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Skip to content The HBS Digital Initiative brings together perspectives across disciplines to help people understand how technology is transforming...
- April 2021
- Case
Distinct Software
By: Das Narayandas, Arijit Sengupta and Jonathan Wray
Distinct Software (disguised name), a global enterprise software company, is at an important point in its growth trajectory where the luster of its mantra of “grow and win at any cost” has dimmed with increasing competition and margin pressures. To help navigate its...
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- March 2021
- Case
Seeding and Selling Asana
By: Jeffrey F. Rayport, Susie Ma and Amram Migdal
In December 2019, Oliver Jay, Asana’s Chief Revenue Officer (CRO), was reconsidering his go-to-market (GTM) strategy. Asana was cloud-based work management software that enabled users to break up projects into discrete tasks that could be assigned, scheduled, and...
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Keywords:
SaaS;
Customer Journey;
Business Model;
Business Organization;
Change Management;
Growth and Development Strategy;
Growth Management;
Marketing Channels;
Marketing Strategy;
Product Marketing;
Organizational Change and Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Organizational Structure;
Technology Platform;
Online Technology;
Technology Industry;
United States
- 2020
- Working Paper
From Online Content to Offline Results: Effects of a Best Practices Initiative on an Enterprise Social Network
By: Shelley Xin Li and Tatiana Sandino
We examine the effects of a best practices initiative on an enterprise social network (ESN) with a natural field experiment in a large grocery store chain. Our results do not show an immediate improvement in sales, but do show 3.67-percent higher sales for the...
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- 2021
- Book
Sales Management That Works: How to Sell in a World That Never Stops Changing
Selling is changing, but the impact on sales of megatrends like ecommerce, big data, and AI is often misunderstood and not supported by empirical data. Managers who fail to separate fact from hype will make decisions based on bad assumptions and, in a competitive...
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- September 2020 (Revised November 2020)
- Case
d.light
By: Michael Chu, Krishna G. Palepu and Dilyana Karadzhova Botha
Kenyan off-grid-solar pioneer d.light can power entire homes in rural Africa but must now decide how to fund the growth of its asset-heavy business model. Ned Tozun and Sam Goldman founded d.light in 2006 to transform lives through solar solutions enabling access to...
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- May 2020
- Article
Sales Leadership During and After the Crisis
Because customer acquisition and retention are the lifeblood of a for-profit enterprise, sales activities establish foundational conditions for a business. In turn, sales managers’ responsibilities in a crisis extend beyond keeping the lights on. Their leadership makes...
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- January 2020
- Case
Freelancer, Ltd.
By: Christopher Stanton, Karim R. Lakhani, Jennifer L. Hoffman, Jin Hyun Paik and Nina Cohodes
Over the course of the 2010s, the rapid advancement of mobile technologies and the rise of online freelancing platforms seemed to portend a radical transformation of labor markets into on-demand, flexible talent pools. Even though several Fortune 500...
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- April 2018
- Teaching Note
InsideSales.com (A) and (B)
By: Frank Cespedes
Teaching Note for HBS Nos. 817-018 and 817-042. InsideSales.com (ISC) has been successful selling its software to small- and medium-sized businesses (SMB). But for various reasons, the founders see “the next stage of growth” as building a scalable sales and service...
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- March 2018 (Revised June 2018)
- Case
Knowledge Sharing at REMA 1000 (A)
By: Tatiana Sandino and Olivia Hull
A year after Norwegian grocery chain REMA 1000 adopted Workplace, Facebook’s enterprise social network, Chief Human Resource Officer Tore Høylie is asked to evaluate its impact on company culture and communication. Almost 90% of the workforce is engaged with the...
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- February 2018
- Case
Qualtrics (A)
By: Doug J. Chung and James M. Lattin
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...
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- February 2018
- Supplement
Qualtrics (B)
By: Doug J. Chung and James M. Lattin
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...
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- February 2018
- Supplement
Qualtrics (C)
By: Doug J. Chung and James M. Lattin
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...
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- September 2017 (Revised July 2018)
- Case
CyberArk: Protecting the Keys to the IT Kingdom
By: Raffaella Sadun, David Yoffie and Margot Eiran
CyberArk was the recognized leader in the Privileged Account Management (PAM) space, a cybersecurity subsegment it had essentially created to secure organizations’ IT systems and sensitive data. Over 17 years, the Israeli company had grown to a market capitalization of...
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- August 2017
- Article
Incentives versus Reciprocity: Insights from a Field Experiment
By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas
We conduct a field experiment in which we vary the sales force compensation scheme at an Asian enterprise that sells consumer durable goods. With variation generated by the experimental treatments, we model sales force performance to identify the effectiveness of...
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- January 2017 (Revised February 2018)
- Case
Godiva Japan: Think Local, Scale Global
By: Rohit Deshpandé, Esel Cekin and Akiko Kanno
This case tracks Jerome Chouchan’s strategies and execution for a successful turnaround of Godiva Japan’s operations, which were experiencing a decline in sales when he became the managing director of the company in 2010. Through various initiatives and innovations,...
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Keywords:
Branding;
Internationalization;
Innovation;
Positioning;
Customer Segmentation;
Occasion-based Segmentation;
Execution;
Talent;
Customer-focused Strategies;
Product Positioning;
Globalized Firms and Management;
Change Management;
Talent and Talent Management;
Customer Focus and Relationships;
Product;
Segmentation;
Innovation and Invention;
Brands and Branding;
Retail Industry;
Food and Beverage Industry;
Japan
- September–October 2016
- Article
What Senior Executives Should Know About Sales
Business is more complex, data more abundant, and more specialists are needed to stay up-to-date with functional best practices. As a senior executive, you can worry all you want about disruption, but you need a salesforce aligned with strategy to do something about...
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- August 2016 (Revised June 2017)
- Case
InsideSales.com (A)
This case focuses on growth requirements for a company moving from its base in SMB customers (Small and Mid-Sized businesses) to Enterprise customers (companies with more than 500 employees). It examines the differences in buying processes, product requirements,...
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Keywords:
Business Organization;
Customer Relationship Management;
Marketing Strategy;
Organizational Change And Adaptation;
Organizational Design;
Talent;
Talent Management;
Organizations;
Growth Management;
Sales;
Salesforce Management;
Corporate Entrepreneurship;
Technology Industry;
United States
- August 2015 (Revised September 2015)
- Case
Shareholder Activists and Corporate Strategy
By: David Collis and Ashley Hartman
By 2015, there had been an upsurge in activist shareholders arguing for radical changes in companies' corporate strategies. Personalities like Carl Icahn, Bill Ackman, and Daniel Loeb were feared and loathed in some quarters, celebrated in others. With nearly $120...
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Keywords:
Scope;
Activist Investors;
Spin-offs;
Synergy;
Diversification;
Consolidation;
Hedge Fund;
Corporate Strategy
- 2015
- Working Paper
Incentives versus Reciprocity: Insights from a Field Experiment
By: Doug J. Chung and Das Narayandas
We conduct a field experiment in which we vary the sales force compensation scheme at an Asian enterprise that sells consumer durable goods. With variation generated by the experimental treatments, we model sales force performance to identify the effectiveness of...
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- Article
Well Said: Why Articulating Your Strategy Can Set You Apart
Senior finance managers now operate in an altered c-suite landscape. The executives reporting to the CEO have doubled in the past 30 years, mostly an increase in functional specialists, not general managers responsible for cross-functional integration. Three decades...
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