It's a transformation . . .

How should companies define sales processes in the context of their overall strategy and the forces that are acting on their organizations?

How should sales organizations be structured and how should they engage with prospects?

These are questions that must be considered, and the answers aren't the same for every organization.

Most important of all, the way products are bought is changing. How people find and share information is changing. Sales must change also, but the metamorphosis has been a slower process, in part because as you point out, sales managers can't mentor eagles. The result for sales: an ever-widening gap between forecast and actual outcomes.

There are many challenges in this. At the top of the list how to promote trust--as mutual trust is a required condition of any valuable business relationship. If transparency of motives is central to promoting trust, exactly how will organizations define the motives of the Eagles they want to nurture? To prescribe "the most suitable solutions?" What if that means prescribing a product that isn't one their company sells?

That by itself could change fundamental assumptions about trust and about salespeople. If there's anything that people believe about our sales culture, it's that salespeople are tasked with selling their company's product or service. Customers have shared that when a salesperson's motives are unclear, it's a trust-breaker.

And that's already started to happen when the word "Sales" is purged from sales job titles, favoring more nebulous terms like "Associate," or "Consultant." And, as social networks expand and more people become engaged in selling (the familiar refrain "the whole company is the sales force" is close to the mark!), mapping out such details as how to make motives transparent, and what job titles really mean becomes strategically important.

These are a few of the risks and challenges that organizations will face as new sales paradigms give primacy to understanding clients' strategic goals and to promoting and measuring relationship building over strict revenue goals.

The new generation of Eagles will enter a game with a much different set of sales rules.

The Wash Between Waves

Andy,

I am glad you have gotten into this issue. It needs commentary from people lile you who are involved in sales and improvement of the sales process.

Changing the title won't do it. When I was in an executive role I receive the pitch from "Associates" or "Consultants." Most were scripts presented by people who were recently trained to present "the business case." The problem was, it was a business case that was general and not especially applicable to my situation. The "Associate" lack the acumen to make it applicable. I would like to emphasize that there are salespeople who have the business acumen to do so. However, they are few and far between and, often marginalized by their own companies.

You touch on an issue that I think is very central. Companies must decide whether they are focused on selling products in the short-term or interested in building mutually benefical relationships with a long-term pay-off. Most traditional sales organizations are focused on the short-term. Making the switch is truely transformational. The question is how to foster the transformation.

John

John I. Todor, Ph.D.
Author of Addicted Customers: How to Get Them Hooked on Your Company.