In the rapidly evolving landscape of industrial innovation, a major hurdle for business customers is the inherent uncertainty associated with adopting new products. This uncertainty is often exacerbated by the digital transformation, which contributes to an overwhelming influx of information. Central to this challenge is the inadequacy of knowledge transfer from salespeople to business customers, leading to a suboptimal understanding of the new offerings and consequently, a reluctance to adopt these innovations. Despite its significance, the strategies to effectively mitigate this issue have remained largely unexplored. Our study addresses this gap by examining the impact of salespeople's selling capabilities on the adoption of knowledge by business customers. Selling capability, defined as the capability of individuals to perform salespeople's tasks, emerges as a critical factor in facilitating customers' understanding and acceptance of new industrial innovations. We conducted comprehensive surveys with business customers focusing on their experiences with recent incremental industrial innovations, complemented by objective purchase data from company records. This research is pioneering in empirically establishing that the adoption of knowledge by customers acts as a mediating factor between salespeople's selling capabilities and the purchase of innovations. Intriguingly, our findings reveal the existence of an optimal level of selling capability necessary for effective knowledge transfer, which varies depending on specific contingencies. This discovery is crucial for sales, innovation, and marketing managers, suggesting that relying solely on selling capabilities might be insufficient. We recommend the integration of additional strategies, such as assertive listening, to enhance knowledge transfer. Such strategies can prevent the pitfalls of overreliance on selling capabilities alone and foster a more effective adoption of industrial innovations among business customers. Our findings offer valuable insights for professionals aiming to navigate the complexities of selling industrial innovations in the digital age, providing a nuanced understanding of how to tailor their approach to improve customer receptivity and adoption rates.

在快速发展的工业创新领域，企业客户面临的一个主要障碍是采用新产品所固有的不确定性。数字化转型往往会加剧这种不确定性，数字化转型会导致信息大量涌入。这一挑战的核心是销售人员向企业客户的知识转移不足，导致对新产品的理解不佳，从而不愿采用这些创新。尽管其意义重大，但有效缓解这一问题的策略在很大程度上仍未得到探索。我们的研究通过检查销售人员的销售能力对商业客户采用知识的影响来解决这一差距。销售能力被定义为个人执行销售人员任务的能力，成为促进客户理解和接受新工业创新的关键因素。我们对商业客户进行了全面调查，重点关注他们最近增量工业创新的经验，并辅以公司记录中的客观购买数据。这项研究在实证上具有开创性，证明客户对知识的采用是销售人员销售能力和创新产品购买之间的中介因素。有趣的是，我们的研究结果揭示了有效知识转移所需的最佳销售能力水平的存在，该水平根据具体的突发事件而变化。这一发现对于销售、创新和营销经理至关重要，表明仅仅依靠销售能力可能是不够的。我们建议整合其他策略，例如自信的倾听，以增强知识转移。此类策略可以防止过度依赖销售能力的陷阱，并促进企业客户更有效地采用工业创新。我们的研究结果为旨在应对数字时代销售工业创新的复杂性的专业人士提供了宝贵的见解，让他们对如何调整方法以提高客户接受度和采用率有细致入微的了解。