How should you gear your sales strategies toward faster recovery from the coronavirus outbreak? An excellent article by the Boston Consulting Group tells you how to do just that, in great detail! A few things BCG recommends:

• Establish an action plan ASAP.
• Conduct virtual, agile springs to mitigate crisis impact and tackle short-term gaps in your sales process—this may include adjusting your sales incentive program to sustain motivation:

“Salespeople may have to be kept motivated by altering performance management systems and incentives to reflect the new context. Leaders could, for instance, announce an incentive floor, below which commissions will not fall, calculated from each salesperson’s three-month rolling average or the previous year’s performance.”

• Prepare a crisis battlecard to establish a response to the first five, most-likely conversations with customers.
• Develop conservative, short-term forecasts for supply and demand, given constraints such as prolonged social isolation.
• Make customer retention a priority by upgrading digital technologies that improve the sales experience and customer journey.

Many kudos to BCG for providing such an in-depth game-plan for sales leaders, helping us all stay informed and prepared.