Selling and sales management for successful servitization: a systematic review and research agenda
Christian Kowalkowski et al.
Abstract
Servitization—the shift from product to service-centric business models—has attracted widespread attention, yet best practices for selling services and transforming the salesforce remain unclear. In response, this study systematically reviews the literature on selling and sales management for servitization. Analyzing 66 articles across 21 journals, we identify three key themes: customer engagement throughout the purchase journey, skills and abilities of selling actors, and sales management support. Our integrative framework highlights how the selling of services and solutions necessitates a collaborative, cross-functional process of customer engagement across various stages of the journey. Ideally, this engagement fosters recurring cycles with loyalty loops, driven by proactive customer success management. We also present a comprehensive research agenda with four key themes bridging critical gaps in current knowledge. From a managerial perspective, our review underscores that servitization necessitates extensive organizational changes beyond the sales function, affecting not only what firms sell but also how they sell.
6 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.44 × 0.4 = 0.18 |
| M · momentum | 0.65 × 0.15 = 0.10 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.