When selling radical innovations, salespeople often worry that they'll appear incompetent, which undermines their confidence and stalls sales pipelines. New products' complexity can get in the way of knowledge transfer via traditional training approaches. Companies should instead reframe the salesperson's role from expert to orchestrator, provide consultation support through expert tandems and fast-response channels, and foster a culture that values curiosity and collaboration over perfection. Across industries, companies are investing heavily in radical innovations, such as new software layers for traditional hardware, AI-powered industrial tools, and smart services that promise to transform how customers create value. Yet, when these offerings reach the market, sales pipelines often stall. Salesforce, for example, struggled with the early commercialization of a radical innovation launched in 2016: Einstein, an AI add-on to the Salesforce CRM system. Managers often assume that the...
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