HR Blog

Travel log: Jan Mouton from Washington (2)

In this second episode, Jan Mouton comments on the sales plea in a time of crisis.

Selling in times of crisis

One rather remarkable session was by Neil Rackham, sales training expert, researcher and author on the subject.
 

Here some of his poignant observations:

• Today’s CEO’s are far more concerned with sales than in the past. Twenty years ago, efficiency improvement received the most attention. Ten years ago, acquisitions were the order of the day. Today, the focus is organic growth and this puts sales in the foreground.
• The age of the salesman as the walking brochure is definitely behind us. This schism came about when Wal-Mart discovered that 70% of their sales effort was only good for 5% of their result. When they realized that, Wal-Mart immediately went over to notifying their suppliers that having salesmen visit is too costly and that they would find the advantages of the sold products on the internet. At the same time, they of course asked for a discount. Since that day there have been no salesmen at Wal-Mart to pitch a product!
• In almost all markets, the uniqueness of products decreases while the possibility of replacing them increases. In B2B contexts this explains why there is only interest in salesmen who provide solutions for problems the buyer is incapable of solving himself and why those service offerings are very customized.

These figures do, unfortunately, suggest that 40% of salesmen are still walking brochures. When times are tough, their limited contribution to total sales is made even more evident. It is this group of people that should therefore be made to leave the organization or be re-schooled. Considering that strong sales profiles remain hard to find on the labour market, the second option is perhaps the more interesting one.
 

All of this means that the message we give salesmen in our training sessions today, has drastically changed:

• Creativity has become more important than the power to convince
• Creating value for the client (value selling) is what clenches the deal
• Sales strategies have become more important than sales skills
   

The biggest mistakes Sales can make in hard times are:

• Chasing after more opportunities
• Doing more negotiation than actual selling
• Selling more on price disregarding the customer’s safety

Today’s motto is, in other words, not “sell harder” but “sell smarter”.
 

To conclude, a last brainteaser: If you wouldn’t chase after a certain opportunity in good times, NEVER pursue it in bad times either. This analysis confirms that BCT’s approach to sales training is a strong one. It seems that the initiative www.Network4Value.eu has come at exactly the right time.