What my research on the future of selling suggests about where sales value is moving
For years, one of the salesperson’s core advantages was information.
Salespeople knew more than the customer. They had product knowledge, benchmarks, market insight, and internal access the buyer often did not have.
That world is changing fast.
The internet has already reduced the value of salespeople as information providers. AI is accelerating that shift.
So the real question is no longer whether information is becoming commoditised. It is.
The real question is this:
If information is no longer the salesperson’s main source of value, where does sales value move next?
This article is part of my broader research project, The Future of Selling. Over several years, that work has drawn on literature review, workshops, keynote material, podcast conversations, recorded expert interviews, and in-depth practitioner discussions.
One of the clearest patterns to emerge is this:
Sales value is moving beyond classic solution value toward systemic value.
As information becomes easier to access, the salesperson’s value moves from knowing more to helping customers make sense of more.
Why solution value is no longer enough
Most professional salespeople no longer think of themselves as selling products.
They think they sell solutions.
That is fair. Over time, sales has evolved from talking about features to diagnosing needs, linking offers to business problems, and demonstrating outcomes such as efficiency, performance, or ROI.
That was real progress.
But my research suggests that even solution value is no longer enough in many B2B environments.
Buyers are often no longer asking only:
Does this solution solve the problem?
They are asking:
Will this help our wider system perform better under real conditions?
That is a different commercial standard.
It reflects a shift from solving isolated problems to strengthening wider systems.
What I mean by systemic value
Systemic value is the value created when a solution improves the performance, resilience, alignment, and long-term viability of the wider system around the customer.
Not just the immediate issue in front of them.
Not just the narrow business case.
Not just the local gain.
That wider system may include operations, procurement, finance, IT, compliance, sustainability, regulators, suppliers, implementation teams, and downstream stakeholders.
So the key question becomes:
How does this solution improve the wider system in which the customer operates?
That is the essence of systemic value.
Customers are not just buying a solution. They are buying a stronger system.
Why is this shift happening now
This shift is not a fashionable relabelling exercise.
It is a response to structural change.
- Markets are more interconnected.
- Supply chains are more fragile.
- Regulation is more demanding.
- Sustainability has become strategic.
- AI is making information easier to access, but not easier to apply wisely.
As a result, customers increasingly care about things that classic solution selling does not fully address.
They want to know:
- Will this reduce implementation risk?
- Will this improve continuity?
- Will this align stakeholders?
- Will this make us more resilient?
- Will this still work under real-world complexity?
That is why the scarce resource is changing.
It is no longer just about having information.
It is making sense of complexity.
What I heard in the research interviews
Across the interviews, one pattern kept returning.
Customers increasingly value salespeople who help them deal with uncertainty, not just explain an offer.
That showed up in different ways.
In some cases, the emphasis was on fragility in global markets. Customers were no longer focused only on cost or technical performance. They valued suppliers who could help them operate under volatility.
In other cases, the real value was no longer a fixed solution, but a platform or capability that allowed the customer to adapt as conditions changed.
In consulting and transformation contexts, the same pattern appeared again. The customer question was no longer just whether the solution made sense on paper. It was whether the organisation could absorb it, align around it, and make it work in practice.
Across sectors, the pattern was remarkably consistent:
Customers were buying confidence in a more complex system.
What systemic value looks like in practice
Systemic value becomes clearer when you look at what customers are actually trying to improve.
Usually, they are not mainly buying a better feature or a better pitch.
They are buying things like:
- lower downtime
- less disruption
- better stakeholder alignment
- reduced implementation risk
- stronger lifecycle performance
- more predictable outcomes
- greater resilience
- lower exposure to future shocks
That is why systemic value is broader than ROI.
ROI still matters. But the business case is now often about more than revenue uplift or cost savings.
It is also about avoiding losses, reducing fragility, smoother adoption, and stronger long-term viability.
What this means for sales
If customers increasingly buy system improvement rather than isolated solutions, then sales has to evolve too.
The salesperson of the future cannot rely mainly on being an information provider.
That role is under pressure.
The more valuable role is different.
It is the role of someone who can:
- diagnose systems, not just needs
- uncover hidden interdependencies
- identify bottlenecks and value leaks
- translate across stakeholders
- reduce ambiguity
- connect the offer to the customer’s wider reality
- help the customer build confidence around change
That is a more demanding role than classic solution selling.
But it is also a more defensible one.
Because information can be automated much more easily than contextual judgment, stakeholder orchestration, and system-level diagnosis.
The future salesperson is not mainly an information provider, but a sensemaker, orchestrator, and guide through complexity.
Conclusion: the next frontier of value selling
The research behind The Future of Selling suggests that we are seeing a real shift in how commercial value is created.
The salesperson who mainly informs will keep losing ground.
The salesperson who simply reframes products as solutions will also struggle more than before.
The salesperson who helps customers reduce fragility, align stakeholders, improve resilience, and strengthen the wider system around a decision will become more valuable.
That is what I mean by systemic value.
And in a world where the internet and AI are steadily reducing the scarcity of information, systemic value may be one of the clearest answers to the question that started this research in the first place:
What kind of value remains for sales to create?
My answer is this:
- Not just informational value.
- Not just solution value.
- But systemic value.
That, in my view, is where the future of selling is heading.
Further reading
For readers who want to explore the broader thinking behind this argument, these are useful next steps:
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Gartner on rep-free B2B buying and AI-assisted purchase journeys https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-03-09-gartner-sales-survey-finds-67-percent-of-b2b-buyers-prefer-a-rep-free-experience
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McKinsey on omnichannel B2B growth and hybrid commercial models https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/growth-marketing-and-sales/our-insights/the-multiplier-effect-how-b2b-winners-grow
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Stephen Vargo and Robert Lusch on service-dominant logic https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11747-015-0456-3
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James F. Moore on business ecosystems https://hbr.org/1993/05/predators-and-prey-a-new-ecology-of-competition
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World Economic Forum on global value-chain resilience https://www.weforum.org/publications/charting-the-course-for-global-value-chain-resilience/
