Bain & Company article gave advice on possible short and medium-term actions to protect revenues, return on investment (ROI), and plan for growth amid Coronavirus crisis

Summary:

Bain & Company partners provided guidance, on April 3, 2020, to help companies manage their sales, margins and productivity even in downturns such as Coronavirus epidemic:

• Manage Cost of Sales – Shift select customer segments and activities to inside sales teams, self-service digital channels, or indirect channels, and align selling capacity in each channel to current market reality and customer priorities
• Increase Sales Productivity – Eliminate unnecessary activities and meetings, use digital tools and process automation, ensure representatives focus on right accounts, identify winning sales behaviors and profiles, and provide adequate support and pre-call planning to sales representatives
• Maximize Gross Margin – Control discounting policy by aligning it to strategy for customer segments, and focus on cultivating relationships with key customers, adding small gestures to service and using data-driven analytics to maintain win rates
• Adjust Resources and Structure – Shift activity away from low-margin and unprofitable segments, as well as transactional businesses to current opportunities for customer renewals, cross-sales, and upselling, as well as reallocating higher share of resources to frontline quota-carrying representatives, and adjusting breadth of product portfolio that they can sell or provide

To read article for free at Bain & Company’s website, please visit https://www.bain.com/insights/revving-up-sales-roi-for-a-downturn/

Original publication date: April 3, 2020

Date last updated: April 8, 2020