Over the years businesses have been bombarded by numerous strategic models and management approaches. Just a few examples of such strategies that can be found on various management training programmes include: downsizing, relationship advertising and marketing, empowerment, total quality management, re-engineering and benchmarking. All these ideas have produced adjustments within our businesses and in also in those of our customers and so have also left a deep impact in the field of selling.
Perhaps one of the most significant changes is that, where clients are concerned, what used to count as "best" service from a supplier is thought of as standard service today. A good seller is expected by clients to:
1. Sustain consistent top quality without having any faults worth mentioning.
2. Tell the client regularly about the newest trends and also contributes to the client's being in a position to react to these trends rapidly and at a competitive price.
3. Go through the chain of value generation and look for opportunities to rationalise and pass on any eventual cost benefits to the client.
4. Keep their rates consistently at the lower end of the market scale.
5. Ensure that their production does not endanger health, is safe, and is kind to the natural environment.
These five increased demands have led to serious modifications in the way industrial field sales are carried out. The sales man or woman must move from being a simple profit maker into a problem solver. This change requires the sales man or woman to be able to supply complete answers to their client's needs. This will include a mix of goods and services, the correct info and comprehensive assistance and back up. There is no-one better suited to undertaking this new approach to industrial field sales than the sales person who is able to keep in close personal contact with the client.
Thus the modern industrial salesperson is progressively turning into the customer's advocate. They pay attention to your client's ideas, wants and also to their complaints and pass them on to the organization. As the client's representative, the field sales man or woman will start to have a bigger influence on how much can be charged for goods and services than in the past.
In the long run the industrial salesperson will increasingly turn into a market researcher. They will need to know intimately the full range of goods they sell, the level of competition and their prices, as well as the way the clients evaluate the organization's services in comparison with the competition.
Sales supervisors, sales management training experts inform us, must be conscious that these changes will also alter the conventional sales process that industrial sales men and women might be working with. The modern sales man or woman needs to build up a relationship of trust with each and every decision maker inside a customer's organization: persuading is out - convincing is in!
The sales man or woman has to go from being an information giver to being an information receiver. The client doesn't have to know every little thing about your company in the first instance, rather the other way round! To get this intimate knowledge of your client's company will require regular group discussions.
The modern industrial sales man or woman regularly takes on the role of co-ordinator of the customer-supplier relationship. They're the contact partner when customer support doesn't work, when a bill which has long been paid is demanded for the 3rd time, or when a guarantee promise isn't kept or the delivery time is overrun.
It should be really clear to you by now that entirely new demands will be made of the industrial salesperson:
The new industrial salesperson needs to be a great listener, analyst and communicator. He/She understands the customer and his wishes and will deliver these to his/her colleagues within the business.
For this the new industrial salesperson must be equipped to speak to specialists from departments much removed from sales, for instance research and development, both in his/her company's business and the clients.
The simple selling techniques, like closing deals and handling complaints, though still vital, will decrease in their importance. Having said that, co-ordination skill, talent for organisation and team capability will become far more important.
The industrial salesperson who's simply guided by quotas will soon belong in the past. The new industrial salesperson needs to be self-managed, self-lead and self-encouraged. As such they will also need to be managed differently and a refresher sales management training program might be valuable for any sales supervisors having to lead such industrial sales people.
Richard Stone (richard.stone@spearhead-training.co.uk) is a Director for Spearhead Training Limited ( http://www.spearhead-training.co.uk/ ) a company that specialises in running management and sales training courses. Richard provides consultancy advice for numerous world leading companies.
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