From strategist to field manager: How can sales management adapt to the post-Covid “new normal”?
(A2023-114532)

AUTHORS

PASCAL BRASSIER, UNIVERSITE CLERMONT AUVERGNE - CleRMa Lab; Xavier Martin, Leadership Campus SAS

ABSTRACT

There is a now a consensus in the literature on the observation that the Covid pandemic effected significantly the business environment. This research investigates it has deeply modified the role of sales managers and their teams in this “new normal” context. Sales professionals were not prepared for such a situation, and various ways of dealing with it were implemented in the emergency. Given the lack of academic work on this subject, we designed a qualitative study based on a series of interviews with sales managers in two European countries. A content analysis and a semantic network analysis allowed us to identify distinct categories in their discourse. Our results show (1) how sales teams perceived this period of crisis, (2) how sales managers reacted, and (3) how they project their role in the aftermath of this global crisis, between strategic and operational missions, between customer management and sales force support.