Customer decision networks
How do teams find, prioritize and engage key stakeholders? Do differences emerge in sequence, depth or resource allocation?
LONGARENA RESEARCH / BEHAVIORAL EVIDENCE
Collaborations open · Whitepaper not yet published
How B2B sales teams
make choices in complex
enterprise selling
China B2B Organizational Sales Simulation Whitepaper
Not survey answers, but the steps teams actually take when facing a limited budget, a full customer decision network and unexpected change.
A frozen research sample
Make choices in complex selling observable.
- training classrooms
- 78
- active teams
- 361
- classroom attendances
- 1,776
- approved sales actions
- 19,733
- AI customer stakeholders
- 1,281
Real enterprise training classrooms from 2024–2026. Attendances are not unique people; action counts refer to approved, effective sales actions.
On the SalesNail simulation platform, teams represent a selling company and interact with AI customer stakeholders with distinct roles, positions and needs. They choose whom to contact, when to propose a solution and which purchasing opportunity deserves their limited budget. Across three rounds, records capture each action’s sequence, target, cost and approval.
RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Questions beyond “who won?”
Exploration and focus
When do teams shift from broad exploration to selected opportunities? How does resource concentration change across rounds?
Proposal timing
Before a first proposal, has the team engaged the relevant key decision-maker? How are discovery and prescription connected?
Coordination and adaptation
How do teams with shared decisions and a designated operator act? How do they adapt to designed shocks such as leadership changes?
Frozen evidence. Reproducible counts. Conclusions still to come.
A fixed cohort
The 78-classroom list does not change with production updates or collaboration responses. It spans 58 different scenarios.
Independent verification
Twenty-two behavioral and configuration datasets were extracted per classroom, hash-checked and independently recounted.
Rerun rather than trust
Collaborators receive a metric dictionary, classroom summary and offline checks. Every result should state denominators, missingness and snapshot version.
Frozen source：b2b-whitebook-78-v1.1
PRIVACY & METHODS
Clear boundaries before public claims.
- A convenience sample of training classrooms, not a nationally representative survey. Simulation behavior is not real-world sales performance.
- Message bodies and win/loss outcomes are not currently available. Roughly one in ten actions lacks a cost value, which remains unknown.
- This page and the invitations contain aggregate information only. Company identities, participant identities and raw classroom records are not public.
- Public strata require at least 10 verified organizations and 30 teams. No individual, team or company rankings.
- Individual-level research data is not available for public download. Access requires a data-use, anonymization and publication-review agreement.
COLLABORATION
Two paths to one trustworthy study.
Faculty & independent researchers
Bring a question from selling, organizational behavior, management, education or process mining. Align on one or two questions and conduct reproducible analysis. Academic papers and the business whitepaper proceed in parallel; authorship follows academic contribution.
- A 45-minute online conversation
- Align questions and the analysis plan
- Sign an agreement and receive restricted data
- Divide work; statistical and privacy review
The first collaboration window closes November 30, 2026. Later collaborators remain welcome. Early findings may support subsequent research-funding preparation.
Academic collaboration ↗Download collaboration invitation ↓ English · PDFTraining institutions & participating enterprises
Verify the hosting relationship, participant organization type and training context for your classrooms. Verification concerns facts; it gives no institution a veto over research conclusions.
- Nominate a contact person
- Privately receive only relevant classroom records
- Check and correct within ten working days
- Sign a one-page verification and use authorization
Verification completed by mid-December 2026 enters the first edition; later verification enters subsequent editions. Anonymous aggregate comparisons follow publication, not rankings.
Classroom verification ↗Download collaboration invitation ↓ English · PDFVerify first. Publish second.
October–November 2026
Research conversations, question alignment and classroom verification.
December 2026
Begin descriptive analysis; mid-December is the first-edition verification deadline.
Q1 2027 (planned)
Proceed toward publication subject to statistical and privacy review. Strata below the threshold will not be published.
Later editions
Verification remains open. New annual samples are frozen separately and do not overwrite the existing source.
Questions & answers
Can I download the full whitepaper now?
Not yet. The two collaboration invitations are available and describe the questions, participation and boundaries. The reviewed report will be announced in this section.
Is the raw data open?
No. Individual-level research copies are restricted to collaborators with a data-use and publication agreement. Public results are anonymized aggregates without organization or participant identities.
Does the sample describe B2B selling nationally?
No. These are real training classrooms but a convenience sample, and observed behavior occurs within a simulation. The research will disclose those limits rather than equate rehearsal with real sales outcomes.
Will non-responding institutions be removed?
No. The 78-classroom cohort is frozen. Unverified institutional information is excluded from industry strata and is not inferred.
Who should I contact?
Email the LongArena Whitepaper Research Group at bill.bai@long-arena.com and indicate academic collaboration or classroom verification.
LongArena Whitepaper Research Group
Turn observed behavior into shared knowledge.
Tell us about your research interests or verification needs. Start with a conversation.
bill.bai@long-arena.comProject page updated： · Explore all research