Integrating neuroscience into B2B sales research: foundations, frontiers, and expert directions

Neuroscience has emerged as a promising lens to uncover latent cognitive and emotional mechanisms underlying consumer behavior in marketing and sales. While its application in business-to-consumer (B2C) contexts has received growing scholarly attention, its relevance and potential contributions to business-to-business (B2B) sales remain underexplored and theoretically fragmented. Addressing this gap, our study asks: How has research on neuroscience in B2B selling evolved, and what key areas remain underdeveloped in both theory and practice? To answer this, we adopt a sequential mixed-methods design combining a systematic critical literature review with a Delphi study involving 18 internationally recognized B2B sales experts. Drawing from five leading academic databases—Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, PsycINFO, and Google Scholar—we map current literature on the field. Findings reveal a reduced academic coverage, with neuroimaging techniques such as electroencephalography (EEG) and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) offering insights into trust-building, engagement, and decision-making processes critical to B2B interactions. The Delphi study complements these insights by surfacing areas of expert consensus and divergence, particularly around ethical considerations, methodological limitations, and organizational barriers to adoption. Experts consistently call for the development of standardized protocols, cross-disciplinary frameworks, and empirical validation to enhance managerial relevance. Taken together, our findings position neuroscience as a potentially transformative—yet currently underutilized—paradigm for advancing B2B sales theory and practice. We conclude by outlining a future research agenda aimed at fostering methodological rigor, industry-specific applications, and broader contextual generalizability.