Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management

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The human side of digital transformation in sales:

review & future paths

Sascha Alavi & Johannes Habel

To cite this article: Sascha Alavi & Johannes Habel (2021) The human side of digital
transformation in sales: review & future paths, Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management,
41:2, 83-86, DOI: 10.1080/08853134.2021.1920969

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Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management
2021, VOL. 41, NO. 2, 83–86
https://doi.org/10.1080/08853134.2021.1920969

EDITORIAL

The human side of digital transformation in sales: review & future paths
Sascha Alavia and Johannes Habelb
a
Sales & Marketing Department, University of Bochum, Universitätsstraße 150, Bochum, 44780, Germany; bDepartment of Marketing &
Entrepreneurship, C.T. Bauer College of Business, University of Houston, 4750 Calhoun Road, Houston, TX77204-6021, USA

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

The digital transformation of organizations is a pervasive force which fundamentally changes Received 20 April 2021
companies and, in fact, society as a whole. For many companies, the sales force is at the center Accepted 20 April 2021
of this transformation seeing the essential role of salespeople at the customer-company interface KEYWORDS
and the exceptional quantifiability of salespeople’s work outputs and inputs. New, cutting-edge digital transformation; sales; new
sales technologies such as predictive sales analytics, virtual or augmented reality, or AI bots hold technologies; cutting-edge
the promise of significant productivity gains, yet, simultaneously may entail insidious side effects technologies; digitalization;
for sales employees and companies. While past research made significant progress in understanding sustainable digitalization;
the benefits of these new technologies, the intricate ‘human side’ of the digital transformation employee well-being; sales
remains relatively ‘uncharted territory’. With this special issue, we aim to contribute to a better management
understanding of the human side in digital transformation of sales—to augment academic
knowledge, provide immediate guidance to practitioners, and improve academic sales education.
This editorial reviews the works in the special issue, the state of digital sales transformation in
practice, and on this basis derives ideas for future research.

General relevance of digital transformation
in sales
Digital transformation in sales is pervasive and ubiquitous.
Succinctly, digital sales transformation reflects the invest-
ment, implementation and adoption of new, cutting-edge
technologies in the sales force. In this sense, firms of all
industries and sizes make substantial investments to advance
their digital sales infrastructure (Lamberton and Stephen
2016; Freimark et  al. 2018). Undoubtedly, the proliferation
of new, cutting-edge sales technologies is progressing:
Companies spend on average $4,581 on sales technologies
for each salesperson per year (Xant Labs 2017), totaling
approximately $55 billion of company investments in sales
technologies in 2019 (Gartner 2019).
The surge of new digital technologies has already fun-
damentally disrupted traditional sales processes and pro-
foundly changed the way salespeople operate (Guenzi and
Habel 2020; Mathieu, Ahearne, and Taylor 2007; Singh et  al.
2019). These new technologies comprise tools to support
salespeople in (1) collecting and analyzing customer and
market data (Schneider et  al. 2021; Sundaram et  al. 2007),
(2) supporting customer relationship management (Sun
2006), (3) selling via digital sales channels (Habel, Alavi,
and Linsenmayer 2021), and (4) facilitating communication
with customers and colleagues (Alavi, and Linsenmayer
2021). New digital technologies such as artificial intelligence,
machine learning, internet of things, smart sensors, plat-
forms, social media apps, or cloud services provide a
substantial opportunity for sales organizations to realize
essential increases in productivity. However, at the same
time, these technologies often possess an invasive nature:
The amount, velocity, detail, and completeness of data ren-
ders salespeople largely transparent, providing unprece-
dented monitoring and influence opportunities. As a result,
for many companies the digital transformation is a trou-
blesome change management process with many pitfalls,
especially when it comes to sales employees’ buy-in.
In light of this tremendous practical relevance, numerous
academic articles have carved out the benefits of new tech-
nology to increase sales performance. That is, extant research
showed that salespeople’s usage of technologies can increase
their revenues, profitability, cross-selling success, upselling
success, and improve customer relationships (Wieseke et  al.
2011; Singh et  al. 2019). However, current sales research is
lacking an understanding how digital transformation affects
and is affected by individual salespeople and sales managers.
Seeing the aforementioned levels of invasiveness, transpar-
ency, and power to monitor and influence, the question
arises how sales managers and salespeople are personally
affected and how they cope with new technologies.
The state of the digital transformation in sales:
some insights
To provide a glimpse into the state and progress of the
digital transformation of the sales force, we have conducted

CONTACT Sascha Alavi sascha.alavi@rub.de

© 2021 Pi Sigma Epsilon National Educational Foundation
84 S. ALAVI AND J. HABEL
a survey among 128 experienced sales managers from dif-
ferent industries. The managers provided insights on the
adoption of different sales technologies and rated the stage
of the technologies in the technology lifecycle. The responses
indicate some progress in the digitalization of the sales force,
though the progress seems slow-paced, taking small steps
instead of big leaps. Managers with whom we discussed the
digitalization of their sales force emphasized that such a
slow-paced, considerate approach to digitally transforming
the sales force may be prudent, seeing the risks involved.
The top three sales technologies named by the sales man-
agers were ‘evergreens’: (1) CRM systems (89% adoption),
tablets (78% adoption), and social media applications (73%
adoption). However, the sales managers reported significant
less adoption of sales technologies that might be character-
ized as cutting-edge: Virtual or augmented reality applica-
tions (27%), big data analytics (39%), predictive analytics
(17%), internet of things applications (21%), and sales and
service bots (11%) seem to be less prevalent in sales orga-
nizations. Regarding the maturity and novelty of the sales
technologies, 62% of the managers clearly marked CRM
systems as mature sales technology, while the key, upcoming
sales technologies in a growth stage were predictive sales
analytics (81%), internet of things applications (70%), big
data analytics (68%), and sales and service bots (65%). For
sales managers an essential challenge is how to ideally imple-
ment these novel technologies in their sales organization
and effectively support the adoption by their sales employees.
The human side of digital transformation in
sales: some empirical insights
While digital initiatives bear the potential to achieve 1.8
times higher earnings (World Economic Forum 2018), a
recent study of the Boston Consulting Group (2020) found
that 70% of digital transformations fall short of their objec-
tives. Only 48% of companies introducing new digital tech-
nologies are able to raise their performance with them
(McKinsey & Company 2017). According to a Forbes study,
with 70% the main cause for the failure of digitization ini-
tiatives is that employees are reluctant to use digital tech-
nologies (Forbes 2019) since they fear to lose their jobs or
that their tasks may change dramatically owing to the usage
of digital technologies (Microsoft 2017).
To probe into salespeople’s perceptions and reactions
to the implementation of new, cutting-edge sales technol-
ogies in their work environment, we have conducted a
cross-industry survey of 584 salespeople. The results of
this survey paint a multi-facetted, rich picture of sales-
people’s hopes and fears connected to new sales technol-
ogies. Salespeople’s seem to harbor complex, ambivalent
perceptions of this new force in their work environment,
characterizing new sales technology as a blessing and
curse. Generally, salespeople hold positive views regarding
the potential of new digital sales technologies. 71% of the
salespeople in the survey state the new technologies
strongly support them in their work. Only a minority of
15% indicated that they disapprove of new sales
technology. However, for some salespeople, the new digital
tools raise fears and concerns: 27% of the salespeople feel
that their job may be threatened due to the new technol-
ogies, 25% feel likely to be replaced, 23% feel likely to
be replaced by colleagues with better technology skills,
and 21% fear a rescinding of their personal power in the
company due to a coerced sharing of knowledge.
Importantly, while some salespeople seem to harbor such
concerns, still, the majority does not necessarily share
them. However, concerns regarding job autonomy seem
to be much more widespread: 61% have the feeling that
they can be monitored to a greater extent through the
new sales technologies and 33% indicate that the new
tools contribute to their mental exhaustion at the end of
a workday. Evidently, despite the inherent promises of
elevated productivity, at least a part of the sales force
harbors substantial concerns when it comes to new sales
technologies. For sales managers this points to the urgent
necessity to support these employees in the challenging
transformation endeavor.
One underlying theme in this respect is the pending
discussion in sales and marketing research—in fact, in
society as a whole—whether new digital technologies can
in fact replace humans and make human effort virtually
redundant (e.g., Castelo, Bos, and Lehmann 2019; Guenzi
and Habel 2020; Huang and Rust 2018; Lawrence et  al.
2019; Luo et  al. 2019; Xiao and Kumar 2021). This topic
recently experienced a strong surge in marketing research
as well as in practice (Hoar 2015). For example, having
the catchphrase ‘Machines vs. Humans’ in the title, Luo
et  al. (2019) recently investigated whether AI-based chat-
bots can substitute salespeople in sales calls. Similarly,
Lawrence et  al. (2019) addressed the question whether
online sales channels can effectively replace individual
salesperson attention. However, the potential of new sales
tools to substitute individual salespeople in the stages of
the personal selling process may be available in some
industries and for some business models, but very limited
in others, such as contexts with high selling complexity or
industrial settings. Relatedly, in the stages of the personal
selling process which particularly require empathetic skills
and adaptive selling (Alavi, Habel, and Linsenmayer 2019),
i.e., in the customer interaction and after-sales service,
effectiveness of automation through new digital sales tech-
nologies may be strongly limited. This finding is in line
with recent works indicating that personal attention through
salespeople is especially warranted in complex and
high-priced contexts (Alavi et  al. 2021; Habel et  al. 2020;
Lawrence et  al. 2019; Schmitz et  al. 2020). Interestingly,
this finding is in line with a recent study of the prestigious
World Economic Forum on the future of work indicating
that in complex business contexts the number of sales and
marketing jobs is bound to rise in response to digitalization
initiatives (World Economic Forum 2018). Seeing the
far-reaching social, economic, ethical, and financial conse-
quences for firms when new sales technologies substitute
salespeople, we argue that it may be a key endeavor for
future sales research to profoundly explore interactions and
interrelations between man and machine, that is, between

salespeople, sales managers, and cutting-edge sales tech-
nologies. In this spirit, we have created the special issue
on ‘the human side’ in the digital transformation in sales.
Summary of articles
We received submissions until September 1, 2020, and ulti-
mately accepted four original research articles, along with
three commentaries on one of these articles. In the first
article, Zoltners and colleagues (2021) integrate practical
experience with academic literature into a comprehensive
model of success factors and causes of failure when digitally
transforming sales. Their model highlights the importance
of a ‘human side’ by proposing that digital transformation
makes or breaks with the sales force’s digital readiness, accep-
tance of digital technologies, and the sustainability of the sales
force’s adoption. The authors also translate their insights into
an actionable checklist that managers can use to digitally
transform sales.
Three invited commentaries complement Zoltners and
colleagues’ article. Cron and Baldauf (2021) evaluate the
article from researchers’ point of view, Herman and
McAndrews (2021) from educators’ point of view, and
Brüggemann (2021) from a practitioner’s point of view. All
commentators praise the article for its high relevance and
potential impact on research, education, and practice. They
also offer valuable reflections that lay the ground for future
works on the digital transformation of sales.
Zoltners and colleagues’ article provides a useful umbrella
framework for identifying how human factors shape the
digital transformation in sales. For example, as one cause
of failure, they propose a lack of rethinking—to successfully
digitalize sales, organizations need to discard old ways rather
than merely adding digital technologies on top of existing
operations. The second original research article in this spe-
cial issue—Mattila, Yrjölä, and Hautamäki (2021)—examines
such discarding of old ways more closely and introduces
the concept of unlearning to the digital sales literature.
Building on interviews with more than thirty executives and
senior managers, they develop a process model which shows
how sales organizations transform themselves digitally by
identifying a need for unlearning, identifying what needs to
be unlearned, discarding old processes, and instilling change.
Zoltners and colleagues’ framework also highlights that
digital transformation can cause salespeople to experience
stress, while its success rests on the usefulness of digital
technologies. The third article in this special issue—Guenzi
and Nijssen (2021)—dives deep into explaining such per-
ceptions of stress and usefulness. Drawing on job demands–
resources theory, Guenzi and Nijssen propose and empirically
verify that stress decreases and usefulness increases when
companies actively reduce the uncertainty that digital trans-
formation evokes for salespeople. Ultimately, such uncer-
tainty reduction fosters salespeople’s integration of digital
technologies into their daily work.
The fourth and last article in this special issues homes
in on one key technology in the digital transformation of
sales: digital sales channels. Specifically, Bongers, Schumann,
and Schmitz (2021) examine how the introduction of digital
sales channels impacts business-to-business salespeople.
Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management 85
Building on qualitative data from almost forty interviews
with decision makers in buyer and supplier firms, the
authors uncover a comprehensive set of challenges and
boundary conditions. Again, these challenges and boundary
conditions corroborate the central theme of this special
issue: the digital transformation of sales is particularly chal-
lenging due to its ‘human side’, which sales organizations
need to systematically manage in order to succeed.
Conclusion & outlook
When it comes to the digital transformation in sales, the
importance of the ‘human side’ can hardly be overstated.
Digital transformation efforts rarely fail for technological
issues but for companies’ lack of effectively managing the
human factor. With this special issue, we aim to contribute
to a better understanding of the human side in digital trans-
formation of sales—to augment academic knowledge, provide
immediate guidance to practitioners, and improve academic
sales education.
We hope that we thereby inspire future research on the
human side of digital transformation in sales. One main
implication from the works and commentaries in this special
issue is that examining the human side of digital transfor-
mation requires researchers to adopt a comprehensive, holis-
tic view when investigating antecedents or consequences of
firms’ implementation of cutting-egde technology in the
sales force. We argue that taking such a ‘comprehensive
perspective’ implies evaluating new sales tools and the cor-
responding implementation processes through a broad set
of multi-facetted criteria, ideally, including financial out-
comes, strategic outcomes, employee outcomes, and ethical
outcomes. This is because the digital transformation of sales
itself represents a multi-facetted, complex phenomenon and
may only be adequately understood and captured when
evaluating it based on these diverse perspectives. Adopting
a myopic view, by, for instance, only examining productivity
increases in terms of elevated sales, does not suffice to fully
grasp the human side of digital transformation, and runs
danger of omitting influential side effects. For example, sales
productivity increases brought about by implementing a
state of the art predictive analytics tool for lead generation
are short lived and likely backfire, when overloading sales
employees with escalating workloads.
In essence, we propose that future research may adopt a
‘balanced score card’ perspective in developing conceptual
models on digital sales transformations which explicitly
includes tradeoffs and goal conflicts between the dimensions.
Such tradeoffs may pertain to effects of new sales technol-
ogies on sales effectiveness versus sales efficiency, financial
sales performance versus employee health or wellbeing, or
applying an ethical perspective, when juxtaposing increased
performance through elevated surveillance of employees
versus lowered performance but higher employee autonomy.
Through this special issue we hope to provide an impetus
for groundbreaking research in these areas to further aca-
demic knowledge and practical insight on the human side
of the digital sales transformation. We are convinced that
such work may hold implications not only for sales and
86 S. ALAVI AND J. HABEL
marketing research, but for the challenges that society as a
whole faces in its continuing digital transformation.
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