The New Norm for Sales Organizations: Impact of Technology During Environmental Turbulence

Many sales organizations are working virtually and connecting with customers differently because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic. In response to this pandemic, which is a prime example of environmental turbulence, many companies are challenged to be more innovative to maintain communication and collaboration with customers (Hartmann and Lussier 2020). Turbulence is an element of the business environment that constrains organizational behavior and performance. This has placed a focus on salespeople embracing collaboration tools and practices to support the new norm of the virtual sales environment. In the last two years, sales organizations’ ability to conduct face-to-face meetings with clients and prospects have been limited. Face-to-face meeting, luncheons, conferences, business events were all but gone due to the pandemic. Yet the responsibility of creating pipeline, delivering sales results and attaining quota never disappeared. Sales organizations have shown the ability to thrive through resiliency through not only grit but technical innovation. The impact of turbulence on performance has been investigated in a series of empirical studies, mostly focused on private sector organizations. A majority of these studies support the proposition that turbulence has a negative effect on performance (e.g., Anderson and Tushman 2001; Li and Atuahene-Gima and Ko 2001; Kuivalainen et al. 2004; Lin and Germain 2003). However, previous research suggests that in a turbulent environment, a firm will tend to make more adjustments and adaptations to become successful than in a stable environment (Sawyer 1993). Miller (1987) argues that as perceived environmental turbulence increases, the firm should devote more attention to innovation to gain advantages from its environment and for the organization. Business-to-business (B2B) organizations have experienced challenges such as an increase in the number of stakeholders in the sales process, customer knowledge, competition, advancements in technology and globalization (Arli, Bauer, and Palmatier 2018; Hartmann, Wieland, and Vargo 2018; Lim 2020; Lussier and Hartmann 2017). The objective of this paper is to build off this existing research and present a conceptual model illustrating the sales ecosystem’s ability to exemplify resilience and leverage technology to address the challenges the recent pandemic has presented to sales organizations. In this paper we conceptualize how environmental turbulence can impact performance. Using resource-based view (RBV) as the foundation we discuss the moderating relationship sales technology has between environmental turbulence and sale performance (see Figure 1). This study builds off the existing sales technology literature and discusses how even in challenging times, sales organizations cannot only survive but thrive during times of certainty. Our first step in the research is to present the theoretical background from the perspective of environmental turbulence and RBV. Next, we present the developed model (see Figure 2) and its influence on collaboration and sales performance. Future research and managerial implications are then provided to discuss the positive