Annual Research Project: Mastering the New Normal in Sales Organizations

Research Goals and Outcomes: Coming soon

Timing: March 2021 – February 2022

* Research report available in Italian

First Annual Research Project: COVID-19 and Remote Selling

Research Goals and Outcomes: Capture how sales networks reacted to the challenges brought by the COVID-19 pandemic by adopting remote selling tools (e.g., Skype, Teams, WebEx, Zoom...) in the interaction with their clients. The analysis focuses on:

• Behaviors: What did salespersons do? With which kind of clients did they adopt remote selling and to do what?
• Results: What conclusions do salespersons draw? How did remote selling change client interactions?
• Company support in implementing remote selling: What did the company manage well and what not, according to salespeople perceptions?
• Vision for the future: How and how much will salespersons continue using remote selling tools and channels? For which clients and for which activities? Which kind of support will be most relevant for the future?

Timing: March 2020 – February 2021

* Research report available in Italian

Second Annual Research Project: Selling at Coronavirus’ Times

Research Goals and Outcomes: Instant survey in collaboration with the student association JEME Bocconi, which highlighted that 71,2% of seller- and 82,9% of buyer-companies has implemented restrictive policies after the pandemic’s outbreak in Italy. Even before those restrictions were imposed by public authorities, sellers faced issues in visiting 60,1% of their clients and expected their turnover to fall by 22,1% (this estimate dropped even further to 41,1% after March 8th’s ministerial decree). Salespeople got immediately active and tried to intensify the use of technology, to the point that they claimed to be able to maintain relationships with 69,2% of those clients they weren’t able to contact in person anymore. So, before the government’s interventions, 39,9% of all clients could still be reached in person, while 42,2% was could only be reached via alternative means, such as the phone (30,3%) or e-mail (27,4%), or more advanced technologies, such as web conferences (13,5%), Skype calls (14,3%) and messaging systems (14,5%). 17,9% couldn’t be reached at all anymore. Only 15,6% of the sellers use all the tools, while the majority (58,3%) uses four of them. There is still room for improvement, since the remaining 26% uses two at maximum. This is important, because the findings show that the larger the number of alternative tools that companies use, the higher the likelihood to maintain client relationships, and thus limit a decrease in turnover. Indeed, the expected loss diminishes by 2,65% for each additional alternative tool used. Since digital tools are the ones less used, their employment becomes a powerful tool to limit the crisis more than ever before.

Timing: March 2020

* Research report available in Italian

Third Annual Research Project: COVID-19 Emergency Landscape

Research Goals and Outcomes: The Coronavirus emergency confirms the limited adoption of digital tools and technologies in buyer-seller interactions in the commercial context. Nonetheless, the emergency can represent a stimulus for fostering the commercial networks’ and processes’ digitalization, and find alternative ways to manage commercial relationships in the recovery phase. CEOs and managers of nine multinational companies, who met at a virtual roundtable on the topic COVID-19 EMERGENCY at SDA Bocconi’s CEL on April the 21st 2020, share this view. The event’s goal was to enable an exchange of views and experiences, in order to identify replicable managerial strategies and actions, as well as best practices, with respect to: How to keep and manage the client relationships in a moment characterized by relational freeze and social distancing? How to improve people’s motivation and engagement? There are eight interdependent areas, in which winning managerial actions have been identified: (1) Accelerate digitalizzazione; (2) Keep contact; (3) Listen to problems – identify priorities; (4) Think for innovating; (5) Give and take care; (6) Be a point of reference; (7) Offer concrete support to the own commercial networks; (8) Be selective.

Timing: April 2020

* Research report available in Italian