Sales force effectiveness and steps taken by companies during recession

Abstract

During the recession, across all sectors, companies had forecasted weakness in business conditions. As companies started witnessing a reduction in their top lines, the sales teams in these companies came under severe pressure to perform. In spite of a prolonged slump in demand, the sales divisions were forced to meet their sales targets. This phenomenon was witnessed across almost all sectors in the economy. Our project focused on what steps sales teams in companies across sectors have taken to tackle the sudden slump in sales during the recession. The project comprises of four major sections, via which we have progressed our report. The sections are Secondary Research, Primary Research, Significant Conclusions and Appendix. In Secondary Research, we have looked into various journals, textbooks and other sources online based on which we have devised a framework for understanding sales force effectiveness. We also continued the secondary research and identified the various components of the sales and marketing strategy that are likely to be modified to improve sales or stimulate demand. This formed the basis for the questionnaire with which we had conducted the primary research. The primary research was conducted across 6 different sectors, namely Automobile (Commercial Vehicles), Financial Services (Banks and Insurance), Steel, IT Services, Industrial Goods, and Automobile (Passenger Vehicles). These sectors were steadily making headlines in the newspapers for being the worst hit during the recession. We conducted interviews of managers devising the sales strategy and of sales personnel who are involved in day to day sales in 11 companies across the 6 sectors. Through our primary research we found that while the effects of the recession were felt across sectors in India, its impact was not as intense as in the developed nations. There were a few steps that almost all companies had adopted immediately after the recession. However, there were a number of other initiatives that were specific to the sector and some steps which were very specific to the culture of the company. All such steps taken by the different companies have been classified and summarized.