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Licensed foreign telecom operators in Myanmar were required to also provide mobile financial services (MFS). Due to a lack of trust in the banking sector, the government believed the adoption of MFS would boost financial inclusion in the country by enabling seamless money transfers, bill payments, and more. As they entered the MFS market, foreign telecom operators Ooredoo and Telenor grappled with fundamental questions that would determine their launch and customer acquisition strategies.

Spreadsheet supplement for case SMU840.

Set in January 2020, the case describes Singapore-based retailer Iuiga's omni-channel journey. Launched in May 2017 as an e-commerce only venture, Iuiga offers a curated range of high- quality products in the 'home and living' category at affordable prices. It sources these products from China-based original design manufacturers (ODMs), which produce for large global brands (known for their superior design, quality and hence high prices), and retails them under its own brand name at much lower and transparent prices. In May 2018, Iuiga launched a pop-up store to drive greater brand presence and customer engagement. Buoyed by the store's runaway sales, the firm decided to adopt a longer-term brick-and-mortar retail strategy, and by December 2019, it had established nine retail stores that contributed 80% of its total sales and employed more than 40 sales people (full time and part time). It had been almost 20 months since Iuiga adopted omni-channel retailing. Looking at the latest sales and customer data, Jaslyn Chan - Head of marketing at Iuiga, wondered if going physical had been worth it, or whether the sales in the offline channel had grown at the cost of sales in the online channel. Moreover, what types of customers did the different channels attract? Should the company increase the physical footprint further? Would opening additional pop-up or brick-and-mortar stores enable more customer acquisitions and tapping of new market segments?

This brief case describes the rise of so-called digital natives (also called born-in-digital) in the 2000s and 2010s that successfully grew without a sales force. The case highlights the emergence of business-to-business Internet and cloud-based companies and their decisions regarding sales strategy based on different customer bases. The case discusses the firms Atlassian, Basecamp, and Slack.

Razorpay is one of the leading Indian business-to-business (B2B) payment solution providers. Its growth has been based on its technological leadership and service differentiation. While it has worked in a matured market so far, the company has recognised the need to enhance its business model and service offerings. It intends to reduce its dependence on its core payment gateway by launching multiple products covering payment processing and disbursement. It also plans to move to a more platform-centric business model by launching a digital lending marketplace. The case provides details for discussing the challenges involved in transforming the product and market strategy of Razorpay in an evolving B2B payment market.

Kjell & Company was a Swedish retail electronics chain. The company's products consisted of home electronics and accessories. The company was noted for its excellent customer service and a fair "one-for-all" HR policy. Historically, the salespeople had been compensated by a fixed salary and a variable commission conditional on meeting a monthly sales quota. Anecdotal evidence suggested that the monthly-quota compensation scheme might have demotivated some salespeople toward the end of the month, as those who fell short early in a month simply gave up because they had no chance of meeting quota. Thus, to mitigate this problem, management proposed a shorter-temporal-horizon daily-quota scheme. The (A) case focuses on the decision faced by the CEO on whether to change the sales force compensation plan to a temporally shorter scheme and, if so, how to implement the change. The (B), (C), and (D) cases show the results of various metrics across different types of salespeople after the change in the compensation plan was implemented. The case series explores different ways to analyze data for inference about salespeople's behavior caused by a change in the compensation structure. Also, the case series shows ways to experiment with the compensation plan for causal inference.

Kjell & Company was a Swedish retail electronics chain. The company's products consisted of home electronics and accessories. The company was noted for its excellent customer service and a fair "one-for-all" HR policy. Historically, the salespeople had been compensated by a fixed salary and a variable commission conditional on meeting a monthly sales quota. Anecdotal evidence suggested that the monthly-quota compensation scheme might have demotivated some salespeople toward the end of the month, as those who fell short early in a month simply gave up because they had no chance of meeting quota. Thus, to mitigate this problem, management proposed a shorter-temporal-horizon daily-quota scheme. The (A) case focuses on the decision faced by the CEO on whether to change the sales force compensation plan to a temporally shorter scheme and, if so, how to implement the change. The (B), (C), and (D) cases show the results of various metrics across different types of salespeople after the change in the compensation plan was implemented. The case series explores different ways to analyze data for inference about salespeople's behavior caused by a change in the compensation structure. Also, the case series shows ways to experiment with the compensation plan for causal inference.

Nobel Ilac was a Turkish generic pharmaceutical company marketing more than 100 drugs in 20 countries and, as of 2017, had over 2,500 employees worldwide. Nobel had implemented a transformation strategy-more specifically, a customer segmentation plan-whereby the sales force had begun to use data to determine their call plans. As a result, it had improved sales performance, and its previously negative EBITDA had reached double-digit positive figures. Two key issues remained: 1) growth was not as high as desired; and 2) the sales force's voluntary turnover was very high. Given that the sales force was the only go-to-market channel, Nobel needed to do something to reduce employee turnover without affecting the positive trend in sales and profits. For many industries, personal selling is the primary and sometimes the only way that a firm can go to market. Hence, properly managing the sales force is a key to a firm's success. The case outlines the challenges of managing a sales force-in particular, how to decrease salespeople's attrition while also increasing growth.

In 2011, Canibal launched a machine that could sort and compress aluminum cans, plastic bottles, and cups. Users could play a jackpot-style game on the machine's digital display, while disposing of their beverage containers and earning coupons or other rewards. The machine could also display advertising or serve as a communication tool. In 2016, the company's new machine, the i3, had more potential than earlier models, due to enhanced reliability and displays that could allow Canibal to pursue new markets. Benoit Paget, CEO and founder of Canibal, must choose a growth path: which customer segment should he focus on? How should he position his product? What would be the implications of these choices for marketing and sales requirements, pricing, and funding?

Industry leaders should adapt to changes in the business context and consider different ways to grow. Advances in technology had shifted software demand to the cloud. As a result, Microsoft announced a strategic shift in direction from its existing 'Windows first' strategy to an 'AI/cloud first' strategy to capture the increasing demand for digital transformation solutions. In line with this change in the overall firm strategy, Microsoft had to come up with a viable go-to-market plan that would align its new commercial strategy with sales, partners, products, services, and customers in order to drive long-term growth without hurting current revenue or profits. The case outlines the challenges involved in transforming the sales strategy of a well-established firm to better serve customers.

Roush Performance manufactured and marketed factory-modified performance vehicles and high-end aftermarket automotive performance parts. Since its inception, Roush Performance had focused on building its engineering technology competency and diversifying its product portfolio to grow sales. Many of its engineers were proud to be on the forefront of technological innovations with the company. In contrast, Roush's marketing and sales divisions had a somewhat passive role. The sales culture was stagnant, and sales compensation, a key factor in motivating salespeople, had remained unchanged for 25 years. Sales compensation is one of the key elements in an organization's sales management strategy. It is used as a primary mechanism to motivate salespeople and represents the lion's share of a firm's expenditures. Sales organizations have to constantly update their compensation practices to continually motivate their salespeople as the firm's sales strategy changes to adapt to evolving market conditions. In 2018, Roush's growth was down, and its salespeople had become shortsighted and complacent. A new sales compensation plan seemed necessary to better align salespeople with Roush's goals. The case outlines the challenges of designing a new sales compensation structure that can better motivate salespeople. The case focuses on salespeople but can relate to other employees and, thus, applicable to general HR management.

Senior leaders have great confidence in their ability to develop innovations, say the authors, but not in their ability to commercialize them. This may result from a lack of formal processes and effective talent-management strategies. Steenburgh and Ahearne suggest a new approach: Assess the skills of your salespeople systematically. Train them for knowledge and resilience rather than focusing on a product's bells and whistles. Create a psychological profile of the ideal buyer. And assign strategic account managers to your most important customers. When new products are launched, the authors write, the best companies are strategically aligned, from the sales force to the C-suite. HR creates competency maps and works with sales managers to establish training and coaching programs. Frontline sales managers support the learning process that their reps go through in the field. And top leaders make sure that pressure to meet earnings targets doesn't stand in the way of future growth.

Retail customers may accept different prices on different channels -but retailers need to manage new complexities to make it work. These include understanding what customers value in each channel and how that affects what they will pay, giving store employees the right language for talking about price differences, and working out operational challenges. Getting it right has a real payoff: Retailers that effectively price differently across all channels see bottom-line growth of 2 to 5%.

Rather than trying to sell standardized products or services to the biggest possible set of buyers, B2B companies need to develop ways to help specific customers achieve better outcomes. Instead of describing their solutions, companies first need to understand customers'specific challenges, objectives, operating practices, and competitive environment, then create offerings to deliver value within a customer's specific business context and culture.

In response to increasing consumer demands for faster deliveries without added cost, more companies are implementing IT solutions that enable access to real-time sales data and inventory data across the whole enterprise. Real-time sales and inventory information, coupled with advanced analytics enables networks to accommodate fluctuations and changes in the business environment quickly, a quality the authors call distribution agility.

Today's retailers need to adopt a data-driven view -with the goal of understanding how website features and advances in AI will affect consumer behavior.

By 2015, MongoDB was seven years old and a so-called "unicorn," a startup valued at more than $1 billion. MongoDB's open-source software had been downloaded about 9 million times, and the company seemed to have the potential to disrupt the $45 billion database market. Dev Ittycheria had taken over as CEO in September 2014. An IPO was on the horizon, but MongoDB needed to get its business in position. He brought on Meagen Eisenberg as CMO in March 2015. After a few weeks getting under the hood of the operation, Eisenberg had a long to-do list. The website was ugly; SEO and SEM didn't exist; the social media strategy was muddled. The company didn't have a good system for predicting how many sales leads it needed, or how to score and prioritize the leads it did get. Eisenberg had inherited incomplete historical data on conversion rates. Before she could outline her strategy in any detail, she'd have to settle on a fundamental question: How many qualified sales leads did she and her staff need to bring in this year, so that the still-unprofitable company could close enough deals and hit its revenue targets?

Stride was founded in April 2016 and offered a software that gathered data from disparate sources and organized such data in one platform with a simple interface, with the goal of enabling marketing teams to more easily develop and launch personalized marketing campaigns. Elise Bergeron, the start-up's cofounder and Chief Operating Officer, had been confronted with multiple difficult decisions since the early days of the company. Some of the most pivotal of those decisions involved the sales aspect of the business. First, she and her cofounders needed to figure out what should be the company's target market. One potential approach involved evaluating the benefits and challenges presented by small, mid-sized and large. It was not uncommon for start-ups to first focus on small customers and gradually seek larger ones, as it expanded its product's feature sets, but Bergeron and her cofounders were not sure such approach would be the best for Stride. Alternatively, they could choose based on a use case standpoint: marketing teams in B2B and B2C companies had different needs for the product - should Stride focus on one or the other as its target market? Bergeron was not convinced. Second, Stride's leadership needed to define its sales model. At the product's price point, direct sales seemed to be a necessity. But how about the indirect channels? Bergeron was doubtful about the benefits of relying on third party platforms - such as Salesforce - or system integrators at such an early stage of the start-up's journey. The answer was not obvious, however. As of the second half of 2017, Stride's sales cycle had finally developed some patterns and its cofounders felt increasingly confident about their sales choices. Unexpectedly, however, an opportunity that could take the incipient business to the next level appeared.

Qualtrics was an online survey research platform and since the beginning, the company had relied entirely on an inside sales model-sales done remotely without face-to-face contact with clients. The low-cost inside sales model, along with an emphasis on a strong sales culture, had helped Qualtrics to grow rapidly. However, it needed to prepare for the next phase of its growth. The company decided to diversify its product portfolio and target different types of customers (enterprise clients). In accordance with this change, it recognized the need to revise the inside-sales-only model by adding a field sales component to better serve these customers. Many organizations often go through a turning point in their strategy to explore ways for growth. The case series outlines the best practices of scaling an inside sales model and the challenges involved in changing an organization's sales management and strategy to initiate future growth.

Qualtrics was an online survey research platform and since the beginning, the company had relied entirely on an inside sales model-sales done remotely without face-to-face contact with clients. The low-cost inside sales model, along with an emphasis on a strong sales culture, had helped Qualtrics to grow rapidly. However, it needed to prepare for the next phase of its growth. The company decided to diversify its product portfolio and target different types of customers (enterprise clients). In accordance with this change, it recognized the need to revise the inside-sales-only model by adding a field sales component to better serve these customers. Many organizations often go through a turning point in their strategy to explore ways for growth. The case series outlines the best practices of scaling an inside sales model and the challenges involved in changing an organization's sales management and strategy to initiate future growth.