FEATURE | SALES PRIORITIES
SET FOR THE NEW VIRTUAL WORLD It’s official: 2020 saw the biggest hit to the UK economy in 300 years. The pandemic continues but so does business, and there’s no shortage of advice and tools for the sales organisation, as MARC BEISHON reports
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nly 10 years ago we were in the aftermath of the Great Recession and a lengthy spell of austerity was on its way, at least in the UK. The economy, while subdued, slowly improved and was ticking over well with low unemployment, albeit with ongoing productivity and wage stagnation issues, and uncertainty about Brexit. But while “boom and bust” scenarios of various severity are a pattern, nothing in the post-WW2 period has been like the pandemic of 2020 and its stubborn continuation in 2021. The speed of this change has placed severe pressure on many company managers, who have had to react fast to what can only be called a crisis. Before looking at strategies and priorities for the salesforce now, what is the business outlook and which sectors are doing best? The obvious paradox of the pandemic has been record stock market gains on some exchanges while a large swathe of the economy is on its knees, especially sectors such as transport and hospitality, and there have been major rises in unemployment and decreases in national GDPs. The UK economy shrank 9.9% in 2020 – the worst fall in 300 years. 22 WINNING EDGE
It seems like a puzzle but is explained by factors such as the concentration of well-performing stocks in the indexes, near zero interest rates and backing for private bond markets, the bias towards the better-off holding stocks, and a forward looking (and probably over-optimistic) outlook. If you are a fund manager it hardly takes much insight to know where to invest as it has been obvious that sectors such as technology and online retailing were going to do well. The share price of the ubiquitous Zoom conferencing firm has zoomed up from $90 last February to more than $400 now, although it did reach a peak of about $570 at one point. The price of Bitcoin has gone through the roof. Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, Alphabet (Google) are huge companies that are just getting bigger. Netflix has added millions of subscribers. There has actually been a boom in companies going public in Europe. A lot of other industries have been more or less pandemic proof. Utilities, construction, support services, manufacturing and professional services are among them to greater or lesser degrees. Pharmaceuticals is another obvious winner given the vaccines story although generally healthcare may have slowed down as people have avoided some care. When the pandemic tails off – and it looks like a long haul – there will be sectors that will build on current success, such as e-commerce and logistics, home fitness, gaming and so on. All companies will have their own take on how their markets have changed, but there are other core factors that have been ongoing anyway, such as the move to greener economies and the introduction of technologies that will underpin many operations (including selling of course), such as artificial intelligence and 5G mobile. ISMPROFESSIONAL.COM
