DIAGNOSING SALES FORCE CHANGE RESISTANCE: WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM THE ADDICTION LITERATURE

Current change issues represent a symptom of a larger problem - the inevitability of change and salesperson efforts to resist change. As change will continue to occur, change agents will continue to cope with resistance to change. Resistance can be about today's change, but also about change in general. The premise of this paper is that sales organizations can learn much about managing change processes from researchers and practitioners that have dealt with change resistance and addictive behaviors. In this paper, we present a model for overcoming change resistance in a sales organization. This model includes four key elements: 1) creating a program to manage change resistance, 2) preparing change agents for change resistance, 3) helping sales managers to understand the nature of sales force resistance and addictive behaviors, and 4) providing proactive sales force assistance.