{"id":17258,"date":"2022-05-18T11:02:20","date_gmt":"2022-05-18T11:02:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/?p=17258"},"modified":"2025-12-01T13:28:57","modified_gmt":"2025-12-01T19:28:57","slug":"rethinking-sales-strategy-in-a-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/ghi-analysis\/rethinking-sales-strategy-in-a-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"Rethinking Sales Strategy in a Pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Santiago<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Santiago Escobar<\/strong>
Director of Omnichannel Strategy
Medtronic<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/div>\n\n\n\n

Q: Medtronic is one of the\ntop five companies in the medical-device industry, among the industries most\nhit during the pandemic. What has your strategy been to get through it in the\narea you run?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: From the standpoint of channels, the main strategy during the\npandemic was to have a closer relationship with our distributors in order to\nbetter understand the impact the pandemic was having on their businesses and\ntheir ability to continue working during periods of uncertainty. We began\ntaking a closer look at their sales situation, inventory, and portfolio, to\nhave a very clear map of the places where we might have risks, or opportunities\nto reduce risk. This detailed analysis led us to restructure our network of\ndistributors, ending ties with certain risky distributors, and splitting their\nterritories up among our sales team and other distributors with lower risk\nlevels and more growth potential. This helped us maintain a tolerable level of\nrisk, and more importantly, to speed up the growth of our distributors once\nrestrictions started to loosen in different countries, as we managed to focus\non those distributors who definitely could and wanted to grow.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q: Indirect sales in\norganizations, particularly in large companies like Medtronic, has always been\na model that swings from advantageous to disadvantageous. Have you developed a\nstrategy to help with their recovery while being able to continue growing\nalongside them?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: Yes. Thanks to the restructuring of our indirect channels, today we\nhave distributors that are far more aligned with Medtronic\u2019s goals and are\nfocused on working in territories where we need their help to reach more\npatients. With these distributors, we are working on strategies for expanding\nterritories together with the company\u2019s in-house teams. One of the main areas\nunderpinning growth moving forward is how we can have shared sales teams in\nsecondary and tertiary territories where we do the sales work together,\nalthough the actual product is delivered by the distributor, who is normally\nmore capable of reaching small customers in these territories. This strategy\nhelps us maintain the direct relationship with customers and reduce operating\ncosts at the same time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Medtronic\u2019s
Medtronic\u2019s Hugo\u2122 robotic surgery system<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Q: During the pandemic,\nthere were some products associated with pathologies that required lengthy\ntreatments whose sales remained stable, and there were even opportunities, as\nwith the case of respirators. Did you identify any business opportunities with\na new device?<\/strong><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A: The pandemic brought with it big opportunities for the lines of\nventilation and intensive care. Because of our strong positioning in these areas,\nwe were able to support thousands of people and institutions that needed these\nkinds of products, and thanks to the work of thousands of employees at\nMedtronic, we never stopped giving support to those in need of it.  Now, from the standpoint of channel\nmanagement, the pandemic also brought with it a lot of opportunities to explore\ndifferent ways of serving our customers. For example, we fast-tracked remote\nsales from our Shared Service Centers, focused resources to give more support\nto strategic accounts, and we realigned the network of distributors to be more\nefficient.  This brought us considerable\nrecovery in 2021 and so far in 2022, and we are now a stronger and better\nstructured company than when the pandemic began.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Note about the company:<\/strong> Medtronic\nis a global leader in technology applied to health care, with more than 60\nyears in the market, and more than 90,000 people across 150 countries,\ndeveloping solutions that treat over 70 diseases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A chat with Santiago Escobar, with whom we discussed the sales strategies they have implemented during the pandemic in Medtronic Latin America\u2019s omnichannel segment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":17259,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6531,6532,4654,6535,6537],"class_list":{"0":"post-17258","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ghi-analysis","8":"tag-medtronic-latin-america","9":"tag-omnichannel-strategic-medtronic-latin-america","10":"tag-sales-medical-equipment-latin-america","11":"tag-sales-strategy-medtronic-latin-america","12":"tag-santiago-escobar-medtronic-latin-america"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/24"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28641,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17258\/revisions\/28641"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalhealthintelligence.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}