We face a paradigm shift in sales. Modern b2b sales environments in many industries have seen profound changes during the last decade: Increasing competitiveness strengthened the bargaining power of customers, high market and product transparency decreased profit margins and switching barriers, products as well as suppliers became commoditized.The task of the salesperson today is not any more the mere communication of elsewhere created value with the main importance put on the persuasive closing of the deal, but the generation of value for the customer in a long-term, relationship-oriented consultative sales approach. Adaptation to this situation is essential for modern sales forces in order not to fall into obsolescence. The way how selling is done today emerges as a powerful differentiator and source of competitive advantage for modern sales organizations.This work aims at identifying relevant key success factors for doing sales successfully in a modern sales environment in consultative sales approaches. The findings of this work may serve as a framework to identify special characteristics of successful sales organizations and provides data and information to apply those findings to developing less successful sales organizations into successful ones.After many years of b2b-sales experience in several markets, Dr.

Martin Auer is now head of Science Sales Academy (www.science-sales-academy.de), a consulting company specialized on b2b-sales and key account management. His work gives illuminative insights in how markets have changed and provides a sound structure of well researched key success factors for sales organizations in modern times and a valuable framework of characteristics and skills which successful sales organizations need today.