Understanding the consequences of digital technology use in sales: multilevel tensions inside sales organizations

TLDR

Personal selling is being transformed by digital technologies, yet many sales organizations struggle to realize benefits and existing research offers limited multi‑level insights into their impacts. This study investigates how digital technology use creates multiple tensions with both positive and negative consequences that differ across sales director, manager, and salesperson levels. The authors conducted 32 interviews with sales professionals from ten Australian construction firms to gather empirical insights. The study identifies six tensions—autonomy, innovation, information, interaction, resource, and control—that are perceived differently at each level, providing a multi‑level perspective that explains both positive and negative consequences of digital technology use in sales.

Abstract

Personal selling and sales management are undergoing a major transformation driven by an increased use of digital technologies. Despite the potential that digitalization holds, many sales organizations struggle to realize the benefits of digital technologies. While the extant sales literature has studied the impact of digital technologies on sales, it tends to consider sales organizations broadly as uniform structures and provides fewer insights on the potential impacts between different levels within sales organizations. Consequently, this study explores how digital technology use in sales results in multiple tensions leading to both positive and negative consequences and how they are experienced differently at multiple levels (sales director, sales manager, salesperson). We draw empirical insights from 32 interviews with sales professionals in ten different organizations in the Australian construction industry. The findings reveal six tensions (autonomy, innovation, information, interaction, resource, and control) and show how these tensions can be perceived differently at each level. These findings advance the contemporary personal selling and sales management literature by offering a multi-level perspective that explains why and how the use of digital technologies can have both positive and negative consequences in sales organizations and generates important insights for sales managers who are adopting digital technologies.