Exploring antecedents and outcomes of salesperson change agility: a social exchange theory perspective

Dynamic business environments can cause unexpected disruptions that can force firms to embrace new ways of working. In such situations, salesforce change agility can be a key to success. However, scant research has examined the factors that promote the development of change agility, or the consequences thereof. We address these notable omissions by using a sample of 237 B2B salespeople to explore the effect of idiosyncratic deals on work absorption, change agility, behavioral performance, and sales performance. The findings indicate that a salesperson's idiosyncratic work arrangements (i.e. Flexibility and Development Idiosyncratic Deals) enhance work absorption, which in turn increases salesperson change agility. Moreover, we find that while development idiosyncratic deals are positively related to change agility, flexibility idiosyncratic deals do not impact change agility. Finally, our analysis also shows that change agility is positively related to behavioral performance, with subsequent downstream effects on sales performance. Collectively, these findings offer a glimpse into the importance of agile behaviors as salespeople deal with the changes impacting the sales function.