Your COVID-19 Survival Plan should include sales capability

Capability the foundation to recovery

Assess your sales capability today…

Selling under regulatory lockdowns and physical distancing due to COVID-19 will certainly require changes to sales structures and ‘go-to-market’ strategies in the short to medium term. 

Customers, confronted with their own survival, are limiting CAPEX and OPEX spending to only those items that are a burning platform and require immediate action.  The result is that your revenue streams will be impacted.

 What does this mean to Sales Teams and traditional structures?   

 Firstly, sales leaders are looking at reducing headcount based on the revenue outlook through the rest of 2020.  

Secondly, sales structures are being reviewed, rebalanced and optimised.  The fall out will include a decrease in the number of face-to-face sales representatives, but also a potential increase in the number of internal telesales resources.  Some current face-to-face sales representatives may well be redeployed into an internal telesales role, or – if this is not possible – let go.

These are difficult and unpopular options, but necessary considerations for the ultimate survival of your company.

Before redeploying sales individuals however, we recommend that you first assess their sales competencies. This, together with standard performance and sales effectiveness measures, will ensure that the right people are in the right roles. You will also avoid ending up with “square pegs in round holes”, which means people performing roles that they do not have the right competencies or capabilities for.  

Assessing salespeople’s competencies also helps inform which people you need to exit out of the business. 

Finally, assessing salespeople’s competencies identifies where future investment in training and development should be made.  Combined with individual development planning and coaching, companies will be much better placed to enable a faster and much more effective ‘go-to-market execution’.

Register and request your company’s Competency Calibration tool.