A programme on the future of B2B selling
What customers consider valuable has changed shape — and Value Selling has to change with it.
Buyers used to need a product, then a solution to a defined problem. Increasingly, they need help improving an entire system — end-to-end, cross-stakeholder, over time. Most value propositions were built for the product or solution era and have not caught up. That is the core finding of the Future of Selling research programme, running since 2009: as customer value keeps widening in scope, Value Selling as a discipline needs to be redefined. This page walks through the research, step by step — each section opens the interactive artefact behind it.
Led by Prof. dr. Régis Lemmens (Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management, Antwerp Management School) and Prof. dr. Javier Marcos (Cranfield School of Management).
The research, step by step
Six stops, eight interactive artefacts
Each section below opens a working, interactive tool built from the research data — not a static chart.
1 · Where value has come from
The Value Eras Timeline, 1900–2040
Value creation has moved through distinct eras over the last 125 years — from mass production, through the quality and information eras, to today. Explore the full timeline and see where the next era is heading.
2 · Why the timeline is compressing
Two forces are accelerating this shift: rising systemic risk, and AI compressing how long any advantage lasts.
The Acceleration of Systemic Risk, 1980–2025
Climate change and geopolitical instability are making crises more frequent and more interconnected — a polycrisis that reprices risk across every B2B relationship.
The Compression of Time: AI, Transparency & the Shrinking Cycle
AI compresses how long anything takes to catch on, how long a company can coast on its last advantage, and how long a business externality can stay hidden.
3 · What customers do differently now
Changes in Customer Behaviour
A trend does not turn into demand for a value dimension by itself — it turns into a change in what the customer actually does. Sixteen sourced behaviour shifts, filterable by which value dimension each one feeds.
4 · Where that pressure lands
From Trends to Value Dimensions
The four B2B trends do not land on a single spot in a customer’s organisation. Trace the flow from each trend, through the Nested System Levels — Deal, Enterprise, Supply Chain, Society, Planet — to the Value Dimension it activates.
5 · Framework 2 — what is changing
The Scope of Customer Needs
Customer needs are nested — task inside process inside system — and are widening outward. As AI commoditises problem-diagnosis, the consultative middle is hollowing out, and selling is polarising into transactional or strategic.
6 · Framework 3 — the supplier’s answer
The Value Re-Engineering Cycle
Four phases, two loops: Value Design, Value Selling, Value Realisation, and Value Capture — the mechanism that lets a supplier re-anchor its value promise as the customer’s scope of need widens, and keep re-anchoring it as conditions change.
Where does your value proposition stand?
Try the Value Proposition Gap Diagnostic
Select the trends you recognise, confirm the customer behaviours you actually see, and rate your current strength per value dimension. A self-diagnostic starting point for a conversation about whether your value proposition still resonates — not a substitute for real customer evidence.
Recent field notes
From the programme
Observations from interviews and fieldwork, written as the research produces them.
20 May 2026 · Field note
One Customer, Three Conversations
Two long research conversations with Lien Byttebier at Accent surface a sales model built around three levels of the customer, three propositions, and three languages — and the recognition that selling into large industrial accounts has become an act of coordinated change management. Read →
20 May 2026 · Field note
The Supply Chain Has Become the Sales Conversation
An afternoon with a senior supply chain leader at Kaneka Belgium reveals how industrial supply chains under pressure are reorganising around trust, intelligence, judgement, and integration — and what this means for the suppliers across the table. Read →
Research partners
Solvay Brussels School of Economics and Management · Antwerp Management School · Cranfield School of Management · TIAS Business School
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