The AMA Winter Academic Conference is one of the most important academic conferences in the marketing discipline, bringing together scholars and practitioners from around the globe. During this year’s conference, which was split into an online part on February 10-11 on the Whova platform and an in-person part on February 18-20 in Las Vegas, USA, Professor Dr. Manfred Krafft and Victoria Kramer from the Chair of Marketing Management hosted a special session on the topic “The Future of Solution Selling”. The session was originally planned as part of the in-person conference in Las Vegas. However, due to the increasing uncertainty associated with the current COVID-19 pandemic, they decided to move the session to the virtual part of the conference to ensure the safety of the session participants.

The session was split into two parts. In the first part, the past, present, and future of solution selling research and practice were discussed in a panel session moderated by Professor Krafft. As panelists, Werner Reinartz (University of Cologne, Germany), Shankar Ganesan (University of Notre Dame, Indiana, USA), and Anna Salonen (University of Jyväskylä, Finland), all leading scholars and experts in the areas of solution selling and inter-organizational relationships, were invited to the session. Afterward, in the second part of the session, four papers on current topics in the area of solution selling were presented. Victoria Kramer presented her paper on the role of customer adaptiveness to enhance customers’ perceived solution effectiveness, which is joint work together with Professor Dr. Sundar Bharadwaj (University of Georgia, Atlanta, USA), Professor Dr. Manfred Krafft, and Professor Dr. Stefan Worm (BI Oslo, Norway). Professor Dr. Maik Eisenbeiß (University of Bremen, Germany) presented a paper on “Spotting and Exploiting Selling Opportunities During Service Visits”, which was followed by a presentation by Professor Dr. Sascha Alavi (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany), entitled “The Ambivalent Role of Monetary Sales Incentives in Service Innovation Selling”.

The session was closed by a theoretical outlook on enhancing research in the area of solution selling and value-based selling in a presentation by Joona Keränen on a “Theoretical Toolbox for Enhancing Value-based Selling Research”. A total of 102 participants attended the session, which was overall perceived to have been a great success.