Why the Best Salespeople Push Back Hardest: Comparing Lewin, Kotter, ADKAR and Bridges for a Move to One-Price Selling and Mapping Where Resistance Will Come From
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University of Phoenix
MGT/526: Managing in a Changing Environment
Week 2 Assignment
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[Date]
The dealership group, employees and figures are a composite written for a model paper.
Week 1 found that the most urgent change for the composite dealership group is its sales process. Leadership has now proposed a specific change: replace negotiated pricing with one posted price on every vehicle, let customers complete most of the purchase online if they wish and convert commissioned salespeople into salaried product specialists paid a base salary plus a bonus tied to customer satisfaction and unit volume. About 62 salespeople, 9 sales managers and 7 finance and insurance managers would be directly affected. The change asks the group's most successful salespeople to give up the skill that made them successful. This paper compares change models for this change and maps the resistance it will meet.
Four Change Models
Lewin's three steps
Lewin described change as unfreezing current behavior, moving to a new state and refreezing it. The model's strength is its simplicity and its recognition that old patterns must be loosened before new ones take hold. Its weakness for this change is that it says little about how individuals move through it or how to sustain it in a system where pay plans and habits reinforce the old way (Cawsey et al., 2020).
Kotter's eight steps
Kotter's model runs from a sense of urgency and a guiding coalition, through a vision that is communicated widely and cleared of obstacles, to early wins that build momentum and, finally, new behavior rooted in the culture. It is detailed and organization-focused. It fits a change that requires coordinated action across five stores. But it focuses on what leaders do, not on how each salesperson experiences losing a familiar role.
ADKAR
Hiatt (2006) describes individual change as five outcomes: awareness of why change is needed, desire to support it, knowledge of how to change, ability to perform in the new way and reinforcement to sustain it. ADKAR's value for this change is that it identifies where each person is stuck: a salesperson may be aware and knowledgeable but lack desire because the change threatens income.
Bridges' transitions
Bridges (2009) distinguishes change, the external event, from transition, the psychological process people go through: an ending, in which they let go of the old identity; a neutral zone of confusion; and a new beginning. The model is useful here because salespeople are not only changing tasks but losing an identity as skilled negotiators.
Choosing Models
No single model fits the whole change. The group should use Kotter's steps to organize the leadership work across stores and ADKAR to diagnose and support individuals, with Bridges' insight guiding how leaders talk about what people are losing. Lewin's simple frame is useful for explaining the change, but it is too general to guide the work.
Mapping the Resistance
To understand resistance, the group's human resources manager interviewed 20 salespeople and all sales and finance managers and surveyed all 62 salespeople anonymously. The findings differed by group.
Top-performing salespeople
The top quarter of salespeople earned an average of about $118,000 last year, far more than the proposed salary and bonus would pay at current volumes. Their resistance is the strongest and is based on a real loss. In survey comments, they also expressed pride in negotiation as a skill and worried that the new role would feel like order-taking.
Average and newer salespeople
Most salespeople earned between $45,000 and $70,000, with large swings from month to month. Many expressed interest in a steady salary, but they doubted the group would really stop negotiating, since previous attempts at no-haggle used-vehicle pricing had been abandoned.
Sales managers
Sales managers' role centers on approving deals and coaching negotiation. Under one-price selling, that role largely disappears. Their resistance was quieter but significant, expressed as doubts about whether customers would accept posted prices.
Finance and insurance managers
These managers feared that a transparent online process would reduce sales of service contracts and add-ons, which produce much of their pay.
What customers say
Resistance also has an external side. The group surveyed 400 customers who had bought a vehicle in the past year. About seven in ten said they would prefer a posted price with no negotiation, and a similar share said the time spent at the dealership was the worst part of buying. But about one in five said they wanted to negotiate the value of their trade-in, and older customers were more likely to enjoy bargaining. These results support the change while warning that a rigid process could lose some customers, and they give leaders evidence to share with doubtful salespeople, whose belief that customers want to negotiate is partly accurate.
Service and other departments
Service advisers, technicians and office staff are not directly affected, but they will notice if the sales floor is in turmoil, and service advisers often hear customers' reactions first. Their informal views will shape how the change is perceived across each store, so they should be informed early.
Understanding Resistance
Oreg (2003) showed that people differ in their general disposition to resist change, including a preference for routine and short-term focus. Some salespeople fit that pattern. But most of the resistance here is specific to this change and its consequences.
Piderit (2000) argued that responses to change are often ambivalent, mixing positive and negative thoughts, feelings and intentions, rather than simply for or against. The survey reflected this: many salespeople agreed that customers dislike negotiating while fearing for their income. Treating ambivalent employees as opponents would push them toward resistance.
Ford et al. (2008) argued that change agents contribute to resistance through broken agreements, failures to restore trust and communication breakdowns, and that resistance can be a resource that improves change. Their argument applies directly: the abandoned no-haggle experiment broke an implied promise, and salespeople's doubts reflect that history. Their concerns also contain useful information, such as whether some customers want to negotiate trade-in values.
Implications
Resistance should be addressed by source. For top performers, the pay design must be tested: a transition guarantee and a bonus structure that rewards high volume could keep the best people. For average salespeople, credibility is the issue: leaders must commit visibly, perhaps by starting at one store with a public timeline. For sales managers, a new role, such as coaching product specialists on customer experience and managing online leads, must be defined. For finance managers, the process should present finance products transparently online, with pay tied to customer satisfaction as well as sales.
Conclusion
Converting to one-price selling is a change in pay, process and professional identity. Combining Kotter's organizational steps, ADKAR's individual diagnosis and Bridges' attention to transitions gives the group a more complete approach than any single model. Resistance is strongest among top performers with the most to lose, is often ambivalent rather than opposed and is partly a product of past broken promises. Treating it as information will shape a better change plan in the weeks ahead.
References
Bridges, W. (2009). Managing transitions: Making the most of change (3rd ed.). Da Capo Press.
Cawsey, T. F., Deszca, G., & Ingols, C. (2020). Organizational change: An action-oriented toolkit (4th ed.). SAGE.
Ford, J. D., Ford, L. W., & D'Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193235
Hiatt, J. M. (2006). ADKAR: A model for change in business, government and our community. Prosci Learning Center Publications.
Oreg, S. (2003). Resistance to change: Developing an individual differences measure. Journal of Applied Psychology, 88(4), 680-693. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.88.4.680
Piderit, S. K. (2000). Rethinking resistance and recognizing ambivalence: A multidimensional view of attitudes toward an organizational change. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 783-794. https://doi.org/10.2307/259206
How this MGT 526 Week 2 example is structured
The MGT/526 shelf page describes Week 2 as introducing change models and the sources of resistance inside a workforce. The paper compares models against the features of this particular change rather than in general, then studies resistance group by group with evidence from interviews and a survey. It treats resistance as information about the change, which is the view the research supports and the one that leads to better plans. Students search this week as MGT 526 Week 2, MGT526 Wk 2 or MGT/526 Wk 2; all three are the same assignment.
MGT/526 Week 2 questions, answered
What does MGT/526 Week 2 usually ask for?
The MGT/526 shelf describes Week 2 as introducing change models and the sources of resistance in a workforce. Many sections ask students to compare change models, apply them to their chosen organization and analyze why employees might resist the change.
What is the ADKAR model?
A change model developed by Jeffrey Hiatt of Prosci that focuses on individual change through five outcomes: awareness of the need for change, desire to participate, knowledge of how to change, ability to implement new skills and reinforcement to sustain the change.
Is resistance to change always bad?
No. Research suggests resistance often reflects ambivalence rather than simple opposition, and it can reveal real problems with a change. Some resistance is also created by how change agents communicate and behave, so leaders should examine their own role as well as employees' reactions.
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