Unlike last year, 2026 will not reward ‘steady as you go’. Industrial winners must rewrite the rules of growth, starting with the customers they already have, turning AI into measurable margin, and shifting from one-off sales to durable revenue. In this masterclass, we unpack the five commercial moves that will separate leaders from laggards.
2025 was a year of stabilization without celebration. Global GDP limped along at roughly 3.2% and advanced economies stalled around 1.5%. Inflation eased but refused to return to central bank targets. Tariffs shifted from tactical to structural, supply chains re-regionalized, and executives (battered by volatility) played defense.
Last year, industrials focused on weathering the storm. In 2026, they must make the storm work for them. Industrial firms face a pivotal choice: march on as before or reinvent their commercial models to drive real growth in a structurally lower-growth world.
In this masterclass, we unpack the key lessons from the past year and lay out five commercial shifts industrial leaders must seize in 2026 with actionable insights and Simon-Kucher rigor.
1. Precision growth: Your installed base is your biggest asset
2025 trend: With macro growth depressed and new logos hard to win, many industrials retrenched. They cut costs, paused investments, and trimmed portfolios. In Europe, this meant defensive postures. In the US, firms quietly built customer analytics capabilities inspired by SaaS.
2026 prediction: The next frontier is mining your existing base instead of finding new demand. Think SaaS economics applied to industrial hardware and services: cohort analysis, churn prediction, and cross-sell propensity models. Customers are already buying, just not always from you. Start by naming an “Installed-Base GM”: a leader tasked with ranking accounts, developing prescriptive offers, and establishing a GTM measure for activating precision.
2. AI grows from hype to margin lever
2025 trend: AI pilots proliferated, headlines continued to outpace outcomes, but green shoots started to emerge. Organizations ran isolated proofs of concept but stopped short of tying them to margin or customer value.
2026 prediction: AI pricing isn’t future talk; it’s now. Tools from Simon-Kucher and others are delivering self-learning engines that adjust mark-ups on utilization, backlog, energy costs, and competitive signals in real time. Industrial buyers don’t want buzzwords. They want better margin capture, faster pricing cycles, and contextual pricing that accounts for resource scarcity. That’s where AI becomes a margin defense and growth lever.
3. Recurring revenue is now the baseline
2025 trend: Recurring revenue was a differentiator, not a baseline. Hardware was still sold the old way: upfront capital spending with erratic retrofit revenue streams.
2026 prediction: The industrial revenue model has flipped. Successful players will hook customers with outcomes and lock in value with subscriptions. Projects where customers accept ~25% higher spend for outcome-linked offerings and velocity increases are the new benchmark. Recurring models encourage discipline. You must articulate the customer’s job-to-be-done, tie pricing to value delivered, and govern performance with transparent KPIs. Done right, this shifts customers from cost to investment thinking.
4. Regionalized competition demands localized commercial models
2025 trend: Tariffs and trade frictions silenced the era of global price harmonization. Europe watched Chinese imports swell as policy lagged; the US remained insulated by tariffs but felt second-order supply pressures.
2026 prediction: Tariffs are sticky. Localization is no longer optional. Dynamic, region-specific pricing and go-to-market governance will be the difference between winning and merely surviving.
Global pricing isn’t broad regional guidance anymore. Take a global price list and treat it like a starting point, not a mandate. Today’s precision systems codify logic that adjusts net prices by region, channel, and product based on cost inputs, tariff exposure, and competitive threats.
5. China has moved from being a growth opportunity to becoming a competitive force
2025 trend: Chinese industrial peers pivoted from domestic saturation to global market entry, exporting at deflationary cost structures. European sentiment split between opportunity and threat.
2026 prediction: This is the wake-up call. China isn’t merely another market. It’s a strong competitor. European firms should expect deflationary imports to push margins and price floors downward unless commercial models adapt. The US may be sheltered by tariffs, but global pricing corridors are narrowing. The only long-term defense is a sharper commercial playbook: premium bundles, outcome pricing, channel performance incentives, and continuous value communication.
Bringing it together: Your best first moves in 2026
These shifts happen in sequence and in service of one goal: elevating commercial performance in a low-growth world.
Industrial CEOs must start here:
- Formalize installed-base growth as a strategic objective, not a side project.
- Operationalize AI pricing with real milestones tied to margin capture.
- Rethink revenue models to favor recurring, outcome-linked structures.
- Regionalize pricing governance with digital tools and audit trails.
- Deploy a competitive strategy room for pricing and offer response to Chinese entrants.
If 2025 was about endurance, 2026 is all about strategic action. Industries are converging on a simple truth: the commercial model will drive value creation more than the macro environment ever did. Industrial leaders who embrace precision growth, AI-augmented pricing, and outcome-based revenue will win.
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