Cutting sales costs without sacrificing service

A Latin American personal care company set an ambitious target of a 20% reduction in sales operating expenses. At the same time, the company continued to aim for excellence in sales, distribution and customer service. We helped our client create a plan to redeploy the field salesforce and capture savings.

PersonalCo has a very successful R$500 million revenue operation in Brazil. It is a traditional category leader, competing with 100 SKUs in three market segments.
PersonalCo set ambitious cost reduction targets: over 20% of its sales operating expenses. At the same time, the firm aimed for functional excellence in sales, distribution and customer service.
PersonalCo brought Bain on board to speed up the capture of potential savings and help ensure a successful implementation.
Bain devised a Sales Functional Excellence Program that focused on the four key dimensions of the sales department.

View Approach

The Sales Functional Excellence Program had three distinct phases:

Phase 1 identified the potential for improvements, and main levers to achieve them
Phase 2 targeted key initiatives to close performance gaps
Phase 3 resulted in a detailed implementation plan