Very relevant article

This commentary nails it. As a consultant myself, my goal is to bring solutions to the table that disassemble problems piece by piece. The author is correct. Many business owners do not have the time (and sometimes the knowledge) to recognize solutions on their own.

The role of the consultant is have an awareness of the problem through industry experience and recommend actions supported by measurable ROI estimations, whether solutions are revenue increasing, improved product awareness, or strategies to be number one.

The article was very inspiring to me. The words in this article are the bread and butter to a successful sales career.

Missed Opportunity To Leverage Sales Experience

This is an interesting discussion, though I tend to favor Jim Keenan's point of view. A lot of this discussion revolves around roles of consultants, sales people, resellers. I'll focus on the sales person.

The job of the sales person is to help the customer solve problems, improve their business, and achieve their goals. Great sales people sell value based solutions and create value in facilitating the customer buying process. (Unfortunately, many don't do this well).

The sales person that focuses on creating value for the customer can really help the customer make better decisions. Consider for example a customer buying an ERP System. How many times in their careers do customer go through assessing, analyzing, and implementing these systems. Probably a handful. They may be challenged because they don't know what they should be asking, and may not even know what they don't know. The ERP sales professional, on the other hand may go through this cycle dozens of times a year, and can leverage other resources within the company to bring even more experience. While they will present everything in the context of positively positioning their products, they can help the customer identify, access, and address issues they may not have considered.

Now what if the customer leveraged each sales person competing for the business in a similar way? They may also want to leverage consultants for their views as well. The result is the customer can be much better informed, they will identify issues specific to their own business/situation which can never be found through internet research.

Sales people can create value for the customer, the customer that isn't open to that possibility may be missing an opportunity.

Without meaning to be critical, I think the assessment of sales person on commission, reseller as an independent, consultant as unaffiliated is a bit of a distraction. Having worked extensively, in those environments, one can easily end up on any side of the argument, depending on what point you want to push.

It is important to recognize that each one of those roles has a self interest in generating revenue for their own companies by getting the customer to buy their products/services. This is not bad, it's business. The real issue is, are they aligned in helping the customer achieve their goals or solve their problems? If not, if revenue is the principle driver, then regardless of the role, they are not creating value for the customer. Revenue follows value creation. Otherwise, regardless what we call ourselves, we're just peddling.

Thanks for an interesting discussion.

Everyone is a salesperson

Bravo, Dave.

I think sometimes it's fashionable to sniff at sales reps and label them peddlers because they're on commission. So they must be "coin operated."

But we're all selling something, at the very least our ideas. And we're all getting something in return for that good "selling," from recognition to real business.

If customers get value, they don't begrudge someone else making money, whether it's a commission or service fee or some other form of compensation.

As you put it so well:

The real issue is, are they aligned in helping the customer achieve their goals or solve their problems?

the new face of sales

I definitely agree that there are some very good sales people out there who do add value to the customer. I know some who adopted a “consultant” type approach even though their company only compensated them for revenue. They work on the assumption that good customer service will earn them more revenue in the long run and from my experience they are correct.

I recently talked to a company where the sales people can earn more from scoring a high “customer satisfaction rating” than from selling product.

That is the new face of sales and sales team compensation I hope.