Understanding the enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes caused by the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose: The COVID-19 pandemic has led to major sales strategy and process changes as many interactions migrated from face-to-face to virtual environments. The nature of the interactions changed, and sales firms, the sales function and salespeople created new processes to excel in virtual environments. As sales processes evolve further, this paper aims to focus on understanding the enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes. In addition, this study seeks to understand the characteristics of enduring shifts and how they are distinct from temporary shifts. Design/methodology/approach: This qualitative analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the sales organizations and salespeople over the period from the start of the pandemic to early 2022. The authors interviewed 66 sales professionals from different countries and industries to better understand the temporary and enduring shifts in sales strategy and processes, adopting ad inductive and narrative approach. Findings: There are four major findings. First, four key themes emerged: increased digitalization, resistance to digitalization, sales process changes and sales organization transformation. Second, changes are classified as temporary, permanent and accelerated changes. Third, some proposed changes were not supported. Finally, five findings were found that were not discussed in previous literature. Originality/value: This paper finds distinctive findings that offer additional valuable insights that connect to and extend existing literature. These include emerging themes, classification shifts, unsupported proposed changes and unique findings.