Publications

July 2020
Article

Reframing Value in a Crisis

By: Frank V. Cespedes and David Hoffeld

Reframing is the process of moving buyers from their current perspective(s) to one that motivates a different response. The current crisis makes this capability more important than ever. View Details

Keywords: Sales; Customers; Perspective; Value; Change; Health Pandemics

06 Sep 2005
Research & Ideas

When Product Variety Backfires

Traditional wisdom teaches that brands win market share by offering a wide variety of products, increasing the chance of appealing to a wider variety of customers. But how happy are you when trying to find a head cold remedy at the pharmacy amid an overwhelming number... View Details

Keywords: by Poping Lin; Consumer Products

November 2003 (Revised January 2004)
Case

XS, Inc.

By: Ray A. Goldberg and Joan McRobbie

XS, Inc. created a seller and buyer Internet for the $200 billion farm supply industry. How can this start-up remain the nonpartisan hub of this network, and how will it aid in the traceability of the U.S. food system? View Details

Keywords: Internet and the Web; Food; System; Business Startups; Agribusiness; United States

May 2018
Article

The Changing Craft of Selling

By: Frank V. Cespedes and Tiffani Bova

This article draws on two surveys: one with more than 3,100 sales professionals about trends affecting the role(s) of sales in their companies, and the other with over 7,000 consumer and business buyers about their expectations when dealing with sales people. The... View Details

Keywords: Sales; Change; Trends; Performance Effectiveness

18 Nov 2014
HBS Seminar

Steve Tadelis, University of California Berkeley Haas School of Business

18 Jul 2016
Working Paper Summaries

Beyond Symbolic Responses to Private Politics: Examining Labor Standards Improvement in Global Supply Chains

Keywords: by Andrea R. Hugill, Jodi L. Short, and Michael W. Toffel; Manufacturing

October 2022
Exercise

Shanty Real Estate: Confidential Information for Homebuyer 2

By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Nathan Sun

Shanty is a simulation in which students inhabit the role of either a traditional home buyer or an iBuyer, both bidding on the same condo. The traditional home buyer has access to a “comp sheet” of similar properties that have recently sold, and has done a walkthrough.... View Details

Keywords: Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Measurement and Metrics; Market Timing

October 2022
Exercise

Shanty Real Estate: Confidential Information for iBuyer 3

By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Nathan Sun

Shanty is a simulation in which students inhabit the role of either a traditional home buyer or an iBuyer, both bidding on the same condo. The traditional home buyer has access to a “comp sheet” of similar properties that have recently sold, and has done a walkthrough.... View Details

Keywords: Algorithm; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Measurement and Metrics; Market Timing

10 Sep 2014
HBS Seminar

Ben Edelman, Harvard Business School

2023
Working Paper

The Value of Professional Ties in B2B Markets

By: Navid Mojir and Sriya Anbil

We study how a particular form of social ties (i.e., professional ties proxied by past employment) aﬀects price and proﬁtability in business-to-business (B2B) markets. While most of the work on social ties focuses on information diﬀusion in business-to-consumer... View Details

Keywords: Professional Ties; Social Ties; Business-to-business Marketing; B2B Marketing; Repo; Individual Connections; B2B Pricing; Pricing; Decision-making In Financial Markets; Marketing; Relationships; Price; Financial Markets; Decision Making

SSRN

Article

Know Your Customers' 'Jobs to Be Done'

By: Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon and David S. Duncan

Firms have never known more about their customers, but their innovation processes remain hit-or-miss. Why? According to Christensen and his coauthors, product developers focus too much on building customer profiles and looking for correlations in data. To create... View Details

Keywords: Customer Relationship Management

Register to Read

Article

Sales Methodologies and Selling

By: Frank V. Cespedes

Sales methodologies play an important role. A common approach in a sales force allows for consistency, dissemination of best practices, acceleration of learning, and it helps the firm to scale because management then has common metrics to monitor and evaluate. However,... View Details

Keywords: Methodology; Sales; Analysis

July 1985 (Revised July 1990)
Case

Atlantic Corp.

By: Peter Tufano

Two forest products manufacturers negotiate the sale of a group of assets. ACRS would allow the buyer to rapidly depreciate the stepped up basis to justify a high valuation. The seller recently paid greenmail, and this transaction may be linked to its desire to avoid... View Details

Keywords: Assets; Negotiation; Acquisition; Forest Products Industry

Educators

04 Jul 2010
News

Housing bust's severity surprising

18 Feb 2013
News

Anticipating this week's housing stats — without dread

May 2014
Article

Cynicism in Negotiation: When Communication Increases Buyers' Skepticism

By: Eyal Ert, Stephanie J. Creary and Max H. Bazerman

The economic literature on negotiation shows that strategic concerns can be a barrier to agreement, even when the buyer values the good more than the seller. Yet behavioral research demonstrates that human interaction can overcome these strategic concerns through... View Details

Keywords: Trust; Information Asymmetry; Perspective Taking; Reactive Devaluation

October 2022
Exercise

Shanty Real Estate: Updated Confidential Information for Homebuyer

By: Michael Luca, Jesse M. Shapiro and Nathan Sun

Shanty is a simulation in which students inhabit the role of either a traditional home buyer or an iBuyer, both bidding on the same condo. The traditional home buyer has access to a “comp sheet” of similar properties that have recently sold, and has done a walkthrough.... View Details

Keywords: Algorithm; Decision Choices and Conditions; Decision Making; Market Timing; Measurement and Metrics

October 2007 (Revised February 2008)
Background Note

Evaluating M&A Deals: Accretion vs. Dilution of Earnings-per-share

By: Carliss Y. Baldwin

When discussing the pros and cons of an acquisition, practitioners often talk about the impact of the deal on the buyer's earnings-per-share (eps). An acquisition is said to be "accretive" if the buyer's eps goes up post-deal; it is "dilutive" if the buyer's eps goes... View Details

Keywords: Business Earnings; Mergers and Acquisitions; Private Equity; Negotiation Deal

Educators

November 1987 (Revised March 1993)
Background Note

Global Semiconductor Industry--1987

By: David B. Yoffie

In 1987, the global semiconductor industry was coming out of the deepest recession in its 40 year history. The note examines the competitive dynamics of this industry over time, the nature of its technology, and the sources of competitive advantage. The role of buyer... View Details

Keywords: Financial Crisis; Globalization; Crisis Management; Consumer Behavior; Competitive Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Technology; Semiconductor Industry