Sales performance pdf by Consalia

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Content marketing is merging with sales as selling changes

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Super sales practice will help plug the ‘value gap’

17/09/14 #0274

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Selling is centre stage in the drive for business growth

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Overview

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Publishing Manager Richard Sexton Managing Editor Peter Archer Production Manager Natalia Rosek Commissioning Editor Nick de Cent Design, Infographics & Illustration The Design Surgery www.thedesignsurgery.co.uk

Contributors PETER CRUSH

Freelance business journalist, specialising in human resources and management issues, he was deputy editor of HR magazine. NICK DE CENT

Editor of the The International Journal of Sales Transformation, he specialises in covering sales performance, and pharmaceutical and IT issues in print and online.

SALES REVENUE IN FOCUS AS UK ECONOMY RECOVERS Image: Getty

It may be emerging from an identity crisis, but selling is gaining centre stage in the drive for business growth, writes Nick de Cent

DAN MATTHEWS

Journalist and author of The New Rules of Business, he writes for national newspapers, magazines and websites on a wide range of business issues. CHARLES ORTON-JONES

Former Professional Publishers Association Business Journalist of the Year, he was editor-atlarge of LondonlovesBusiness.com and editor of EuroBusiness magazine. BETH ROGERS

Head of marketing and sales subject group at Portsmouth Business School, Dr Rogers has taken an active role in the development of the sales profession, notably through the UK National Sales Board. EDWIN SMITH

Writer and editor, he has contributed to The Guardian, The Independent, The Independent on Sunday, The Sunday Telegraph, London Evening Standard, City AM and Private Eye. RAYMOND SNODDY

Writer, presenter and media consultant, he was media editor at the The Times and Financial Times, and presented BBC Television’s public accountability programme Newswatch.

Although this publication is funded through advertising and sponsorship, all editorial is without bias and sponsored features are clearly labelled. For an upcoming schedule, partnership inquiries or feedback, please call +44 (0)20 3428 5230 or e-mail info@raconteur.net Raconteur Media is a leading European publisher of special interest content and research. It covers a wide range of topics, including business, finance, sustainability, lifestyle and the arts. Its special reports are exclusively published within The Times, The Sunday Times and The Week. www.raconteur.net The information contained in this publication has been obtained from sources the Proprietors believe to be correct. However, no legal liability can be accepted for any errors. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the prior consent of the Publisher.© Raconteur Media

elling has always had something of a split personality. In part, this is because the definition of sales is so broad, encompassing retail and business-to-consumer (B2C) selling as well as business-to-business (B2B) transactions. At the same time, approaches to selling vary enormously, depending on the size of the deal and the nature of the product. Indeed, selling is almost defined by paradox: sales cannot only be considered the oldest profession, it is one that is often held in little esteem by the people it serves, the customers. It has been beset by scandal, yet remains substantially unregulated either by legislation or professional body. At the same time, selling represents the oxygen that enables businesses to thrive, although it is a function under-represented in company boardrooms. Nevertheless, selling has never been more important than today and is increasingly recognised as a key driver in our fiercely competitive, globalised world. Second only to a company’s core brand, the sales function can arguably be regarded as the most important asset a business owns. “For the first time, there’s a realisation that the future of companies depends on sales and marketing in a way that it never has before,” says Professor Neil Rackham, who advises large corporations on their sales strategy. Whereas, in previous years, organisations may have relied

on product innovation or mergers and acquisitions to expand, now the focus is on organic growth, and that usually implies taking business from the competition. “If we can’t out-innovate our competitors, what are we going to do? The answer is we outsell them,” says Professor Rackham. “There’s an increased interest in sales in the boardroom,” he adds, citing the changing focus of boardroom advisers down the years from efficiency experts, to mergers-and-acquisitions specialists, to today’s sales and marketing consultants. The nature of sales is changing too; indeed, selling is undergoing an almost head-to-toe transformation. Sales forces are expensive to maintain so transactional selling is increasingly moving online, into the domain of marketing. The trend is for sales forces to be slimmed down, but filled with higher-quality recruits focused on much more complex business problems. Essentially, the role of the traditional product-focused “rep” – the “talking brochure” – is fast disappearing and being replaced by a more rounded businessperson with excellent communications skills. “There’s a higher level of job for fewer people,” says Professor Rackham. That said, he warns that figures around the number of people involved in selling can be confusing. Although there are fewer people in direct sales roles, there are more people in support activities with “sales” in their titles. The bounda-

ries of sales are expanding as more companies recognise its importance, he says. Meanwhile, the marketing function with its newly acquired responsibility for transactional sales, through its traditional responsibility for websites, brand and advertising, is in some ways becoming more sales-like. Especially in the United States, it is increasingly being allocated formal targets designed to drive transactional sales. INCREASED COMPLEXITY

This increased complexity in the sales landscape – it’s now multi-channel and closely coupled with business strategy – necessitates a more professional approach right up to the highest levels. Professionalism is now the big focus with employers and salespeople increasingly looking for professional sales qualifications that are transferable between roles. Evidence can be seen in the expanding number of university sales courses and in-company academies, as well as accredited courses and qualifications from professional bodies such as the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management.

tion, purchasing and sales “working together always achieves more satisfactory and competitive results”. Today, the best salespeople are welcome in company boardrooms because they bring with them innovation, business knowhow and market knowledge. At the same time, exposure to the commercial environment, often through sales, is very much a rite of passage if not a longer-term requirement for many executive careers. Technology is enabling sales professionals to understand the new complexity in their roles, not just through traditional CRM systems and business intelligence; analysis of big data and social media is helping to give companies greater insight into their customers. A host of specialist applications is also supporting everything from managing incentive schemes to recruiting higher-quality candidates via more scientific assessment processes. Selling is a profession in transition, emerging from the recent downturn and responding to the rapidly evolving business landscape. It seems like it has been waiting in the wings for decades, but a combination of factors – new business models,

Selling is a profession in transition, emerging from the recent downturn and responding to the rapidly evolving business landscape Buyers, too, are becoming more professional and looking towards co-creating value rather than the traditional adversarial approach. According to the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply, whose 106,000 global members make up the world’s largest procurement and supply professional organisa-

customer power, technology, a hugely competitive commercial environment – have now conspired to place the sales function centre stage. As a result, there is genuine promise that selling can truly emerge from its identity crisis, and transform into the true profession consumers and businesses deserve.

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Channel Management

GETTING THE MOST FROM RETAIL PARTNERS Pro-active management of retail channels by product producers requires blood, sweat and tears, as well as imagination. Dan Matthews reports

sing agents, distributors and resellers to help shift product and boost revenue is a sales strategy used to great effect by big brands for decades. But the relationship between brands and their retail channels is becoming increasingly complex. Vendors have to compete for attention within their network of retailers and, increasingly, the business-to-business-to-consumer (B2B2C) model of selling relies on an intricate partnership approach where a good amount of the power rests in the reseller’s hands, not the vendor’s. If they want to shift stock – and of course they do – vendors must cuddle up to channel partners. They must equip them with the tools to sell, provide brand collateral promoting their own products ahead of others and create a support structure that helps partners and makes them feel important. This will not come as news to brands, but what might do is the sheer blood, sweat and tears that some vendors are devoting to their reseller network. In 2014, best practice is a relationship that is formal, prepared for, well resourced and, critically, two way. For David Ellis, director of strategy at Arrow ECS, UK and Ireland,

this means starting at the beginning with an individually tailored business plan outlining mutual goals that are agreed upon by both parties in the deal. “Successful channel managers are the ones who really get to know what motivates their channel partner and their staff, and who understand that this may vary greatly, even among partners that on the face of it appear to be very similar,” he says. “The key to effective channel management is gaining executive ‘buy-in’ from both parties at the outset. To achieve this, both vendor and channel partners need to be very clear on their mutual goals. “With a formal business plan created at the outset, should there be any areas of underperformance, they can then be reviewed and focus applied to address issues as appropriate.” Creating a plan gives both sides the opportunity to set out what they expect from the relationship and what represents success as well as, perhaps more importantly, failure. Once the relationship is defined, the vendor needs to start a charm offensive. Andy Grant, managing director of Bowan Arrow, says brands must work hard to rise above others. “Partners like to feel valued and

Channel managers should remember that partners are businesses too and not just conduits for products

Image: Getty

heard by the vendor, instead of being perceived as a means to an end to hit a number,” he says. “Most partners will be working with as many as ten to twenty vendors at any given time, so the brands that differentiate their offering will grab the attention of those partners, while the others risk falling down the pecking order.” Mr Ellis adds: “From the start, it will be key for the vendor channel manager to focus on helping the partner deliver some initial sales. This will ensure that the partner sees some early return on investment, and will make a relationship much more ‘sticky’ and viable for both parties.” SALES PACKAGE

After the honeymoon period, it’s important to keep up the momentum. Brands should construct a package of measures that inspires resellers to do just that – resell. The ingredients of this bundle should include hands-on care, fluid com-

munications and marketing support as well as regular contact underpinning everything. AppRiver is a global software-asa-service provider of e-mail and web security solutions. For its channel, the business has created the concept of “phenomenal care”, which basically means doing everything it can to make life easier for its retail network. “That could mean asking our partners questions and doing discovery during the on-boarding process so they are equipped with the knowledge and right tools and products for their customers,” says Jim Tyer, Europe, Middle East and Africa channel director of Appriver. “All of it translates to us doing the heavy lifting so that our partners can focus on creating healthy profit margins.” Channel managers should remember that partners are businesses too and not just conduits for products. They are often cash strapped and time poor, so brands are advised to make the relationship straightforward and demonstrate

the value in every request for action. “Make programmes simple and effective,” says Olivier Choron, chief executive of purechannelapps, a software company that provides channel marketing and sales tools. “Often brands forget to consider their partners have limited time, resources and knowledge to deliver marketing programmes. “They also forget that these retailers cannot focus on just one brand and one product. Ask yourself how you can improve partner relationships. Is it all about margin or complimentary services and support? Look at the relationship proposition from the partner’s point of view, not just your own.” The channel is an extension of your sales floor and, just like inhouse salespeople, resellers need support, motivation and rewards, as well as a clear path ahead of them. By putting these elements together in perfect harmony, brands can build a relationship that adds zeros to the bottom line.

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Social Media

SELLING WITH POSTS, TWEETS AND PINS

Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram are powerful selling tools. Charles Orton-Jones knows how to get the most from them

ere’s a cracking lesson in how to sell via Facebook. Sally’s Cottages is a holiday lettings agency with 300 cottages in the Lake District and Cumbria. Last September, the business had 6,000 “likes”. This has rocketed to 58,000 in a year. The customer reaction has to be seen to be believed. A single prize giveaway of a free cottage for a weekend got 6,558 comments, 3,255 shares and was seen by 425,000 people. Facebook is the biggest referrer of business. Referrals for the first six months of 2014 were 39,853 compared with 6,049 in the previous 12 months, a rise of 559 per cent. Who said Facebook can’t be used for selling? Founder Sally Fielding reports: “When we ran the competition, we maxed out bookings for the cottage we were promoting for the rest of this year. That demonstrates the power of social media.”

Selling via social networks remains a Wild West – you are free to experiment to your heart’s content Her method? She says: “We do Facebook advertising which helps us to gain page ‘likes’, but it is through posting interesting stories which invite our Facebook fans to tell us about themselves which get the best response. The images that we use on Facebook are crucial and whichever image we put up on Facebook has to tell a story – we find this really dictates the level of interaction we get. For example, people love pictures of water and mountains, but aren't as responsive to a festival or a localised event.” Ms Fielding does all the commenting herself because, as the owner and boss, she wants to have a personal

connection to users – and it works. This anecdote shows just how powerful social media channels can be for selling. Yes, it’s easy to laugh at Twitter when Harry Styles of One Direction gets half a million retweets for uttering drivel like “Love everybody”, but channels such as Pinterest, LinkedIn, Instagram, Vine and Google+ all have big commercial potential. Snapchat is the social media phenomenon which baffles businesses. The messages self-destruct in seconds, leaving no trace. So how can it be used to sell? A recent Co-operative Electrical campaign gives a valuable pointer. The goal was to target students. Vouchers for £30 off a laptop were pinged out as picture messages on Snapchat. James Kirkham, co-founder of the agency behind the campaign Holler, says: “If the brand has a product they want to create an event around, then a tease and reveal promotion through Snapchat is a viable marketing opportunity. This might be a snap of the forthcoming new product range, a fleeting glimpse of the limited edition canned drink before it goes on sale, a moment of an exclusively designed dress before anyone else.” POWER OF IMAGES

Pinterest is probably the most overlooked social media site for business. Interaction is lower than on Facebook; users simply pin or add a single line of comment under a picture. Not much room for creativity. No matter, says Phillip Smith, the UK manager of Trusted Shops, which helps 17,000 retailers sell online. “Pinterest is definitely the unsung hero in product selling,” he says. “While customers don’t have direct access to buy, the demographic is right for customers who have time to kill and money to burn. If you showcase your best products

Image: Getty

and spend time designing boards for different product types, customers with specific interests will be engaged, driving high-quality traffic to your site.” The cost of putting images on Pinterest is negligible. In August, Pinterest launched a business analytics platform, offering audience insights, advice for increasing impressions, clicks and repins, and traffic and engagement metrics. Making the most of data will be at the heart of all successful business campaigns. In addition to monitoring activity, via Facebook’s in-house charting set, Google Analytics and other standard traffic-monitoring tools, you may need to track what people are saying about you online. Sentiment analysis programmes read Twitter and Facebook to gauge the mood around events, people and firms. Since it requires machine-reading of the English language there are sceptics. Air France uses Spotter to monitor Twitter; Viralheat, Semantria and SAS Sentiment Analysis are also names worth researching. But selling via social networks remains a Wild West – you are free to experiment to your heart’s content. Airline KLM certainly is. A new scheme called Meet & Seat allows passengers to link to reveal their Google+ and LinkedIn profiles when they book a ticket. Other passengers can see this information and then request to talk to them or sit by them. KLM says the idea will “build a sense of community among its customer base, while encouraging brand loyalty among its most frequent users.” It might. It might not. But the beauty of social media is that the cost of participation is so low and the potential gains sky high. So why not plunge in?

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Marketing and Sales

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Marketing and sales teams are becoming increasingly inter-dependent as the nature of selling changes, writes Edwin Smith

he shifting relationship between marketing and sales has been well documented of late. And there is no shortage of analysis to explain just what’s been going on. A recent CEB study shows that the typical business-to-business buyer’s decision is 57 per cent complete before they make direct contact with the supplier company for the first time. This, as the well-worn explanation goes, is because the internet has changed everything. Buyers have an almost infinite amount of information at their disposal, so can do a huge amount of research before taking the step of making contact with a supplier and initiating something that more closely resembles the traditional “sales” process. Realising this, many suppliers have turned to content marketing in order to join and influence the conversation before they’re actively invited to be part of it. Now, 30 per cent – one in three – of business-to-business companies’ entire marketing budgets are set aside for content marketing, according to a report this year by the US-based Content Marketing Institute. Business-to-consumer companies aren’t far behind with 24 per cent of marketing spending going exclusively on content marketing. This doesn’t mean sales departments aren’t still important, of course. Just that their role now begins later on in the “buying journey” and, if they are to be successful, that they must work more closely than ever with their colleagues in marketing.

While this is an important shift, it’s no longer new – and the debate is moving on apace. Technology, systems, individuals and entire business models are developing to get to grips with the new relationships between buyers, marketers and sales. And, as you’d expect, some businesses are even driving the change themselves. “In our company, the marketing and sales teams work almost as a single, well-oiled machine,” says Shafqat Islam, co-founder and chief executive of Newscred. “Marketing generates leads through content, then nurtures those leads by sending more content – white papers, blog posts, e-mail marketing, native ads. [According to their interaction with that content] those prospects are scored and, once they reach a high enough score, they enter into the sales team’s purview. A lot of times, if the prospect isn’t ready, the sales guy will send them back to marketing to nurture them further. This happens seamlessly and it’s a constant cycle.” Mr Islam adds that the company also operates with a small five-person team of “sales development reps” who sit between the 12-person marketing team and a 20-strong sales team. LEADING WITH CONTENT

The NewsCred model is instructive, not just because the startup has grown quickly – from 120 to around 200 employees since receiving $25 million of series-C funding in January – but also since it describes itself as an “end-to-end content market-

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ing platform”. From planning to approvals, to analytics, it helps clients, such as Procter & Gamble, Xerox, Visa and AIG, find and create content for their own customers. So the company has a direct line of sight to the changing relationship between marketing and sales, but also to the forces driving that change. The way that NewsCred internally scores prospective customers relies heavily on data about those prospects’ demographics and how they interact with content. But Mr Islam says an important part of the company’s approach has been to acknowledge that the old paradigm of the buying process no longer applies.

The Sales Profession Page 08 “The purchase path is more complex. It’s no longer a funnel with ‘awareness’ at the top, ‘purchase’ at the bottom and ‘consideration’ along the way. I think that’s a limited, old-school view of it. We actually think it’s more like a pretzel than anything else – with different people coming in and out of the funnel at different stages. You can’t be too prescriptive about the way prospects progress,” he says. This sentiment chimes with the thinking of Pat Spenner, managing director of CEB, who believes that understanding the influence of

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group dynamics on real-world buying decisions is crucial for the success of both sales and marketing. He says: “Heretofore, marketers’ entire MO has been to ask: ‘How do we get individual stakeholders to connect with us as a supplier; to like us and favour us, read our white papers and so on?’” In reality, Mr Spenner says, it’s more powerful to connect individual employees within a company to one another. He uses the phrase “consensus marketing”, but stresses that, in itself, this isn’t a new idea – just the way that consensus is created in the context of the modern buying journey, where suppliers tend to be part of the process much later on. “Now we don’t have sales guys in their trying to knit this consensus together,” Mr Spenner says. “We have to start priming for consensus before the sales team gets in and that means marketing has to really start thinking about how they can create a consensus before sales reps are on the ground talking to that company.”

tions and fears of different people working together within the same organisation. Using this method, marketing automation company Marketo has gone as far as to create guidelines for chief marketing officers who are minded to convince their colleagues from different departments that their business should invest in marketing automation software. Mr Spenner says there are even differently worded scripts, with specific language and phrases, which address the key concerns of people from different departments. And, he adds, the consequences of this for the sales-marketing relationship should not be underestimated. “In the best commercial organisations, it will draw sales and marketing closer together. Because if this consensus-knitting happens before sales gets in, when sales does come in, they’re going to pick up that exact same thread,” he says.

CREATING PERSONAS

He points to qualitative research by CEB that revealed the practice of creating inter-personal personas. These are models that marketers can use to understand the motiva-

The marketing and sales teams work almost as a single, well-oiled machine

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SALES PERFORMANCE 17/09/14 EDITION #0000

INCREASED COMPLEXITY OF CUSTOMER JOURNEY Ben Turner, sales director at the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management, explores the new reality of selling

We’re now in an age when organisation, intelligence and understanding are what make a true sales professional There has been a raft of information and theory describing this new way of working with buyers. Trigger Selling from Avention, for example, seeks to understand the best time to be speaking to buyers by looking at external environmental factors to help influence buyers at the right time. Challenger from SEC begins to understand the necessary role of a sales professional to be more of an expert than the buyer, adding experience and knowledge that exists beyond the value proposition itself. Research and understanding of procurement professionals, by BlueSky Performance Improvement, further helps to understand the relationship between buyer and seller, and the new theories on how to interact with them. This has enabled sales professionals to under-

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Commercial Feature

Opinion

ver the last few years, the role of the salesperson has changed through the increased use of digital channels and social media interactions. These technologies have essentially changed the role of the buyer; throw in the recent recession and the pressures that it has bought, and we are essentially looking at a completely different and new type of buyer.

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stand the challenges and objectives of procurement professionals, and suggests encouraging interaction rather than resistance. Then there is the reality that we are not selling to one person – we are selling to multiples, with different personalities, thoughts and agendas. The new buyer explores the market; they are part of networks, have peers and use them for decision-making purposes. Their internal decision-making has grown; buyers are educated and have access to information – they do not need a walking brochure. So where does this leave the sales professional? Grant Leboff, author of Sticky Marketing, asks the question, what value do you add as a salesperson, not what value do your products or services add, but what do you add? This, built upon by the Sales Executive Council’s Challenger Model, is turning the role of the salesperson into a different animal. The new sales professional is not there to “bang down doors”, but to act as a conduit to the buying organisation, understanding the needs of each individual, putting the correct parties in a room to help facilitate the decision. This new buyer has meant the new sales professional is more of a broker, a collaborator, a diplomat, a mediator or an intermediary – their role is no longer one dimensional. With this brings excitement, interaction and complexity. Gone are the days of the salesman with a Filofax, annual target and gift of the gab. We’re now in an age when organisation, intelligence and understanding are what make a true sales professional. Perhaps there cannot be a more exciting time to be one.

Work with information at your fingertips Sales professionals could save significant amounts of time and increase the revenue they bring in by making better use of intelligence, according to information experts Bureau van Dijk 7. If salespeople have access to the right intelligence in the right tools, they can work more efficiently and have more time to focus on sales. Bureau van Dijk’s Mint package provides professionals with the latest information on their current and potential customers, including key decision-makers for millions of companies in the UK. This avoids the issue of sales teams relying on their own records, which can be out of date, or spending time sourcing data themselves. Using Mint sales teams can draw on constantly updated details from a central database, which pulls information from 120 providers around the world, including regulatory and proprietary sources. This information can also be integrated with organisations’ own customer relationship management (CRM) systems. “If Mint content is integrated into a CRM, then salespeople can see fresher and richer company records with a level of detail they’d never be able to collect and maintain themselves,” says Louise Green, Bureau van Dijk group marketing director. “The package can link up with any CRM system,” she says, “including in-house packages, with simple-to-implement apps for popular CRMs, such as Salesforce and MS Dynamics.”

identify other opportunities, which may exist elsewhere in a group.”

Develop your accounts

PERFECT TIMING The ability to keep track of a company’s news can help salespeople make contact at the best time, as Mint can alert them to when certain events, such as new management taking charge or successful acquisitions, have taken place. “If you find a business that has been bought by a private equity company, you know they’re going to be backed to grow, so that’s a really good opportunity,” says Ms Green.

If Mint content is integrated into a CRM, then salespeople can see fresher and richer company records with a level of detail they’d never be able to collect and maintain themselves

WIN NEW BUSINESS Mint allows users to analyse groups of companies, which can help identify typical customer profiles. “You can very quickly work out what most of your customers look like and from there you can find other companies in the UK which also look like that,” says Ms Green. “This can help to discount particular businesses, so sales teams focus their efforts on the strongest leads,” she adds. Once a list of target organisations has been drawn up, sales teams can further break these down by geographic location, size or sector as required. This kind of information can help organisations with sales planning and give them access to far more relevant prospects than would otherwise be the case. Businesses are also able to use the system to find out more about organisations, including accessing news stories, and understand their corporate structure. “An awareness of structure can help identify where the decisions are made in a company,” says Ms Green. “You don’t want to spend a lot of time selling to a subsidiary if all the decisions are made higher up the tree. And it can also help

Sell

Bureau van Dijk’s expertise as an information provider helps to set it apart from other players and this is reflected in the Mint product. “We offer a wide range of search, analysis and integration options because we really understand data, and how companies can benefit from it,” Ms Green says. Now could be a good time to invest in such capabilities as the economy starts to pick up and new opportunities emerge. “If there are more opportunities available, it would be sensible to have a system that helps you find them more efficiently,” she concludes.

For more information on how Mint could help your business, visit www.bvdinfo.com or call 020 7549 5000

Integrate

Create more targeted campaigns

Source more strategically

Analyse

Plan more effectively

GET IMPROVED EFFICIENCY ACROSS ALL PHASES OF THE SALES AND MARKETING PROCESS

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Professionalism

UK SALES PERFORMANCE

LEARNING TO BE PROFESSIONAL

Key strengths of UK sales force

Demand for high-level professional development in sales is growing as selling improves its reputation. Nick de Cent reports

Source: SalesAssessment.com, UK Sales Skills Audit

GOOD

AVERAGE -Achieving goals -Communication -Information management

BUSINESS COMPLEXITY

POOR -Engaging the customer -Understanding customer needs -Awareness of competitors - Keeping abreast of new products and services

Which skills?

Source: CEB Sales Training and Development Benchmarks

15% 14% 11% 10% 9% 8% 7% 5% 5% 4% 4%

OTHER

PROBLEM-SOLVING

PROSPECTING

TEACHING CUSTOMERS AND COMMERCIAL CONVERSATIONS

LEADERSHIP AND MANAGEMENT

STRATEGIC THINKING

PLANNING/TIME MANAGEMENT

POSITIONING AND TAILORING

1% DECISION-MAKING

BUSINESS ACUMEN

Professionalism is increasingly significant as salespeople’s roles continue to evolve with transactional sales disappearing online. “What’s left is much more complex than ever before,” Professor Rackham says. The relationship between buyers and sellers is now more of an arrangement between two business equals about how to create value. “The limiting factor is how creative you are as a business person. The marketplace is demanding professionalism due to the increasing complexity of the job,” he says. Buyers, too, are conscious that their professional reputation needs improving, both in terms of eradicating unethical practices from the supply chain and by boosting the quality of procurement personnel. CIPS is promoting the concept of licensing professional buyers, similar to the way doctors and accountants have a licence to practice. Mr Noble claims there is “huge interest” in this concept and calls for a similar scheme for sales. Currently there is little appetite for this among salespeople, according to ISMM’s Mr Turner. He sees licensing as a voluntary, opt-in arrangement and says: “We’re a long way off it.” Buying and selling are two sides of the same coin, distinct but similar, Mr Noble concludes. Both are positioning themselves to improve their professionalism to meet the demands of today’s boardrooms.

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING

Ethical behaviour and standards of education are two cornerstones of a true profession and we are witnessing a transformation in the way selling is “taught”. One trend is a move away from the traditional short-term training “fix” towards in-company sales academies operated by organisations that “want to be seen as operating in a certain way”, according to Tony Hughes, chief executive of trainers Huthwaite International. In a conscious move to further professionalism, Matthew Lang, global vice-president for marketing and sales operations at Sony Mobile, is currently setting up an academy for the company’s 400-strong global sales force, which has revenue responsibility for tens of billions of dollars. The aim of this information-sharing portal is not simply to provide development, but also to act as a means of incentivising salespeople and building a community. A whole variety of learning opportunities will be offered, but the pinnacle will be a Master’s degree programme developed in conjunction with Consalia, which is seen as “something to be aspired to” by the salespeople. The proliferating number of degree-level sales courses is a sure sign that selling is becoming more professional. “In 2010 there were 40 institutions of higher education offering a sales course in the United States; there are 160 today. That’s a quadrupling of the institutes that teach sales at university level,” says Professor Neil Rackham, author and pioneer of research into complex selling. There is also a burgeoning sales education infrastructure developing in the UK with an expanding number of Master’s courses from the likes of Consalia in conjunc-

-Business skills -Problem-solving - Self-management and professionalism

ADVISORY AND CONSULTATIVE SKILLS

Salespeople also come out poorly in a study among boardroom executives. Work undertaken by Phil Squire, as part of a doctoral thesis, found that, in general, fewer than one in ten salespeople met boardroom expectations in terms of what they bring to the table. Now chief executive of consultancy Consalia, Dr Squire has continued this research on a qualitative basis as part of a series of “voice of the customer” interviews with senior executives. Opinions in Britain are even stronger than internationally. “In the UK, 80 per cent of people interviewed felt that less than 10 per cent of salespeople met their expectations; this compares with 73 per cent in the rest of world,” he says. All of which are very good reasons for sales as a function to become more professional, Mr Turner argues. Indeed, there have been signs

ETHICS AND EDUCATION

tion with Middlesex University, Huthwaite working with Sheffield Business School, and Portsmouth Business School. According to Professor Rackham, the essentials for a true profession are a systematic body of knowledge – “until recently, sales didn’t have that” – and “some kind of quality assurance”, while certification is the key to providing the quality assurance that salespeople have the necessary knowledge.

NEGOTIATION AND OBJECTION HANDLING/ASSERTING CONTROL

The proliferating number of degree-level sales courses is a sure sign that selling is becoming more professional

of a new professionalism emerging as selling reinvents itself in the context of a globalised, online world. “We are the place to go for the ethical salesperson,” he says, pointing out that every ISSM course has an ethical dimension.

PROBING AND QUESTIONING

espite obvious pockets of excellence, buyers’ traditional view of salespeople is that “they’d sell their grandmother to get the deal” and “they promise the Earth and deliver very little”, according to David Noble, chief executive of the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply (CIPS). Recent mis-selling scandals, market rigging and allegations of bribery can’t have helped the salesperson’s cause, of course. Selling as a profession has taken “quite a hit”, Mr Noble says and, perhaps surprisingly, one of selling’s cheerleaders agrees. Ben Turner, director of sales at the professional sales body, the Institute of Sales & Marketing Management (ISMM), concedes: “The reputation of salespeople is at rock bottom.”

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Opinion

UK sales skills audit High levels of skill

Above global average

46%

10%

Source: SalesAssessment.com, UK Sales Skills Audit

Below global average

44%

60%

CUSTOMER CONTACT SUMMARY

46%

13% 41%

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36%

The changing role of sales is well suited to women who offer valuable skills to complement those of their male colleagues, says Professor Lynette Ryals, provice-chancellor of education at Cranfield University

ENGAGING THE CUSTOMER SUMMARY

44%

12%

44%

46%

13% 41%

44%

SALES SUCCESS FOR WOMEN

12% 44%

U Advising customers

54%

38%

Spotting opportunities 41%

Matching customer needs to products and services 54%

Using probing questions

Communicating

48%

46%

13%

43%

Influencing customer expectations 40%

Negotiating

10% 50%

50%

12% 44%

Testing and challenging assumptions

30%

66%

BUSINESS SKILLS SUMMARY

NEGOTIATING AND CLOSING SUMMARY

55%

44%

Awareness of competitors

46%

Understanding customer needs

45%

Objection handling

35%

65%

Self-management and professionalism

35%

Resilience

13% 52%

22%

Problem-solving

74%

ntil recently, sales has been characterised by the language of “hunters and farmers”. Aggressive, testosterone-fuelled sales “hunters” tracked down their customer prey and browbeat them until they surrendered and made a purchase, while “farmers” toiled away in marketing and customer services at planting the seeds that would grow future relationships. This rather unattractive view of selling has contributed to its reputation as a male-dominated profession. While 63 per cent of people working in sales and customer service are women, according to the Office for National Statistics in 2013, it is thought women are far more likely to choose customer service roles and less than 30 per cent of salespeople are women. It’s time to recognise that this view of sales is outdated and to revisit the role of women in sales. In fact, as evidence has accumulated that it is much better for business to retain an existing customer than to win a new one, there has been a dramatic change in the sales role. Technology has accelerated this process, largely replacing the salesperson’s traditional function of providing information about products and services. Today, customers can access online sources to find most of the information they need. So, the salesperson’s role is evolving into relationship management, communication and problem-solving. Skills such as managing people, building teams and generating trust with the customer are increasingly prized. While earlier research into what makes salespeople successful focused on masculine characteristics, such as drive and the will to win, recent research into sales success has identified two vital characteristics – enjoying problem-solving and being responsive to social cues from

others. So would it pay companies to increase the proportion of women in their sales teams? Certainly, there are grounds to believe that women are generally better at social skills than men. This in turn may translate into sales success – a recent study of competing teams in an undergraduate business game found that mixed teams produced better sales and profits results than male-dominated teams. A gender-mixed team has access to a greater diversity of skills, which may contribute to higher performance. Other research has suggested that mixed teams have higher social sensitivity, which may increase responsiveness to cues from others and hence link to sales success. At the moment there are relatively few saleswomen at the very top. According to the Female FTSE Board Report 2014, produced by the Cranfield International Centre for Women Leaders, just 15.6 per cent of executive directors of FTSE 100 companies are female. Of those 160 women directors, only eight are in selling or commercial roles. But there are some examples of women being outstandingly successful through a career in sales. The National Association of Professional Women’s Professional Woman of the Year 2014 is a saleswoman, Terri Brady. And Ginni Rometty, the first woman to lead IBM, the world’s largest IT and consulting services company, was global sales leader before taking over as chief executive in 2012. The message is – don’t rule out a career in sales if you are a woman.

Professor Ryals was previously professor of strategic sales and account management at Cranfield University, an exclusively postgraduate university.

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Commercial Commercial Feature Feature

Is your enterprise sales plan making or breaking your sales team? Anaplan commissioned a new study which questioned C-level and senior decision-makers in the sales function in the UK, and found...

98%

of UK businesses are delivering compensation packages to sales reps after the financial year has already begun

76%

of businesses claim to start the sales planning process two months before the end of the financial year

IN FACT

54%

68%

of companies admit to delivering plans at least a month late

of organisations believe the average cost to replace a sales rep could be as much as £24,000

HP is a huge global organisation with 30,000 people on its sales plan across 178 countries. Setting sales targets and ensuring the sales design is optimised before somebody presses go at the start of a new year is a pretty big challenge. Sue Barsamian, senior vice president of indirect sales at HP, recalls: “We were always looking at what actually got deployed in a rear-view mirror that was usually 90 to 120 days later. And that’s because it was completely manual. This was a spreadsheet-run exercise and by the time that all got rolled back up, and people corrected minor errors along the way, we were usually at the beginning of the second quarter.” The solution was to move the entire sales planning and management process over to Anaplan’s cloud-based platform. Ms Barsamian’s verdict? “We have deployed our first year in Anaplan and it went great. I have been at HP eight years and I have never started a year like we did this year, thanks to Anaplan.” She cites a long list of benefits, such as the ability to change the plan at any moment, analytics functions which allow her team to create projects in a moment and the speed. “It was incredibly exciting, but also a real big deal to be able to step into what we consider to be the best-in-class quota and territory management application out there.” The problems experienced by HP are common. A survey by SiriusDecisions reveals half of firms use between five and ten iterations of the sales plan, with only one in five firms capable of resolving the re-evaluation process with a month. Almost a fifth take three months. This is much too slow. So what is Anaplan and why do so many firms use it? Anaplan is a platform that delivers cloud-based, in-memory business planning and execution for sales, operations and finance. The platform was built from the ground up to empower companies to plan, collaborate and act – in real time. Unlike legacy planning tools, Anaplan delivers what companies have always needed in a planning solution – powerful modelling, adaptability on the fly, engaged users, and real-time performance no matter the data volume and complexity. It replaces Excel spreadsheets and other generic tools. For financial projects and “what ifs”, it is the most advanced, quickest and versatile application available. Suitable for firms of all sizes, from ambitious startups to FTSE 100 enterprises such as Aviva and Taylor Wimpey, Anaplan boasts a long list of benefits over legacy systems. Anaplan enables business users

across your organisation to turn the complexity of your business operations into powerful, easy-to-use models. The first advantage you’ll notice is the way Anaplan is purpose built for modelling complex business scenarios for finance, sales and operations teams, from sales forecasting to financial consolidation to trade promotion planning and more. Data is sucked into the platform smoothly, with all your complex business rules stored and managed. You can make charts, compile reports and analyse data using a vast library of functions, including more than 100 applications and templates. There is version control, time and hierarchy management, auditability and workflow management as standard. The second major difference is the way Anaplan is built. Traditional spreadsheets struggle with large volumes of data. Anaplan works smoothly no matter what the data volume. This is due to two technologies: in-memory computing and HyperBlock™ Architecture. This means users can alter data without over-stressing the model. Update a cell and the change is implemented instantly, even if it affects a trillion cells. Excel and other systems cannot do this. Anaplan is immune to the stalling and crashing caused by complexity overload. As a cloud-based service, Anaplan requires zero maintenance by the user. Support and platform upgrades are handled by the provider. For the user there is no IT support needed and no hardware upgrades required. New services can be added by Anaplan on an ongoing basis. And cloud services ensure access to users anytime, anywhere. Just log in and start working no matter where you are based. This approach means an Anaplan implementation takes a tenth of the time of a traditional planning software deployment.

Anaplan enables business users to turn the complexity of your business operations into powerful, easy-to-use models

Anaplan is fully supported from any mobile device (iOS, Android, Windows) so you never have to be disconnected from your data. Users can access plans anywhere, anytime. The firm itself is a privately-owned company based in San Francisco, founded in 2006 by British technology pioneer Michael Gould. Currently Anaplan’s chief technical officer, he realised that existing planning software on the market could not support the growing demands of business, and set out to transform the industry by using in-memory computing, 64-bit multi-core processing and software-as-a-service delivery, combined with HyperBlock™ Architecture to manage data. In May 2014 Anaplan announced it has completed its series-D round of $100 million in financing, bringing total investment in the company to $150 million. Named by Gartner as “Cool Vendor” in 2012, Anaplan now lists HP, Prudential and McAfee as just some of its growing list of blue-chip customers.

To get started with Anaplan, begin with an area of the business that is currently being managed by a complex set of spreadsheets and book an initial meeting with Anaplan. Then Anaplan will work with you to build a proof of concept on the Anaplan platform. Alternatively, go to the Anaplan website and watch a demo video and see how to build an Anaplan app in 15 minutes. You’ll see how easy it is.

For more information please visit www.anaplan.com

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Value Proposition

SHOW VALUE TO MAKE A SALE Organisations and their sales teams must understand customer needs to create and sell products that deliver real value if they want to boost revenue, writes Dan Matthews

Image: Getty

71%

of sales managers think the value gap is the most important problem facing the discipline Source: SiruisDecisions

of untrained salespeople naturally discuss “value” Source: Huthwaite International

55%

of business-to-business customers will listen to solutions that claim to improve business results Source: BTS Sales Practice Partners

ales 101 basic guide to selling went something like this: get a sales job, find out about the product, ring a load of people, say it’s great, get a bundle of yeses, go to lunch. Repeat forever. Sales 2.0 is a very different picture. Buyers, from the consumer on the street to multinational conglomerates and everything in-between, will slam the metaphorical (or not) door in your face if you can’t explain, not only why what your selling is good, but how it fits into their lives. The “value gap”, as it has become known, is a term referencing the apparent chasm between the ability of salespeople to pitch a product and their ability to demonstrate its value on a case-by-case basis. The charge is that salespeople look outwards from their product instead of looking inwards from a buyer’s perspective. The same charge could be levelled at organisations more widely, particularly those that obsess about upgrades and add-ons to product lines while forgetting the things their customers like most about what they sell. This wouldn’t be a problem if it weren’t for the fact that the people who pay for things are choosier and have more choice than ever before. Since the global economic crunch of 2008/9, people in charge of budgets are scrutinised much harder on their investments. They need to know not just that something is brilliant, but in what way its brilliance will make their world a better place. During the summer, at a sales conference in Orlando, consultancy SiruisDecisions released research showing that the biggest problem facing sales teams was not education, skills, reticence on the part of

customers, technology or budgets, but an endemic inability on the part of salesmen and women to describe the value of a product to a customer.

The biggest problem facing sales teams is not education, skills, reticence on the part of customers, technology or budgets, but an endemic inability on the part of salesmen and women to describe the value of a product to a customer Results contained within this research revealed what was by no means a close call; a huge 71 per cent said it was their biggest business hurdle in 2014. Meanwhile, just 10 per cent of buyers said sales reps were value focused in their patter. This was the fourth consecutive year that the value gap was identified as the “biggest issue” in sales. So what on Earth is going on? BUSINESS VALUE

Tony Hughes, chief executive of Huthwaite International, says: “Especially among people with technical backgrounds, close involvement with the functionality of the product or service gets in the way of understanding real business value – what it can actually do to help the customer solve a problem. “We see this every time we meet delegates on our sales training for the first time. Typically, less skilled salespeople talk too much, and try and present a generic solution to an insufficiently understood problem far too early.” So what should they be doing? “They should instead probe and analyse what the true pay-offs would

be that would really make a customer see the need to make a change, and for which they would pay full value to do so. To do that accurately, persuasively and consistently is a highly learnable skill,” he adds. According to research conducted by Huthwaite last year, 57 per cent of sales propositions were resolutely product focused, yet the more effective propositions – that is those from companies who reported big bucks flowing in – were customer targeted and quantifiable. On the company’s own “scale of excellence” in value propositions, 86 per cent of the highest-scoring organisations were those showing increased profit. Conversely, the majority of those registering a low score showed a loss. Coincidence? It seems unlikely. PAIN POINTS

But what does a value proposition look like? Wayne Gratton, business development director at Avnet, a global distributor of IT solutions, says that for his business showing value is about identifying the pain points in each sector it sells to. “It’s important for sales teams to understand there are different drivers in vertical sectors. Security features in healthcare, for example, are focused around data protection for digital health records over and above supporting trends like remote working. That’s where the value of tech lies in this example,” he says. How do you get sales teams on board? Explaining the value of a product to each new potential customer doesn’t sound like a hard thing to do, but the SiruisDecisions research suggests it is harder than it sounds. A barrier to jump over is that salespeople often think in a piece-

meal way – sell ten things and I get a bonus – when they should be shown how to take a more strategic path. Xactly managing director, Europe, Middle East and Africa, Tom Castley, uses a restaurant metaphor to describe the solution. “Just as a restaurant must design a menu that reflects the chef’s skillset and appeal to diners, it is up to management to encourage reps to develop combinations of value propositions that will never fail to capture customer interest,” he says. “Without the incentive to follow a clear plan when cooking up deals, management can’t expect to see consistency and progress. If a restaurant failed to support its chefs in such a way, it’s unlikely they’d see any Michelin stars.” For Huthwaite’s Mr Hughes, closing the value gap is not just about instructing your sales team to ask questions, it’s about asking the right questions, at the right time in the sales process and – critically, because this is the really rare bit – listening carefully to the response. “That requires planning the line of questioning in a flexible way,” he says, “setting clear objectives for any customer conversations; honestly appraising whether they were met; and using the developing insight into the customer’s problems and aspirations to build a persuasive, specific, resonant value proposition.” Companies that ignore the value gap – and there are plenty of them still out there – risk staking their commercial future on a strategy akin to howling at the moon. If teams don’t understand implicitly why customers should want what they are pitching, they risk a marathon of cold shoulders and endless dialling tones.

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Interview

MASTERING BIG DATA TO DRIVE SALES those of their peers. The companies that succeed aren’t the ones with the most data, but the ones that use it best,” he argues. For a salesman, he believes, decisions never change – how do you identify your best prospects, what’s the most effective pitch and how to handle pricing? It’s just that big data, which makes a lot more data available in real time, gives you an edge. “It’s the same decisions, but the fact that you have all this data in real time allows for better and better decisions,” says the consultant who has also run McKinsey’s worldwide functional, as opposed to geographical or industry, practice from its Dallas office. He reckons he can predict which corporate approach is likely to benefit more from big data. BUSINESS ISSUES FIRST

Raymond Snoddy resumes his series of Raconteur interviews with an insight into the career and passions of David Court, head of McKinsey’s advanced analytics practice (pictured)

avid Court is passionate about marketing and data, and believes together they can create game-changing business tools to drive revenue. His feel for numbers came from statistics during a business degree at Queen’s University, Ontario. Marketing expertise was acquired at Procter & Gamble, handling brands such as Joy and Cascade detergent. “I know more about cleaning dishes than any man should know,” jokes Mr Court, who also met his wife Alice at P&G. “Understanding the basics of marketing and getting a wife is as good as you can get for a first job,” says the Canadian, whose 32-year career at management consultants McKinsey & Company began after a Harvard MBA. The combination of being customer driven while understanding statistics informs his most recent passion – helping large corporations embrace the opportunities of big data while avoiding the many pitfalls. The statistics are impressive. “Companies that use big data and analytics effectively show productivity rates and profitability that are 5 to 6 per cent higher than

A company that says we have lots of data, now let’s find opportunities to use it, is unlikely to have longterm success. Instead you start with the business issues and decide how data can drive the business and make more money. To start assemble external and internal data, making sure data from different internal systems, which often do not talk to each other, is properly integrated. You then build a predictive model or algorithm. It took Amazon ages to be able to say if you bought that book, you will like this one. Now building the software can take as little as three weeks. “You build the individual software and then you tailor it to clients. The really tricky thing is getting the front line to use it. This is where most companies fail. They have a sophisticated model, but nobody uses it,” explains Mr Court, whose long McKinsey career included leading the sales and marketing practice. To get sales staff to use the data predictions they must be offered options rather than being told what to do by “a black box”. Training is also vital. Many com-

panies spend 95 per cent of the cost of moving into big data building a great model and the rest on training, when the split should be 50-50. “You are keeping empowerment; you are just making better decisions, that’s what data analytics does,” claims Mr Court, who argues that big data has opened up opportunities in every industry McKinsey has looked at, although advantages can come from different areas. In business-to-business, the key is getting the pricing of goods and services right, while for large retailers the importance of getting the right match between sales and inventory is huge. But where should the big data function be located in a company? Fewer companies are choosing the IT department, while small pockets of isolated analytics workers leads to poor staff retention of these highly desirable professionals. McKinsey has concluded the answer is “a hub and spoke” approach, a smart model-building group at the centre working with analytic specialists in corporate divisions, who are close to the business issues. PERSONALISED MESSAGING

When he talks to marketers, Mr Court reflects the new reality that marketing is shifting towards more personalised messaging. Advertising is far from dead, but the Holy Grail is customer engagement, something likely to be achieved by giving consumers useful and relevant information, when they want it and how they want it. “Analytics is how you make this happen without blowing your brains out from a cost perspective,” says the executive, who has worked for McK-

insey in London, Chicago and Sydney, as well as Toronto and Dallas. The move to more personalised data increasingly raises problems over privacy, a trend that led the European Parliament in March to vote overwhelmingly for stricter data protection rules. Mr Court is optimistic the solution can be found within industry through a form of “depersonalised” personalisation and a reliance on consumer segments.

Outsourcing for Growth Page 15 “I have to reassure the regulators and the public that I am not giving out information I do not need. I do not need to go out and analyse what David Court specifically wants and send David Court a specific message,” he explains. Models are so sophisticated that there is little commercial difference between marketing directly to individuals and targeting depersonalised segments. “What companies need to do is avoid violating people’s concerns by dealing with it through segmentation. The better companies understand the concerns and are moving in that direction,” he says. This 54 year old is, however, happy to reveal that, as a member of National Geographic’s Advisory Council, his private passion is travel and in August he went to Zambia on holiday with Alice. Put that in your database.

The companies that succeed aren’t the ones with the most data, but the ones that use it best

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Commercial Feature Commercial Feature

On your marks, get set, hire… With the economy recovering, many organisations are once again thinking about growth and headcount, but the time it takes for new salespeople to break even is a major hurdle, says leading sales training company Imparta While the cost of a new salesperson starts to affect a company’s bottom line as soon as they are hired, business-to-business salespeople may not start generating significant revenue until the following financial year. This significantly limits how fast organisations can grow their sales teams and still preserve profitability. Research by Imparta suggests the true cost of hiring a new salesperson can be two-and-a-half times greater than their first year’s salary, once recruitment fees, induction costs and the impact of failed hires have been taken into account. This creates a substantial hurdle – often more than £170,000 per person in the first year, according to the research – that new hires must overcome before they cover their costs and the organisation can make a further hire. Imparta’s research identified four types of salespeople: sprinters, middle and distance runners, and non-runners who do not last the course. Only sprinters and middle runners have a chance of breaking even in their first year. The key to unlocking growth, therefore, is to hire or develop more sprinters. So here are the key tools that companies can use to reduce the time it takes for new salespeople to hit revenue.

Richard Barkey Chief executive and founder Imparta

INCREASE QUALITY OF HIRES Salespeople are notoriously good at selling themselves, which makes it a challenge to determine their real capabilities. Most companies use hypothetical interview questions – “what would you do if…” – and psychometric tests. The best companies use in-depth evidence-based interviews, simulations and role plays to reveal what people will do, rather than what they say they will do. They also consider a candidate’s “locus of control”. Broadly speaking, people with an external locus of control tend to believe things happen to them, whereas those with a primarily internal locus of control believe they influence the outcomes themselves. Most sprinters tend to the internal end of the scale, which drives them to overcome any barriers they encounter.

SPEED UP RAMP-UP The first few weeks after joining offer a great opportunity to turn distance runners into sprinters. Organisations need to transfer knowledge about their products and services as soon as possible, educating new salespeople not just in what those products are, but also in how to sell them. Good product training covers the

typical customer stakeholders, their objectives, the common barriers to achieving those objectives, the impact of your solution, and the likely decision criteria and risks that customers will consider. This knowledge transfer should go hand in hand with skills training in your sales methodology, using “learning by doing” rather than lectures, and be followed immediately by manager coaching to reinforce the new skills. A sales academy can help to provide a structure for this training and coaching, while building cohorts of new hires for mutual support. Another important step is to inject new hires into receptive client situations early on. Imparta’s research shows that salespeople often develop into sprinters when they are introduced to an existing client or a receptive contact very early in their tenure. This helps to build confidence and grow informal networks early, before attempting to penetrate the hard shell of a cold target. Businesses also need to understand that younger recruits, the so-called millennials, may resist integration into a more traditional sales environment. This generation uses different tools, especially social media, has different needs, and often values interest, fulfilment and fast career progression over immediate monetary reward. Sales managers need to understand how millennials expect to interact and learn, and what motivates them.

INCREASE NUMBER OF LEADS If existing salespeople are busy enough to justify hiring new staff, they are probably also sitting on dormant or low-probability opportunities that would benefit from the attention of eager new eyes. Take an especially close look at accounts that have been a customer of just one part of your business for a long time and try using the new salespeople to crosssell to them. More generally, stronger lead generation at the company level will translate directly into more sprinters, so investment in salespeople should be matched by investment in lead generation. This lead generation should be focused on customer needs rather than your products; sprinters tend to bring insight to the issues their prospects are facing, rather simply to offer products and services.

100 90 80 70 %

60 50 40 30 20 10

specialists, service delivery managers and so on broaden the base of contacts in the customer organisation, uncovering new needs and making sure that the deals salespeople do win are big enough to carry them over the line.

Revenue generation in year 1 equals...

IMPROVE CONVERSION RATE Organisations can further accelerate break-even by improving the percentage of deals won against the competition and against the outcome of “do nothing”. Sprinters tend to gain early experience of working with an “A” pitch team, where they learn how to uncover the client’s decision criteria and to develop a powerful pitch strategy.

Research by Imparta suggests the true cost of hiring a new salesperson can be two-and-a-half times greater than their first year’s salary This can also be achieved using “deal clinics”, group sessions facilitated by an expert coach to improve the conversion rate while building skills and confidence.

Quality of hires

Percentage of year up to speed

Number of leads

Imparta is a global training company that creates lasting improvements in sales, marketing and service. For more information and a free spreadsheet to help you reduce the time for new salespeople to break even, visit www.imparta.com/times or e-mail info@imparta.com

Average deal size

INCREASE AVERAGE DEAL SIZE

MONTHS AFTER JOINING

Increasing average deal size can also accelerate the break-even for a new salesperson. The best companies target new hires at the most attractive markets and use a systematic methodology to expand opportunities into adjacent areas. Sprinters also tend to have access to the right level of sales support. Technical

Conversion rate

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Ethics

DOING THE

RIGHT THING ust as negotiations were nearly completion, John Michael, chief executive at data storage firm iStorage, threw out a bombshell. “Our software would need accrediting,” he said. “We knew it would meet it, but only by rewriting some coding, which would cause delays,” he recalls. “To bag the deal we could have easily glossed over this, but this just isn’t us. The client was so pleased with our honesty, they decided to appoint us anyway. The result – in the last four months our business has grown in that country by 400 per cent.”

The relationship between good practice and profit is crystal clear If there was ever an example of how sound, ethical selling can go hand in hand with profit, then this must surely be it. Contrast this with the experience Mr Michael says he recently had as a customer looking at kitchens: “The salesman quoted £35,000. I thought this was steep and I was right as I got another for £16,000. When I went back to the first one, he said he’d match it. It left a very bad taste.” At a time when sales is still mired with mis-selling scandals, only the slimmest of suspicions that sales professionals are behaving unethically is all that’s needed to reinforce old stereotypes. “In choosing one brand over another, consumers are already worried they’ve made

the wrong choice,” says Eve Poole, author of Ethical Leadership in a Global World. “It’s never been more vital for salespeople to show spotless ethical standards.” She says protecting professional reputation should be easy. “Selling is about trust and trustworthiness has been expressed in the following equation: credibility plus reliability plus intimacy over self-reliance. The top part is what salespeople have to max-out on,” she adds. MANAGEMENT PRESSURE

But Thomas Beschorner, a researcher at the Institute of Business Ethics, University of St.Gallen, in Switzerland, believes it’s often the context of the organisation, its management or reward and target structure that causes corners can be cut. “The system salespeople are in can force personal ethics aside and then staff have to face the question of who they are loyal to – their employer or the customer,” he says. This dilemma explains why sales staff may adopt a patter that is subversive to their employer – “I’m not supposed to say this, but this cheaper product is just as good.” He adds that even if the advice is genuinely given, it can still sound unethical, if customers suspect it is trained behaviour, designed to manipulate them. “This is why no one salesperson can shoulder the reputation of a whole industry,” says Simon Culver, head of Avaya UK. “What they can do, however, is be as honest and professional as they can. What we make sure we do is back this up, with topto-bottom processes ensuring we

Ethical behavior is essential to build and maintain trust with customers, which in turn brings repeat business and increased profits, writes Peter Crush

38% think British businesses are not very or not at all ethical

35% think British businesses operate less ethically than ten years ago

TRAINING

Large firms like Avaya and Virgin specifically train their staff on ethics. “Training lasts three to six months, with specific modules on this,” says Mario Di’Mascio, executive director for sales at Virgin Media Business. “Sales is all about trust and good sales is about repeat business, not quick wins. We believe the relationship between good practice and profit is crystal clear.” The biggest purchase most people make is a place to live and Which?

of buying experiences are based on how the customer feels they are being treated Source: McKinsey

Source: Institute of Business Ethics 2013

don’t pressurise staff to sell-in before quarter-end periods, or cause undue urgency to meet targets. “Clients fill in quarterly surveys on how the sales process was, so this is another check to ensure our sales staff protect our values. Reputation is really all about transferring brand values.”

70%

recently found 51 per cent of Britons don’t trust estate agents. Peter Buckingham, head of sales at Leicestershire estate agent Andrew Granger & Co, says: “Our sector does suffer a trust issue, especially recently because of sealed bids. People think the sales process is not honest and that we push up prices. To counter this we insist on using genuine sealed envelopes opened in front of clients. It means we genuinely have no idea what the offers are.” At a broad level, ethics awareness is increasing. “We accept that if a culture of management encourages bad behaviour, then quickly salespeople don’t think to question it,” says Andy Hough of the Sales Leadership Alliance. “That’s why we’re striving to promote good ethics as being about business longevity. People in sales have to be ‘influencers’ – that’s OK – but right now we’re

researching what good ethics looks like, with a view to developing a kite mark on sales training processes, so customers can feel confident they have been treated correctly.” With customers increasingly aware of good ethics, and prepared to buy from those who offer service and value, it’s clear maintaining good reputation builds brands and businesses. “We have our own code of ethics, and badge and certify that our staff are doing the right thing,” says Andrew Lawson, managing director of salesforce.com. “In IT reputation follows you; it’s a small world and customers move with you as we develop new products. Being known to provide what they want is vital. We know there is absolutely a correlation between profits and ethics. What we’re saying though is that without ethics nowadays, you don’t have a business – full stop.”

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Outsourcing

HELP AND EXPERTISE FROM OUTSIDE It is a challenging decision to make, but outsourcing sales can open up new possibilities for growth, as Beth Rogers reports

inance directors have been complaining for decades about the increasing cost of making a sale and government statistics persistently show a significant skills gap in sales. Markets are more volatile, customers are increasing powerful and new competitors are constantly emerging. The challenges of designing an effective sales function have never been more complex. When functions become costly, difficult to resource or slow to change, organisations usually turn to outsourcing. The deployment of information and communications technology is an important aspect of organisational success, but the majority of companies outsource it. Meanwhile, according to a Deloitte global outsourcing report in 2012, only 11 per cent of companies are outsourcing sales and marketing. The outsourcing of sales has been described as a dormant market. Some sales activities are commonly outsourced. For example, Kraft used CPM, a leading contract sales organisation, for the launch of Tassimo coffee machines and Reckitt Benckiser used CPM for a sales promotion campaign for Finish dishwasher tablets. In business-to-business sectors, there is a focus on lead generation and qualification, such as O2 using the telemarketing agency Great Guns. The Telemarketing Company (TTMC) claim that the leads they have generated for American Express since 2010 have delivered £83 million in new business. Notably, companies are using third parties to access new geographical markets. Some parts of a customer portfo-

lio might be outsourced. For example, Tennyson is a service provider with a focus on managing smaller customers for big brands, and cites one case of drastically reducing customer churn and generating new business of £12 million. If there are specialist sales agencies delivering great results, why not go further and outsource the whole sales function? In 2004, Japan’s largest pharmaceutical company Takeda announced that it would outsource its UK sales function to market leading contract sales organisation AshfieldIn2Focus, adopting a new model which would more closely align its sales organisation with the way the NHS was buying.

When functions become costly, difficult to resource or slow to change, organisations usually turn to outsourcing They decided to deploy a limited number of regional account directors with cross-functional teams, focused on building partnerships with NHS decision-making units. These posts were designed for the cream of the sales profession in the sector, strategic thinkers with a command of pharmaco-economics, who could connect with administrative as well as clinical decision-makers. This model has been sustained for ten years, suggesting that both brand owner and sales service provider have generated strategic benefit from it.

Image: Alamy

Despite the volatility of business activity in the past five years, the occurrence of sales outsourcing is still very low compared with other business processes. When talking to sales directors about this phenomenon, many perceive considerable risk in losing control of the customer experience. Contract sales organisations would argue they can reduce risks for their clients because their quality management is as robust as their performance management. A company can differentiate itself by the way it sells. Brand values are important, but they do not preclude using a variety of resourcing options from employed staff, interim staff, agents, resellers, contract sales organisations and even reciprocal selling with other companies. Use of telephone, the internet and apps within the sales process are also part of this mix. Some sales service providers are very sophisticated in their understanding of the how customers buy, and help their clients to innovate with use of technology and accessing skills in a way that improves the predictability of costs and flexibility to access new opportunities. The number of sales outsourcing consultancies registered on freeindex.co.uk increased from 187 in February 2010 to 517 in July 2014 and the biggest brand in sales outsourcing reported delivering $2.2 billion sales for clients in 2013. It’s no tsunami, but the tide is turning. UK companies are starting to realise there are some excellent service providers and to explore their potential.