Managing the sales force through the unexpected exogenous COVID-19 crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is bringing about immediate, wide-ranging, and severe challenges for many B2B sales forces. Such challenges call attention to the importance of frameworks that can be applied to aid sales managers in understanding the impact of and responses to COVID-19. Leavitt's model of organizational change, and socio-technical systems theory, point to the importance of considering four inter-related social (i.e., human and structure) and technical (i.e., task and technology) variables when examining organizational change, and recognizing that change to one variable can be predicated upon and/or bring about change to other variables. We tailor Leavitt's model to the B2B sales context and recognize the potential for exogenous shocks such as COVID-19 to impact each variable. In doing so, we conduct a review of practitioner-oriented articles, interviews with key informants working for B2B organizations, and a webinar with sales professionals. These efforts lead to a rich discussion and set of considerations that can help B2B sales forces better understand and respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and other crises.