Abstract
During disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of any commercial organization becomes a critical characteristic. This paper examines the flexibility of the sales process—that is, adaptive selling—as an analog to resiliency, and recommends that firms create an adaptive salesforce to increase resilience. By examining the extant research and conducting interviews with sales leaders, the findings of this paper suggest that an adaptive salesforce should focus on three areas of change within team structures. The first is an increase in flexibility and adaptiveness for the functions that the salesforce performs. The second area is an improvement of the adaptiveness of scale in which sales functions can be rapidly insourced or outsourced. The final area is technology adaptiveness, in which the salesforce adopts the use of technologies that are most relevant to customers. Implications for the firm, sales function, and individual salespeople are also derived.
•During disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic, the resilience of sales organizations becomes critical.•We suggest a new sales structure that we label an “Adaptive Salesforce”.•An adaptive salesforce should focus on three areas of change within team structures—functional, scale, and technology.•An adaptive salesforce is functionally adaptive. Sales organizations can perform all sales functions.•An adaptive salesforce is scale adaptive. Sales organizations can quickly increase or decrease efforts.•An adaptive salesforce is technology adaptive. Sales organizations can easily match the technology needs of customers.
