Writing in the Harvard Business Review, Thomas Stewart summarises the (then new and emerging) role for the sales organisation in the following terms:

“Selling is changing fast and in such a way that sales teams have become strategic resources. When corporations strive to become customer-focused, salespeople move to the foreground; engineers recede. As companies go to market with increasingly complex bundles of products and services, their representatives cease to be mere order takers (most orders are placed online anyway) and become relationship managers.

(Stewart, 2006)

While there is little doubt that the role of the sales organisation has gone through major changes in recent years, what should not be underestimated is the extent to which such changes are increasingly radical and disruptive of business models and theories (Shapiro et al., 1998).

INCREASING CUSTOMER PRODUCTIVITY

As Leigh and Marshall (2001) suggest, the selling function has shifted its focus from selling products and services to ‘increased customer productivity’, through enhanced revenue or cost advantage. But how do we achieve that ‘increased customer productivity’?

We suggest that there is need for joint action by CEOs, sales managers, educators, trainers, consultants and professional organisations to improve the conceptualisation and practice of sales management. And with new models of sales management come new demands of the sales manager and the salesforce. Indeed, conventional selling models have become mostly redundant, and salespeople will need to be educated to think differently because business buyers in particular have different expectations of them.

NEW EXPECTATIONS

In speaking of business buyers, Chally (2006) reports that among the expectations of corporate purchasers from salespeople are:

1. Be personally responsible for our desired results — the sales contact with the supplier is expected to be committed to the customer and accountable for achievement.

2. Understand our business — to be able to add value, the supplier must understand the customer’s competencies, strategies, values and organisational culture.

3. Be on our side — the salesperson must be the customer’s advocate in their own organisation and operate through the policies and politics to focus on the customer’s needs.

4. Design the right applications — the salesperson is expected to think beyond technical features and functions to the implementation of the product or service in the customer’s environment, thinking beyond the transaction to the customer’s end state.

5. Be easily accessible — customers expect salespeople to be constantly connected and within reach.

6. Solve our problems — customers no longer buy products or services; they buy solutions to their problems, and expect salespeople to diagnose, prescribe, and resolve their issues, not just sell them products.

7. Be creative in responding to our needs — buyers expect salespeople to be innovators who bring them new ideas, to solve problems, so creativity is a major source of added value. Critical to this is unearthing unknown problems and identifying customers’ delight and secret needs.

SALES MANAGER OR CUSTOMER MANAGER?

If this is what most business buyers want from salespeople, what then should be the role of their sales managers? Should their managers be driven by a sales process that focuses merely on closing sales? Or should the sales manager be making the transition to becoming a customer manager focusing on achieving the best long-term outcomes for both the customer and their company?

IS YOUR SENIOR MANAGEMENT IN SYNC?

Finally, what about senior managers who are demanding superior performance from the salesforce? Are they providing appropriate marketing support that creates not merely brand awareness, but more importantly, brand preference? And are customer service personnel trained merely to respond to stated customer needs, often leaving real, delight and secret needs unexplored?

The role of strategic customer management has become so important that top management must lead that process of implementing it, and show commitment by ensuring that sales, marketing and customer service understand that they all are really one department with one central mission — creating and keeping profitable customers.

Herman D Alvaranga is a fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and president of the Caribbean School of Sales Management (CSSM), the region’s first specialist sales, marketing and brand management college. E-mail hdalvaranga@cssm.edu.jm