From sales exaptation to digital transformation: Value creation from remote selling

Digital transformation of sales practices was accelerated during the pandemic as it necessitated a rapid shift to remote selling for many organizations. However, traditional sales' reliance on onsite visits, collaborative sales team meetings, and in-person interactions with customers have raised questions on the viability of remote selling in the B2B sales context. This qualitative study explores how sales organizations rapidly responded to these disruptions to create value for remote buyers. Through in-depth interviews with sales managers engaged in remote selling, we reveal new value creation mechanisms via digital channels, enhancing both sales efficiency and customer relationships, the realization of which is followed by organizations' deliberate efforts to assimilate remote selling. We argue this rapid shift can be better understood through evolutionary concepts of exaptation and subsequent adaptation, providing insights into organizational response to radical environmental changes. More specifically, we propose a processual framework where crisis-induced salesforce exaptation prompts organizations to accelerate technology adoption and capability development, which in turn catalyzes organizational changes to propel businesses into digital transformation trajectories. Our research contributes to the literature on crisis-driven innovation and exaptation theory for analyzing rapid transformations. We offer practical insights to address the challenges of incorporating digital technologies into sales structures.