Leadership and Team-Building 
        in Technical B2B Sales and 
        Marketing 
         
        Henri Vuorela 
        MASTER'S THESIS 
        March 2021 
         
        International Business Management 
           
                                               
          ABSTRACT 
          Tampereen ammattikorkeakoulu 
          Tampere University of Applied Sciences 
          Master's Degree in Business Administration 
          International Business Management 
           
          VUORELA, HENRI:  
          Leadership and Team-Building in Technical B2B Sales and Marketing 
           
          Master's thesis 79 pages, appendices 2 pages 
          March 2021 
          The purpose of this study was to gather information on leadership and team-
          building techniques in technical sales. This study is small scale research con-
          ducted for a company with technical sales teams. 
           
          The research focuses on topics around leadership, the technical sales team, and 
          team building. The objective of this research was to build an efficient and flexible 
          technical sales team and develop leadership techniques for the technical sales 
          team. 
           
          The research used action research as the methodology and qualitative research 
          as the primary data collection method. The data were collected through an anon-
          ymous questionnaire, observation, and semi-structured interviews from 11 team 
          members. The data collected in the research was confidential in nature, and for 
          that reason, it was not published in this research. This includes interviews and 
          observations. 
           
          This research included two objectives. The first one was to build an efficient and 
          flexible technical sales team. There was remarkable development forward in this 
          regard, and some changes were made to the teams and roles, and various tech-
          niques developed in this research were used to increase the teams' efficiency 
          and flexibility. 
           
          As the second objective, team-building techniques were developed for a technical 
          sales team. These five techniques were; investigate, communicate, define roles, 
          set goals, and develop. Under these techniques, all the elements that rose during 
          the research process were assembled. 
           
          As a conclusion of this research, it is claimed that significant benefits can be 
          achieved by combining the five techniques developed in this research with the 
          Tuckman’s (1965) forming stages found in the theoretical framework. 
           
          Recommendations for further research could include testing these team-building 
          techniques with different technical sales organisations in a new team and create 
          more detailed definitions of techniques. 
          Keywords: leadership, team-building, b2b, technical sales 
           
                                             3 
          CONTENTS 
          1  INTRODUCTION .................................................................................. 6 
           1.1  Case organisation .......................................................................... 7 
           1.2  Case introduction ........................................................................... 8 
           1.3  Research objective ......................................................................... 9 
           1.4  Research structure ......................................................................... 9 
          2  THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK .......................................................... 11 
           2.1  Leadership ................................................................................... 11 
             2.1.1  Leadership today ................................................................ 12 
             2.1.2  Sales Leadership ................................................................ 13 
             2.1.3  Team Leadership ................................................................ 14 
           2.2  Technical B2B Sales and Marketing ............................................ 16 
             2.2.1  B2B Sales and Marketing ................................................... 17 
             2.2.2  Technical sales ................................................................... 18 
           2.4  Team building............................................................................... 20 
             2.4.1  Forming teams.................................................................... 22 
             2.4.2  Team core values ............................................................... 25 
             2.4.3  Techniques of excellence ................................................... 28 
           2.5  Conclusions of the theory ............................................................. 31 
          3  ACTION RESEARCH PROCESS ....................................................... 33 
           3.1  Research strategy ........................................................................ 34 
           3.2  Designing and planning ................................................................ 37 
           3.3  Strategic action planning .............................................................. 39 
           3.4  Implementing and doing ............................................................... 40 
             3.4.1  Kick-off ............................................................................... 42 
             3.4.2  Questionnaire ..................................................................... 44 
             3.4.3  Developing ......................................................................... 48 
             3.4.4  Observation ........................................................................ 53 
             3.4.5  Interviews ........................................................................... 55 
           3.5  Evaluating .................................................................................... 63 
          4  TEAM-BUILDING TECHNIQUES ....................................................... 65 
           4.1  Investigate .................................................................................... 66 
           4.2  Communicate ............................................................................... 67 
           4.3  Define Roles ................................................................................ 68 
           4.4  Set Goals ..................................................................................... 70 
           4.5  Develop ........................................................................................ 72 
          5  CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................. 74 
           
                                               4 
          REFERENCES ........................................................................................ 77 
          APPENDICES .......................................................................................... 80 
            Appendix 1. Anonymous questionnaire ............................................... 80 
            Appendix 2. The interview questions .................................................. 81 
             
           
          LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES 
           
          TABLE 1. Results from the anonymous questionnaire. ..................................... 45 
           
          FIGURE 1. Five stages of team development (Tuckman 1965, modified). ....... 22 
          FIGURE 2. A basic action research model (Lewin 1946, modified). ................. 35 
          FIGURE 3. Stages in action research (McDonnell 2014, modified). ................. 36 
          FIGURE 4. Timeline and stages of the research process. ................................ 37 
          FIGURE 5. Process of action research (McDonnell 2014, modified). ............... 41 
          FIGURE 6. Team-building techniques created.................................................. 65 
          FIGURE 7. Team-building techniques with Tuckman’s (1965) stages. ............. 75