Transitioning from product to service-led growth in manufacturing firms: Emergent challenges in selecting and managing the industrial sales force

•Top management frequently faces strong resistance to change from within the sales organization when implementing service-growth strategies.•The sales force plays a pivotal role in navigating a successful transition from a goods-centric to a service-led business model.•Selling services differs from selling goods in industrial markets.•We identify specific proficiencies and personality traits that enable services sales in industrial contexts.•Top management must get deeply involved in managing the transitioning process at the industrial sales organization's level.

Despite the increasing strategic value of service-led growth in competitive and commoditized markets, firms frequently encounter problems orienting their industrial sales forces toward these new organizational objectives. To identify important potential challenges to firms attempting to make the transition to service-led growth, we conducted focus groups and depth interviews with 38 sales executives at goods-dominant business-to-business firms. Our discussion with C-suite managers uncovered four major transition issues, to wit, (1) the magnitude of change at the sales organization level triggered by a service transformation; (2) unique elements of selling hybrid offerings versus industrial goods; (3) the link between these differences and the sales proficiencies required for hybrid offering sales; and (4) potential individual differences among high-performing hybrid offering salespeople, compared with sales reps focused on goods sales. These insights highlight some of the managerial and sales force-level challenges that goods dominant firms will have to address as they attempt to initiate and maintain the transition to a service-led growth strategy.