transformed into a “network economy”. Firms have reduced their depth of production, relying on increasingly differentiated supply chain. Managing the buyer-supplier interface in an efficient and mutually beneficial way thus becomes a key challenge for a modern economy, requiring perfectly skilled workforce at this interface. The objective of the project is to design an empirically validated skills model for B2B customer management skills and a (post-graduate level) curriculum and program guide for developing these skills. The curriculum will be offered as a Master’s program and will foster the cooperation between the participating universities concerning sales professionals’ customer management skills in the context of increasingly digitalized B2B markets (e.g., setting up and selling in virtual showrooms, diagnosing customer needs online, text analytics useful in modelling the topics that B2B buyers prioritize on their web site, in e-mails, twitter posts etc). In particular, the project has the following objectives: a) Develop an up-to-date, comprehensive, and empirically validated model of skills in B2B customer management in a digitalising world. b) Develop a post-graduate level course curriculum and program guide including program intended learning outcomes, appropriate pedagogy and evaluation strategies. c) Disseminate the results of the project for a broader community. The project is going to develop a self-assessment tool for customer management skill evaluation and prepare an introductory Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) on upskilling and reskilling. The course can be used by students in electrical engineering, mechanical engineering, logistics, industrial engineering, life sciences (e.g., biology, biotechnology, pharmacology, zoology) and business administration as well as by other learners. It will also help in promoting awareness and interest towards professional sales and selling career paths that appear to offer a bright outlook in the job market of the future.