Why Salespeople Fear Pitching Radical Innovation

Salespeople can feel out of their depth when selling breakthrough products. Managers can help by creating a more collaborative sales culture.

- By Bianca Schmitz, Olaf Plötner, and Johannes Habel

Across industries, companies are investing heavily in radical innovations, such as new software layers for traditional hardware, Al-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 Al add-on to the Salesforce CRM system.

Managers often assume that the problem stems from customers' risk aversion or the product's limited technical maturity. Our research points to a human factor on the supplier side: sales professionals' fear of losing face when discussing something radically new.

This is not the usual fear of rejection in sales. It is a subtle, self-conscious feeling that undermines confidence and performance just when the company requires them most.

How the Fear of Losing Face Holds Salespeople Back

In the research article “Selling Radical Innovations,” coauthored with Julian Schmalstieg and Andreas Eggert and published in Industrial Marketing Management last October, we examine highly innovative products that lagged behind expectations. To that end, we interviewed 69 sales executives, salespeople, and customers from three global manufacturers and surveyed 400 managers from a diverse sample of industrial manufacturers.

We found that when products are radically new, salespeople experience a distinct fear of appearing incompetent to customers. This stems from their anticipation of consultation failures, such as giving incorrect information, being unable to answer questions, or making promises the company cannot yet keep.

These worries lead to hesitation, resulting in salespeople avoiding deep conversations, retreating from new opportunities, and relying on established offerings they can confidently explain.