Keeping B2B Sales Together While Everything Changes: Sales Teams, Sales Roles, and Heedful Interrelating in Solution Selling

Industrial business-to-business (B2B) sales is undergoing a transformation. Sales actors are increasingly expected to sell product–service integrated solutions, in which machinery and equipment are complemented by bespoke services such as sensors and digital technologies that track raw material use and energy consumption. At the same time, sales actors are required to incorporate environmental sustainability regulations into their interactions with buyers. For both selling and buying firms, compliance with these regulations is perceived as a “license to operate.” Product–service integrated solutions thereby support regulatory compliance by enabling data and documentation collection. These requirements increase the complexity of both the solution offered and the sales process itself. Furthermore, specialized expertise is required, and cross-functional collaboration with experts is necessary.

Meeting these expectations is challenging. The pressures associated with product–service integration and sustainability regulations are reshaping industrial B2B sales and pushing transformations. These pressures not only impact the individual sales actor but also the broader sales system, with its many actors, stakeholders, and distinct roles in the sales process. This thesis examines how these transformational pressures might shape and reshape sales roles and their dynamics, guided by the following research question: How are sales roles and role dynamics within B2B sales systems transformed in response to the dual pressures of product–service integration and environmental sustainability regulation?

The empirical context is the Danish industrial sector, a central driver of exports and a key contributor to the country’s trade surplus and industrial innovation. This thesis takes a critical realist perspective and employs a mix of methods that combines theoretical perspectives with two empirical components: a survey to establish the specific context and two qualitative multiple-case studies based on interviews.

This thesis offers several theoretical and managerial contributions. First, this thesis empirically shows and suggests how the dual transformational pressures of increased product–service integration and environmental regulations change and expand the B2B sales role. Second, this thesis contributes empirical manifestations of sales role transformation at the intersection of sales and product–service integration and environmental sustainability. The thesis shows how the pressures may induce role stress and power struggles in sales organizations due to changes in role expectations and responsibilities. Third, the thesis contributes to the growing body of holistic approaches to sales by suggesting that high role expectations extend beyond sales roles. This thesis suggests specialized and equal B2B sales roles working side by side as a team, thereby overcoming contextual role siloing. The introduction of heedful interrelating suggests how sales processes may assume a teaming process in flux alongside the unfolding sales process. This thesis suggests that heedful interrelating may not merely be a theoretical construct for teaming processes but may also be a practical necessity in complex B2B sales. Fourth, the dissolution of the sales team as a “thing,” equivalent to a fixed structure, and its reframing as a process or flux have implications for the ontological foundation of the sales teaming process within the role system. This shapes how sales teaming processes may be further studied, managed, and supported.

Keywords: B2B sales, sales roles, product–service integrated solutions, sustainability regulations, role theory, heedful interrelating