This sounds like one of those future management case studies everybody will learn about in business classes in a few years. "Why did Dell fail? Well, they sacked all their sales people and nobody could buy their product!"

I remember studying one of those. Can't remember the company off the top of my head, some retail electronics outfit. They sacked all their senior sales people on the floor to save money and ended up going out of business because people could find anybody to help them adequately when they were in the store with money.