Lou Gerstner wrote in his book how he saved a million dollars eliminating a product demonstration floor in New York City—presumably at 590 Madison Avenue; but he exhibits little understanding of the impact of his cost-cutting decisions on sales productivity as local sales branch offices lost similar facilities called ‘customer centers’.
In collaboration, worldwide product managers and local client teams used these facilities to keep customers informed about IBM products; when handled properly, these events drove significant revenue for IBM and business partners.
As these cutbacks occurred, we had a demonstration at 590 Madison Avenue with some of the biggest financial firms in New York. The day before, we were up most of the night making a room presentable for these customers (removing broken chairs, cleaning dirty chairs, stealing chairs from employees' desks, cleaning whiteboards, ensuring projection devices worked, etc.) And this was constantly repeated across the country, as we performed twenty customer briefing events over forty days.
Because of these real estate savings, one-on-many customer sales events became less-productive, one-on-one meetings, or customers sales events, incurred the expense of flying to a centralized briefing location, or the personal touch was lost (along with its sales impact) through teleconferences, or worse, the customers' technical recommenders stopped requesting briefings
Gerstner's myopic focus on cost reductions during the Great Expansion of the '90s caused IBM's sales productivity to flat-line in 1995—the first time since the Great Depression. This was one side effect of his financial approach to running a business that was never covered in his self-evaluation, Who Says Elephants Can't Dance?
https://imgur.com/a/Wj1sWuX
http://www.academia.edu/34413045/IBM_Why_Work_at_Home_Failed_At_IBM