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Sales organizations are actively pursuing digitalization because they see value through greater efficiency and effectiveness. In this paper, we examine the challenges in implementing sales force digitalization and suggest ways in which organizations can overcome these challenges. We present a sales effectiveness framework and discuss how digitalization affects its key components, including customer strategy, organization design, talent management, customer engagement, and the supporting architecture. We propose a conceptual model for digitalization success which considers the digital readiness of the organization, usage and adoption of digital solutions by the sales force, and actions for driving sustained impact. We map three types of digitalization failure to this model, exploring the causes of slow progress, poor adoption, and low impact. Then, we share success factors for overcoming these challenges. These include getting the right team to lead the effort, using an agile approach, and putting the organizational support elements in place to sustain success. We present these success factors in the form of a checklist of critical dimensions that organizations tend to overlook. Finally, we discuss the value for practitioners, share limitations of the work, and propose areas for further research that can enhance our ideas and improve sales digitalization success rates.
Zoltners et al. (Sat,) studied this question.