Vol.1: Competitive papers IIP [ \/ } 113

SOLUTION SELLING AND PROJECT MARKETING:A CONVERGENCE TOWARDS CUSTOMER INTIMACY

FOR A JOINT CONSTRUCTIONOF OFFER AND DEMAND

Azimont, Frank1 Ecole de Management LYON

Cova, Bernard2 EAP Paris

Salle, Robert3 Ecole de management LYON

ABSTRACTOn business markets it is possible to observe a double orientation. On the one hand companies dealing with products and services try to combine them in a « solution selling » approach. On the other hand, companies selling projects to order try to create the project through a « creative offering » approach. Consequently, these two orientations converge by integrating a new dimension in their approaches, namely « consultancy » and « expertise » in customer's activities. The core of these approaches is to develop close and « intimate » relationships with customers. This leads us to broaden the scope of these approaches emphasizing the blurring of the boundaries and the collapse of the distinction between industrial marketing, project marketing and even services marketing.

1 E.M.LYON; 23, avenue G.de Collongue ; BP 174 ; 69132 Ecully cedex FRANCE. (Tel +33 4 78 33 78 00. Email: azimont@em-lyon.com)2 EAP; 6, avenue de la Porte Champerret; 75838 Paris cedex 17 FRANCE. (Tel +33 1 44 09 33 66. Email: bcova@eap.net)3 E.M.LYON; 23, avenue G.de Collongue ; BP 174 ; 69132 Ecully cedex FRANCE. (Tel +33 4 78 33 78 00. Email: salle@em-lyon.com)

114 (lip 14th IMP Annual Conference

1. INTRODUCTION

Breaking with today's trend in management science research which consists

in highlighting the interest of a "new" field of research in order to

construct a "new" local theory adapted to it and thereby contribute (?) to

the creation of management knowledge, our intention is to bring together

two areas of research in BtoB marketing: solution selling and project

marketing. This approach goes against the postmodernist trend (Rosenau,

1991) of the fragmentation of knowledge. Indeed, as Martinet (1990, p.22)

claims: "the excessive tendency of breaking up reality is in danger of

transforming the scientific community into hyper-specialists unable to

communicate with each other as each one is isolated in his own tiny field".

In this paper, we will try to build a common theoretical framework for

solution selling and project marketing - which is actually lacking (Giinter

and Bonnacorsi, 1996) on the basis of the concepts of breadth and depth

of interaction which lead to the so-called « customer intimacy » along with

that of joint-construction of the demand and the offer.

2. SOLUTION SELLING, A STRONG TENDENCY IN B TO B MARKETING

The concept of solution selling, proposed in the 60's in the US (Yuong

Byun et Smith, 1990) together with the concept of system selling, has lived

a life cycle with decline and rediscovery all around the world (Mattsson,

1973 in Scandinavia ; Hannaford, 1976, Page et Siemplenski, 1983, et

Dunn et Thomas, 1986, in the US ; Paliwoda et Thomson, 1987 in the UK).

According to Mattsson (1973, p. 108), "in system sellings the seller

provides through a combination of products and services a fulfillment of a

more extended customer need that is the case in product selling" ;

« systems selling means that the seller offers a combination of hard-ware

products and soft-ware (including problem solution, services, etc...) that

Vol. 1: Competitive papers fsj$ 115

together forms an integrated system able to carry out a total function

or set of functions in the buying organization » (Mattsson, 1977, p. 1).

Mattson makes a distinction between « system selling » and «project

selling ». According to him « neither does the systems selling concept

include supply of unique, tailor-made systems to each customer»

(Mattsson, 1973, p. 109).

The German school of industrial marketing, Backhaus and Wiener

(1987) et Giinter (1988), has theoretically developed the concept of

"system selling" on the basis of Mattsson's papers (1973, 1977). More

recently, Bonnacorsi et al. (1996) suggested systems should be

distinguished taking into account two dimensions :

- the nature of market demand : the system is characterized by a high

degree of customisation, reflecting the huge heterogeneity of

users'requirements.

- the nature of technology : the system is characterized by high levels of

interdependence between the functions of individual components. As a

consequence, this makes the design and manufacturing of each component

heavily dependent on the definition of characteristics of other components)

2.1 A managerial approach in the USA

In the 80's, a new stream is trying to embed « system selling » in a broader

context that is based on a deep analysis of the customer's business context.

It is the so called consultative selling (Hanan, 1995). It says : "you are no

longer a vendor, out to sell a product to a customer, you are a consultant,

out to help your customer's business grow". The idea is not only to

combine product and services but also to add consultancy activity and

expertise to reengineer the customer's process. « Consultative selling - the

idea of going beyond selling products and services to actually becoming

involved in the discovery and redesign of customers'business processes - is

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paying off for a handful of companies such as Xerox and Hewlett-

Packard » (Mullin, 1997, p. 22).

In the same way, « customer intimacy » expresses the idea that the

salesman has to be so close to the customer's stakes that he acts as if it

were his own business (Wiersema, 1995). The goal is no longer to solve

customer's problems. It is to help develop his business. Quite often, the

supplier can even be a risk-partner in a project: « Customer intimacy is not

about increasing customer satisfaction: it is about taking responsibility for

customers' results ».

The salesman is in charge of working out change in process both in his

organization and the customer's organization. McKinsey (Fischer et al.,

1997, p. 82) proposes the concept of « customer integration » as « the

process industry's smart version of business-to-business marketing ». In

this approach the main idea is to answer to question : « what does the

immediate customer need in order to be successful in his own market ? ».

The most fitting term - that is the most polysemic - for this kind of

conception is surely "solution selling" : "In Solution Selling" (Bosworth,

1995) "we are trying to redefine the definition of selling. We would like the

business card of sellers we train to read 'buying facilitator'. By facilitating

the buying process we allow the buyer to feel in control of the buying". For

Bosworth (1995) "solution selling requires to use a consultative sales

approach rather than selling features".

Solution selling as proposed by Bosworth starts in 1985. It says that

sales methods used at Rank Xerox for tangible goods are inadequate for

intangible services such as those sold at Xerox Computer Services. This

approach is designed for complex product / services that are conceptual or

intangible. These are difficult to explain especially because they are partly

co-developped with the buyer. They are sold to committees where the

different members are guided by different rationalities in the decision-

Vol. 1.- Competitive papers 'fe 11 ^

making process. They required a sales process conducted by experts

for non-experts.

Traditional selling is based on the existence of a pre-defined « need »

that a pre-defined offering has to match. Bosworth proposes 3 levels of

need:

- latent need,

- expressed dissatisfaction,

- vision of a solution.

There is a latent need when a vendor sees, from his perspective, on the

basis of his past experience, a situation in the customer's organization that

is inefficient or that can lead to a potential problem. This situation is the

result of his analysis but the customer is still unaware of it. The

dissatisfaction statement shows that the customer is facing a problem. He

merely sees a solution and the problem is perceived as being too complex

or too risky. He doesn't know how to approach the problem that is poorly

stated. When a salesman is able to formulate the vision of a solution, he is

not expecting the vendor to solve the problem, he sees himself in the

situation of solutioning it. He feels enabled. He accepts responsibility to

solve the problem and he is personnaly committed.

Solution Selling's methodology is aiming at leading the customer from

the latent pain level to the vision of a solution. The vendor has to be present

in the relationship at the very initial step of the process before the problem

is formulated. That is to say, he has to be a consultant who spends most of

his time making a diagnosis, to make sure that all stakeholders share the

same vision of the current situation.

At the beginning of the process, the vendor starts discussion in an

impressionistic way. He uses stories of situations that other companies had

to face and that he had to help to solve. He suggests that his customer

might be facing similar situations. Quite often the customer then starts to

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ask the vendor questions on how he could solve the problematic situations

in other business contexts. The vendor will have to translate his stories into

the customer business context so that he can better understand that the

vendor is an expert in this kind of analysis. The job of the vendor is to

propose tools of analysis that help the customer to understand his business

context.

Interpreting the situation from this perspective reveals the problem.

Rather than speaking directly about « problem », the goal is to shape the

customer's own representation of the situation (Bosworth, 1995), in order

to enable him to express it his own way. Roughly speaking, this new

perspective is the structure of a potentially problematical situation. This

first «translation» of the situation leads the customer to a new

interpretation . But it is not yet analysed and shared by the other members

of his firm. The new perspective enables the customer to spot variables

(potential causes ) identified in the problem (potential impact). The

customer will not decide to participate in the problem resolution unless it

enables him to reach his private goal in the firm. Clearly, the buyer needs

the problem to be expressed in a certain manner. So, being able to solve it,

he would gain a social value. Then, when the buyer gets involved in the

problem, he feels like the « ambassador » of the situation. He will be

willing to let the problem be recognised by others, so as to save the

situation by proposing an adequate solution. This brings out the idea of an

«interest net » for the developing of an innovation developed by Akrich,

Gallon et Latour (1988). Identifying the problem, the customer himself

becomes its internal vendor long before becoming the saver.

The seller, initially only consultant and diagnoser, becomes a coach for

his sponsor and mediator. Especially when other partners involved express

the problem the same way. After a progressive development, several

people, the buyer, the technical manager, the financial director, share the

same definition of what the problem is. But this constructed vision is still

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based on different rationalities. The seller should then propose to co­

ordinate the finding of a solution. In certain cases, other people will take in

charge the sale in order to develop various competencies, such as technical

support for example.

Thanks to this process, external couples of problems/solutions have been

seen from a different perspective in the buying firm. Adapted to suit the

firm, they lead to a new problem/solution couple, taking into account the

whole of the firm's context. The seller, like a consultant, gets the customer

to take over the situation, getting more involved in managing it from the

inside. It is now time for the seller to elaborate a solution which suits the

problem he helped to raise. In case of an introductory offer, he is the one

who structured the criteria of selection, in partnership with the customer.

So we may say that when a firm leads a market study, searching for an

answer to a problem, and finds one, it means that somebody was there not

long ago to articulate the feeling that the firm had such a need, such a

problematical situation. The Solution Selling approach introduces the

methods based on creative offer. It points out that raising a problem from a

positive analysing pattern perspective builds up its own solutions. We face

a constructivist approach based on Piaget's work. The cognitive system of

the actor creates only problems he knows he can solve.

2.2 A reality that echoes managerial debates

At present we observe important changes in the strategy of the various

actors at play:

- purchasing strategies experience the development of system buying

approaches (Bonnacorsi et Paliwoda, 1990). For instance, a car integrates

about 30 000 individual parts which are integrated in subsystems. The

number of subsystems is decreasing year after year. Now, cars are

composed of less than 20 subsystems managed by suppliers acting as

system integrators.

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- as far as supplier strategies are concerned : main suppliers try to

maintain direct relationships with important customers as first tier suppliers

and to avoid being second or third tier suppliers. For instance, in the car

industry the position of first tier supplier allows suppliers to capture

information and to influence specifications.

These strategies lead to an increasing level of supplier-customer

interface requiring a high level of investment. Because of the level of

investment required, the supplier (and the customer) can only manage a

small number of customers (and suppliers) simultaneously (Hakannson et

Snehota, 1995).

So, companies which adopt solution selling approaches thus evolve

progressively towards a position of engineering companies. Sometimes

they give up their industrial activities (product manufacturing) to become

services companies. As a consequence, these companies modify their

organization. For instance, ABB created a customer management function

and a facility management function and suppressed the product manager

function.The customer managers are in charge of managing « customer

intimacy ». Facility managers help customer managers to solve problems

identified during the course of interaction with customers. They are in

charge of integrating products and services coming from the company itself

or from other companies. Here the focal company has to include

complementary offers coming from companies linked by partnerships and

alliances as presented by Mattsson (1977) in his working paper

"Cooperation between firms in international system selling". This

integration can be very similar to a consortium, a type of organization

which is frequent in project marketing (Giinter, 1986). This case can be

compared to the "co-selling" approach developed by Smith (1997).

As a consequence, when we observe a change from system selling to

solution selling we face two different aspects :

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- on the one hand, system selling takes into account the nature of

the exchange : neither a product nor a service but a product-service

package.

- on the other hand, solution selling describe the mode of interaction and

the way to elaborate the solution and the offer. In solution selling, it seems

that the consultancy dimension is more developed than in system selling.

The focus is not on the nature of the exchange but on the creation of a

context favoring cooperation. In fact, the focus is more on the process and

its implementation than on the end result.

3. PROJECT MARKETING: TOWARDS CREATIVE OFFERING

Project marketing (Holstius, 1987; Cova, 1990) is a specific field of

marketing which appeared in the late 80s to allow companies selling

projects-to-order to cope with competition on worldwide markets. In

project marketing the supplier tries to gain a favorable position with regard

to customers and competitors in order to minimize the effects of the request

for proposal (RFQ) procedure (Boughton, 1986). Actually this procedure

leads the supplier to be in an unfavorable position. He is purely reactive,

he only responds to the stimuli coming from the customer (RFQ) and he

complies with the requirements expressed in the specifications. Facing this

situation, suppliers try to be more anticipative and less reactive in order to

gain an increased control over their offering and their mode of entry into

the project (Cova and Salle, 1997).

Given their unique characteristics, each project might be regarded as an

isolated market for goods and services, providing a framework for

competition between contractors against a specific hierarchy of customer

demands. This makes the task of undertaking market research, in the

traditional sense, to predict or, 'anticipate', opportunities and customer

requirements virtually impossible. There will inevitably remain a good deal

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of uncertainty surrounding potential customers (who?), their requirements

(what?), the timing (when?) and the manner in which goods and services

will be procured (how?). Faced with these dilemmas concerning the

competitive arena (who?, what?) and the rules of the game (when?, how?)

contractors have developed marketing practices designed to position the

company in the demand environment and enable them to react effectively

to project opportunities well in advance of any invitation to tender (Cova

and Hoskins, 1997):

anticipating the competitive arena and the rules of the game

(deterministic approach)

becoming actively involved in shaping the competitive arena and the

rules of the game (constructivistic approach)

By combining these two approaches contractors will aim to avoid,

whenever possible, being required to respond to tender invitations which

they have neither been able to anticipate or influence to some extent.

The deterministic approach is based upon the principle that the project

will be defined entirely by the future customer, together with any advisors,

and that every effort must be made to anticipate such a requirement in order

to better identify and prepare to win the business. The effectiveness of this

approach is very much dependent upon the contractor's ability to gather,

consolidate and disseminate intelligence since, "a company stands little

chance of securing a contract if it only becomes aware of the opportunity at

the time when invitations to tender are issued" (Roland Bertheleme, ex

Marketing Director of Alsthom).

On the other hand, the constructivistic approach is based upon the

assumption that the customer and various stakeholders in the project should

work together to define the optimum solution and, that the contractor is one

of the key players in this process. This is succinctly put into context by

Robert Galvin, President of Motorola, in his statement : "the first step in

Vol. 1: Competitive papers ''tSP 123

any defined strategy is writing the rules of the game...We have

incidentally found that in many quarters of the world, our offer to

constructively define the rules is reasonably welcomed". This approach to

project marketing is based on using 'creative offers' to initiate a project.

Although it can take many forms, a creative offer might be best described

in terms of a speculative proposal which is presented to a potential

customer who has yet to establish clearly defined requirements or, possibly

even a need.

In pursuing a deterministic approach, the contractor is aiming to

anticipate a potential project requirement in order to prepare the ground and

place the organisation in a position to tender for the work under the most

advantageous conditions. A constructivistic approach, on the other hand,

requires the contractor to lead the development process by initiating, or

'creating' the project. By following this twin track approach to securing

project business, with the option to change from one to the other, a

contractor can seek to optimise its competitive position at each stage of the

project marketing cycle (Holstius, 1989).

It can therefore be seen that project marketing (figure 1) extends well

beyond the tactical considerations associated with 'competitive bidding' to

an activity which might be illustrated in terms of the strategy options

available to a contractor at three key stages of project development (Cova,

Mazet and Salle, 1994):

Independent of any project: when a specific requirement has yet to be

firmly established, requiring the contractor to anticipate and/or create the

competitive arena in conjunction with other potential participants.

Pre - tender, when the contractor aims to anticipate and/or write the

rules of the game in conjunction with the customer and other influential

actors.

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Tender preparation: when the contractor accepts the established rules of

the game or seeks to have these re-written in order to compete on more

favourable terms.

ANTICIPATIONBY THE

SUPPLIER

Project Phases

Project Independent

Pre-Tender

Tender Preparation

NetworkScanning

Project Screening

Compliant Offer

NetworkPositioning

Project Influence

Variation Offer

NetworkCreation

Project Creation

Counter­ offer

CONSTRUCTION BY THE

SUPPLIER

High Medium Low/Zero

Degree of Demand Formalization by the Customer

FIGURE 1: A twin track approach in Project Marketing

Before the 80's, companies concentrated their resources on the tender

phase, now many of them strive to invest more in the phase independent of

any project and in the pre-tender phase. The aim is to gain access to a

strong position. An extreme situation is the approach called « creative

offer » (Dessinges, 1990) in which the supplier avoids the tender. The

supplier refuses to be a stooge and to react to the stimulus of the call for

bidding in a behaviourist way. He tries to make the customer's demand his

own, and to construct it with the customer in the course of their interaction.

In so doing the contractor induces a demand by recognising a project idea

corresponding to a problem which remains to be clearly defined by a

customer or, which might represent an opportunity for an, as yet, unknown

customer. Where the contractor undertakes a speculative commitment to

develop the scheme, find or create a customer (e.g. by bringing together a

Vol. 1: Competitive papers tfjfw 125

group of individual investors) this approach can involve a significant

amount of cost and risk. Alternatively, an offer is made to carry out a

feasibility study on behalf of a potential customer for such a project

solution. In either case, the contractor creates and evaluates the concept,

possibly puts together appropriate funding arrangements and assembles a

team to implement the project. The American construction giant, Bechtel,

illustrates the point as well as any: "if there is no project, we will create

one; if there is no client, we will assemble one; if there is no money, we will

get them some". In fact, project marketing has evolved over the last 20

years from a submission approach (the customer is able to define precisely

the specifications) to a construction approach (the customer is not able

alone to formulate the specification) positioning the firm as an expert on

the customer's problem.

More generally, current marketing tactics in project business mostly aim

at constructing or deconstructing the demand with the customer, relying in

particular on the very long definition, implementation and completion

process of the project (three years in average). More than the preparation of

the answer to the bid, it is the construction of the demand i.e. of the call for

bidding and its specifications that comes across as central to marketing

strategies. The logic is that of the search for increased control and power in

an activity that structurally positions the supplier in a situation of

information assymetry, dependence and submission. Marketing tactics and

construction of demand are largely intertwined during the project. The

phenomenon of offer and demand co-construction can be viewed as a major

marketing tactic in project business (Cova et Crespin-Mazet, 1996).

4. SOLUTION SELLING AND PROJECT MARKETING: TOWARD A CONVERGENCE

Common characteristics to a « consultative selling » process in a solution

selling approach and to a «creative offering» process in a project

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marketing approach can be summarized as follows: no pre-defined offer, no

answer limited to the expressed need of the customer, but the capability

thanks to customer intimacy (including its network) to know in advance

(anticipation) in order to act in advance (construction).

4.1 A Common Framework: Customer Intimacy

Customer intimate relationship or « customer intimacy » or « customer

integration » could be defined (Fischer et al., 1997) in relation to a dual

perspective of the supplier/customer interaction (Figure 2):

the depth of interaction which indicates both the level of supplier's

involvement and the degree of customer's willingness to interact, i.e. its

agreement to work in common with the supplier;

- the breadth of interaction which indicates the extent of

supplier/customer contacts, from simple sale/purchase contacts to complex

use network/offering network contacts involving many functions inside and

outside the two companies. The breadth of the interaction appears to be

dkectly linked to the breadth of the offer.

DEPTH OF INTERACTION

.Contribution to Customer's Activity

, Help to the Customer in Problem Posing BREADTH OF

INTERACTION

Sale/Purchase Sale/Purch. Tech/Tech

Buying Center/ Use Network/ Setting Center Offering Network

etc...Assistance to the Customer inProblem Solving

Answer to the Expressed Need of the Customer

FIGURE 2: Breadth and Depth of Interaction

Vol. 1: Competitive papers flip''1 127

From our analysis of solution selling and project marketing, we

consider that customer intimacy that allows consultative selling and

creative offering to develop has to do with maximum breadth and depth of

interaction, i.e. maximum intensity of interaction which can be named

« customer intimacy ».

From our previous research in project marketing (Cova and Salle, 1997),

we take into account four levels of depth of interaction that the supplier can

put into play in relation to the customer's willingness to interact:

Level 1: the more superficial, it aims at bidding for the project with a

compliant offer; in this case the vendor is typically in a product supplier

position;

Level 2: a bit deeper, it aims not to stick to the customer's expressed

needs, but to propose a variation to the specifications in order to be able to

assist the customer in solving its problem; in this case, the vendor positions

itself as a solution offerer and not only as a mere product supplier;

Level 3: deep, it aims to help the customer in posing its problem and

consequently to position the vendor as an expert of the problem of its

customer;

Level 4: very deep, it aims to contribute to the activity of the customer in

putting the problem into context; in this case, the vendor is « becoming

involved in the discovery and redesign of customers'business processes »

(Mullin, 1997, p. 22).

In the same way, we consider four degrees of breadth of interaction

(Cova and Salle, 1997):

Degree 1: the lower, it is limited to day-to-day business such as order

acceptance and delivery between salesman and purchasers;

Degree 2: a bit higher, it multiplies dyads in interaction between the

vendor and the customer according to the nature of the problem taken into

account (Hakansson, 1982) such as quality/quality, logistics/logistics,

production/production... or quality/purchase, sales/production...;

128 :f|p 14th IMP Annual Conference

Degree 3: high, it associates the buying center and the selling center in a

coordinated and sometimes dedicated fashion;

Degree 4: very high, it associates the «enlarged buying center» of the

customer with the « enlarged selling center» of the vendor (Bansard et al.,

1993), i.e. the focal network of the customer with the focal network of the

vendor.

The crossing of the level of depth of interaction with the degree of

breadth of interaction indicates how intense the customer intimacy is and

thus the content and the structure of the offer and the demand that will be

built jointly.

4.2 Some Specific Modes

A) The four levels of depth of interaction can be put into play in a similar

manner by companies making projects-to-order and by companies making

products or services. On the contrary, the higher degree (degree 4) of

breadth of interaction appears to be very rare for companies making

products or services when it is a dominant practice for companies making

projects-to-order (Cova and Salle, 1997). In fact, this high breadth is

possible to observe for companies making products or services in specific

situations where connected relations to the customer play an important role.

It is the case (Lundgren, 1992 ; Blankenburg, 1995) when creating a

position in a new market (« market entry ») or in a non-existent market

(«innovation ») which calls for a mobilization and a coordination of

numerous actors inside and outside the market (« markets as networks »).

B). In project marketing it is possible to distinguish between four

components of an offer : technical, commercial, political and societal

(Cova and Salle, 1997) :

The technical offer, incorporating the products / services to be provided

(including any technical assistance, after sales service, training...) and the

scope of work to be undertaken.

Vol. 1: Competitive papers iMP 129

- The commercial offer, addressing the financial terms (price,

conditions of payment, variation formulae...), contract conditions

(guarantees, roles and responsibilities, liabilities...), details of any project

finance proposals ( senior and secondary debt, export guarantees,

countertrade, bond issues, build/own/operate and other concession

arrangements...) and organisation structures (strategic alliances, sub­

contractors, suppliers...).

The political offer, which consolidates any formal and informal

collaboration with local partners, provides details of any local investments

and, more generally, describes the contractor's investments in the

customer's network of relationships to improve its political position.

The societal offer, including actions taken by the supplier to improve

its societal position within the wider stakeholder community (interest

groups, shareholders, the community, user groups etc.).

In project marketing, companies combine these four components in

order to implement offer strategies allowing differentiation. On the

contrary, in « traditional » B to B marketing, companies generally use only

two components : technical offer and commercial offer. Due to the

concentration of the buying center within one organization, the political

and the societal offer are rarely used. But the increasing competition leads

companies dealing with industrial products and services to progessively

implement new means of differentiation taking into account these

components.

Globally, we can stipulate that, in any case (projects or products), the

elaboration of offer strategies is based on two perspectives :

- a supplier perspective. According to the level of his internal resources

or to the resources he can mobilize, the supplier will be able to choose (or

not) the degree and the level of interaction with the customer;

- a customer perspective. According to the customer's openness to

interaction, which depends on his level of resources and the level of

130 IIP 14th IMP Annual Conference

interdependance he accepts to have, the supplier will be able to develop or

not a given degree and level of interaction with him.

That is to say that « consultative selling » or « creative offer » is not a

panacea allowing the supplier to be successful every time. Actually the

supplier has to be flexible and adaptative enough to be able to sell in all

situations he has to cope with : from « product selling » to « solution

selling». As a consequence it becomes a strategic option to sell

« solution », namely projects (Holstius, 1989).

5. CONCLUSION

Project marketing approaches (solutions, systems) which were specific to

this limited sector (i.e. project business), seem to become transferable and

usable by companies dealing with industrial products and services. The

consequence is not that these companies have to sell all their products and

services packaged as projects, but, that they have to take into account the

fact that within the supplier/customer relationship some episodes can take

place according to a « project mode ». Such episodes can arise from the

customer demand or the strategic willingness of the supplier (solution

selling or system selling) which has to cope with competitors and

purchasing managers.

Thus, companies can go beyond the determinism of marketing methods

which are rooted in their particular modes of production (e.g. industrial

marketing for products, service marketing for services, project marketing

for projects and other systems) to use methods coming from other business

sectors in their marketing approaches. For example, a company

manufacturing products can « decide » to sell them through a traditional

« product mode » (industrial marketing ») or through a « service mode »

(services marketing) or even a « project mode », i.e. a solution (project

marketing). In fact the commercial activity of any company may combine

Vol. 1: Competitive papers flsSP'" 131

episodes having product, service or project characteristics and leading

to different degree and level of supplier customer interaction and the use of

different marketing approaches.

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