The Sales Professional Is the Sale
The Sales Professional Is the Sale
You don’t have to take our word on this; it is business customers themselves who have placed salespeople in the top spot. Since 1988, our statistical analysis of purchasing decisions has demonstrated that the sales professional is the most important factor in determining what customers purchase, how much they pay, and how long they stick with the lucky suppliers they choose from the thousands of business-to-business sellers competing for their business. In fact, our analysis proved that salesperson effectiveness accounts for 39 percent of customer’s buying decisions and is the most important decision factor – more influential than price, quality, and the availability of a total solution.
This is a notable development in the sales world, and it represents the emergence of a new competitive advantage in the business-to-business arena. Sales professionals have become the leading influence on their customer’s buying processes – more important than the selling price, more important than the offering’s features and benefits, more important than the product and service quality. This means that the effectiveness of sales professionals themselves can be an added value to their customers and a competitive advantage for their employers. In the 1960s, media guru Marshall McLuhan declared that the medium is the message. Now, in the business world, the salesperson is the sale.
An Evolutionary Pattern of Development
When did this change happen? Our in-depth supplier evaluation interviews with more than 80,000 business customers first revealed in 1998 that in their estimation, the salesperson had ascended to the top position of influence. This did not occur overnight, though, nor has it completely eclipsed the other influencing factors in the business-to-business sale. Instead, it is an evolutionary development that has been building momentum for years.
The nature of competitive advantage in sales has always been evolutionary. That is why other factors have been more important than sales effectiveness in customer’s buying decisions in the past. Product and service quality is a good example. Quality became a primary concern of business-to-business customers in the late 1970s and 1980s as well-made and dependable Japanese and German motor cars and electronics captured market share from their American competitors. As U.S. manufacturers lost customers, they became aware of the magnitude of the costs they incurred from product defects and failures, and,
even more importantly, aware of the customer defections and lost sales that poor quality caused.
The ensuing focus on – and demand for – greater levels of quality spawned a revolution. Quality-based concepts and programs, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, just-in-time inventory systems, the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, and ISO 9000, dominated the corporate landscape. Companies worked hard and invested significant capital in their efforts to improve the quality of their products and services. They demanded that their suppliers do the same. Suppliers and their sales forces quickly responded to these demands and began winning business by demonstrating the high quality of their offerings and guaranteeing continued quality.
As soon as product and service quality proved capable of winning business, the quality competition really heated up. Sellers strove to match and exceed the quality of their competitor’s offerings. As a result, quality levels are much higher today than they were in 1980. Six Sigma programs, whose goal is the achievement of a de facto defect rate of 3.4 per million, are now commonplace.
But what has happened to quality as a competitive advantage in sales during this time? In the years between 1980 and the widespread adoption of Six Sigma and TQM, the differentiating power and competitive advantage of product and service quality have eroded. Today, the quality of your products and services is considered a basic requirement rather than a competitive advantage. You can’t win or retain customers without high-quality products and services, but neither can you win based on quality alone. Every serious competitor is offering high quality, and customers’ standards and expectations regarding quality have risen accordingly.
In most industries, trying to gain a competitive advantage by offering a higher level of quality simply doesn’t make sense. The difference between a few defects spread over a million parts isn’t economically compelling to customers. Thus, as quality standards have risen and been matched by more and more competing suppliers, quality has lost its power as a competitive advantage.
Sales effectiveness, which is based on the competence of the salespeople and the resources and support provided by their companies, is subject to the same evolutionary forces as is quality. It has risen to the top of the customer’s influence list because demand far outstrips the supply. Today, customers need for a competent, professional salesperson has grown well beyond the ability of the current crop of salespeople to fulfill it and, all the evidence suggests, will continue to grow as far into the future as we can see.
To help understand the driving force behind this condition (and the critical and largely unfulfilled role that customers want salespeople to assume), we need only take a step back and start by acknowledging a very basic fact: The only reason a corporate customer buys anything is because his company cannot or chooses not to make or provide it for itself. If the customer’s company were making or providing it, it would have its own internal organisation to do that work and – this is the key part – it would have a manager or executive responsible for that function. That is to say, it would have someone who was accountable for ensuring that the company actually received the benefit that the product or service was designed to provide. Thus, a business customer’s decision to buy a good or a service externally is not simply a decision to purchase – it is also a decision to outsource the management of the benefit that the purchase is intended to deliver.
What does this mean for you, as someone trying to sell to that company? What we have discovered is that business customers are turning to salespeople to fulfill the role of surrogate manager. When salespeople become skilled at managing the total benefit delivered to their customers, the supply will meet the demand. At that point, sales effectiveness will decline as a competitive advantage, just as quality has. Someday, if enough salespeople and companies recognize and build their sales effectiveness, it may only count as a portion of the entry fee. But today, as we have discovered, the research reveals that fewer than one out of a thousand salespeople can perform to this level!
While the power of salesperson effectiveness to influence customers may eventually decline, there are two reasons why no salesperson or sales organisation can afford to ignore it now or in the future:
First, whether it is a full-blown competitive advantage or simply the table stakes required to enter the game, sales effectiveness will remain a critical ingredient in sales success. In the former case, it is a scarce and in-demand expertise that will help you achieve above-average sales results. In the latter case, when customers simply expect you to possess that expertise, you won’t be able to engage them without it.
Second, relatively speaking, the competitive advantage conferred by sales effectiveness has just begun to emerge. It may well retain its power to win sales for ten or fifteen years or longer, depending on how many salespeople recognise and strive to attain it, before it becomes a commonplace standard and an expectation in the customer’s eyes.
So, the bad news is that the same evolutionary pattern that brought the sales professional to the top spot in the customer’s buying decision will eventually create the same kind of competition that transformed price, quality, and features from substantial differentiation factors into the price of entry. At some point in the future, customers will demand sales professionalism as a matter of course. When that happens, some other factor, perhaps one that has not even appeared on our radar as yet, will emerge as the leading competitive advantage.
Here’s the good news, though. Given the current level of professionalism in sales, we expect that those rare salespeople who are already meeting their customer’s expectations and demands, and those who can quickly respond to them, will enjoy an extended run at the peak of their profession.
The Sales Professional Is the Sale - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Gilbert's Website.
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What’s the most influential factor in business-to-business sales? It isn’t competitive pricing. It isn’t your product’s Six Sigma quality. It isn’t your product’s innovative features or your company’s ability to deliver a total solution. Certainly all of these influence your customer’s buying decisions, but surprisingly, none of them is the most influential factor in business-to-business is you – the sales professional.
You don’t have to take our word on this; it is business customers themselves who have placed salespeople in the top spot. Since 1988, our statistical analysis of purchasing decisions has demonstrated that the sales professional is the most important factor in determining what customers purchase, how much they pay, and how long they stick with the lucky suppliers they choose from the thousands of business-to-business sellers competing for their business. In fact, our analysis proved that salesperson effectiveness accounts for 39 percent of customer’s buying decisions and is the most important decision factor – more influential than price, quality, and the availability of a total solution.
This is a notable development in the sales world, and it represents the emergence of a new competitive advantage in the business-to-business arena. Sales professionals have become the leading influence on their customer’s buying processes – more important than the selling price, more important than the offering’s features and benefits, more important than the product and service quality. This means that the effectiveness of sales professionals themselves can be an added value to their customers and a competitive advantage for their employers. In the 1960s, media guru Marshall McLuhan declared that the medium is the message. Now, in the business world, the salesperson is the sale.
An Evolutionary Pattern of Development
When did this change happen? Our in-depth supplier evaluation interviews with more than 80,000 business customers first revealed in 1998 that in their estimation, the salesperson had ascended to the top position of influence. This did not occur overnight, though, nor has it completely eclipsed the other influencing factors in the business-to-business sale. Instead, it is an evolutionary development that has been building momentum for years.
The nature of competitive advantage in sales has always been evolutionary. That is why other factors have been more important than sales effectiveness in customer’s buying decisions in the past. Product and service quality is a good example. Quality became a primary concern of business-to-business customers in the late 1970s and 1980s as well-made and dependable Japanese and German motor cars and electronics captured market share from their American competitors. As U.S. manufacturers lost customers, they became aware of the magnitude of the costs they incurred from product defects and failures, and,
even more importantly, aware of the customer defections and lost sales that poor quality caused.
The ensuing focus on – and demand for – greater levels of quality spawned a revolution. Quality-based concepts and programs, such as Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, just-in-time inventory systems, the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award, and ISO 9000, dominated the corporate landscape. Companies worked hard and invested significant capital in their efforts to improve the quality of their products and services. They demanded that their suppliers do the same. Suppliers and their sales forces quickly responded to these demands and began winning business by demonstrating the high quality of their offerings and guaranteeing continued quality.
As soon as product and service quality proved capable of winning business, the quality competition really heated up. Sellers strove to match and exceed the quality of their competitor’s offerings. As a result, quality levels are much higher today than they were in 1980. Six Sigma programs, whose goal is the achievement of a de facto defect rate of 3.4 per million, are now commonplace.
But what has happened to quality as a competitive advantage in sales during this time? In the years between 1980 and the widespread adoption of Six Sigma and TQM, the differentiating power and competitive advantage of product and service quality have eroded. Today, the quality of your products and services is considered a basic requirement rather than a competitive advantage. You can’t win or retain customers without high-quality products and services, but neither can you win based on quality alone. Every serious competitor is offering high quality, and customers’ standards and expectations regarding quality have risen accordingly.
In most industries, trying to gain a competitive advantage by offering a higher level of quality simply doesn’t make sense. The difference between a few defects spread over a million parts isn’t economically compelling to customers. Thus, as quality standards have risen and been matched by more and more competing suppliers, quality has lost its power as a competitive advantage.
Sales effectiveness, which is based on the competence of the salespeople and the resources and support provided by their companies, is subject to the same evolutionary forces as is quality. It has risen to the top of the customer’s influence list because demand far outstrips the supply. Today, customers need for a competent, professional salesperson has grown well beyond the ability of the current crop of salespeople to fulfill it and, all the evidence suggests, will continue to grow as far into the future as we can see.
To help understand the driving force behind this condition (and the critical and largely unfulfilled role that customers want salespeople to assume), we need only take a step back and start by acknowledging a very basic fact: The only reason a corporate customer buys anything is because his company cannot or chooses not to make or provide it for itself. If the customer’s company were making or providing it, it would have its own internal organisation to do that work and – this is the key part – it would have a manager or executive responsible for that function. That is to say, it would have someone who was accountable for ensuring that the company actually received the benefit that the product or service was designed to provide. Thus, a business customer’s decision to buy a good or a service externally is not simply a decision to purchase – it is also a decision to outsource the management of the benefit that the purchase is intended to deliver.
What does this mean for you, as someone trying to sell to that company? What we have discovered is that business customers are turning to salespeople to fulfill the role of surrogate manager. When salespeople become skilled at managing the total benefit delivered to their customers, the supply will meet the demand. At that point, sales effectiveness will decline as a competitive advantage, just as quality has. Someday, if enough salespeople and companies recognize and build their sales effectiveness, it may only count as a portion of the entry fee. But today, as we have discovered, the research reveals that fewer than one out of a thousand salespeople can perform to this level!
While the power of salesperson effectiveness to influence customers may eventually decline, there are two reasons why no salesperson or sales organisation can afford to ignore it now or in the future:
First, whether it is a full-blown competitive advantage or simply the table stakes required to enter the game, sales effectiveness will remain a critical ingredient in sales success. In the former case, it is a scarce and in-demand expertise that will help you achieve above-average sales results. In the latter case, when customers simply expect you to possess that expertise, you won’t be able to engage them without it.
Second, relatively speaking, the competitive advantage conferred by sales effectiveness has just begun to emerge. It may well retain its power to win sales for ten or fifteen years or longer, depending on how many salespeople recognise and strive to attain it, before it becomes a commonplace standard and an expectation in the customer’s eyes.
So, the bad news is that the same evolutionary pattern that brought the sales professional to the top spot in the customer’s buying decision will eventually create the same kind of competition that transformed price, quality, and features from substantial differentiation factors into the price of entry. At some point in the future, customers will demand sales professionalism as a matter of course. When that happens, some other factor, perhaps one that has not even appeared on our radar as yet, will emerge as the leading competitive advantage.
Here’s the good news, though. Given the current level of professionalism in sales, we expect that those rare salespeople who are already meeting their customer’s expectations and demands, and those who can quickly respond to them, will enjoy an extended run at the peak of their profession.
The Sales Professional Is the Sale - To learn more about this author, visit Peter Gilbert's Website.
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David BarrDavid Barr is the President of Venture Opportunities, Inc. David has been a professional business broker/intermediary since 1980 focusing on General Business Brokerage and Mergers and Acquisitions representing client transaction value from $400,000 to $20,000,000. Mr. Barr has handled the sale of over four hundred and fifty companies. David earned a university degree from the State University of New York majoring in economics and business. David holds the Mergers and Acquisition Master Intermediary and the Certified Business Intermediary designations from the International Business Brokers Association. He is also a Senior Business Analyst and a Texas licensed Real Estate Agent. For more information about David and Venture Opportunities, visit www.bizdealmaker.com. - Visit David Barr's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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David AchesonDavid Acheson is the founder of DCJA Consultancy. DCJA Consultancy is a management consultancy business specialising in B2B sales consultancy. They offer bespoke and packaged sales consultancy including Sales Optimisation Review, Interim Sales Management, Sales & Marketing Review, 1:1 Sales & Management Staff Analysis, Management Training, Solution Sales Training, Creation of New Pay Plan, KPI's, run Customer Feedback Campaigns, assist with Recruitment, Coaching, Appraisals and set up Strategic Marketing Campaigns. David spent his early career in accountancy and then moved into sales in 1982, working in Office Equipment, IT, Advertising, Training, Outsourcing and Consultancy. He has held many Senior Positions in SMBs and Global Organisations including Head of Sales Operations & Head of Business Development. His knowledge, skills and great experience of the Sales Industry has led to David making keynote speeches and running educational sessions to key businesses through organisations including The Chamber of Commerce and Business Link. - Visit David Acheson's Website |
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Dave KurlanDave Kurlan is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2. - Visit Dave Kurlan's Website |
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Leanne Hoagland-SmithAre your sales where you want them to be? Will you be one of the few who achieves sales or business success or one of the many who have failed to change? Are you tired of being told you are like everyone else? Then you may find my first book on sales of interest. Be the Red Jacket in the Sea of Gray Suits, The Keys to Unlocking Sales available at Amazon or at http://www.processspecialist.com/red-jacket.htm. This book is a reflection of my no-nonsense approach to improving sales to overall business results. If you are truly committed to making sustainable changes, then I can help you secure a positive return on your investment because I focus on executable solutions not telling you the problems you already know you have. From training to corporate (group) coaching to executive one on one coaching, my approach is to assess, create awareness, build a goal driven action plan and then execute. The bottom line question is "Not do you or your employees know it, but do you or they want to do it?" Please call for a free strategy session at 219.759.5601. - Visit Leanne Hoagland-Smith's Website |
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Linda RichardsonLinda Richardson is the Founder and Executive Chairwoman of Richardson, a global sales training and performance improvement company. As a recognized leader in the industry, she has won the coveted Stevie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Sales Excellence and she was identified by Training Industry, Inc. as one of the “Top 20 Most Influential Training Professionals.” Ms. Richardson is credited with the movement to Consultative Selling and is the author of ten books on selling and sales management, including Sales Coaching — Making the Great Leap from Sales Manager to Sales Coach, and Stop Telling, Start Selling. She teaches sales and management at the Wharton Graduate School of the University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton Executive Development Center. Linda is a frequent speaker at industry and client conferences, has been published extensively in industry and training journals, and has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Nation’s Business, Selling Power, Success, and The Conference Board Magazine. Learn more about Richardson's sales training and performance improvement solutions at http://www.richardson.com web - Visit Linda Richardson's Website |
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Anne BarrAnne Barr has over 26 years experience in sales and marketing, six years as a franchisee. She has assisted over 367 business owners and purchasers to achieve their goals in career change, transition and exit strategy. She holds the designation of Certified Franchise Executive from the International Franchise Association, Certified Business Intermediary from the International Business Brokers Association and Board Certified Broker from the Texas Association of Business Brokers. Anne is active in professional organizations, networking groups and volunteers for non-profit entities. As owner/operator of four successful businesses, Anne has proven people skills and enjoys helping clients find the right "fit" in business ownership. Visit www.FranchiseOpportunitySpecialist.com for more information about me and my company. - Visit Anne Barr's Website |
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George LudwigGeorge Ludwig is a recognized authority on sales strategy and peak performance psychology. An international speaker, trainer, and corporate consultant, he helps clients like Johnson & Johnson, Abbott Laboratories, Northwestern Mutual, CIGNA, and numerous others improve sales force effectiveness and performance. Though it's George's strategies and processes that help corporations increase productivity and performance, it's his tremendous energy and dynamism that spark the transformation. Again and again, clients remark on his amazing ability to unleash human capacity and inspire men and women to break out of their comfort zones. The result is a whole new type of salesperson. His customized presentations teach achievers to make stunning advances in their lives. From helping salespeople realize cherished dreams to helping corporations exponentially accelerate revenue streams, George Ludwig leaves audiences and individuals empowered, emboldened, and clamoring for more. George is the best-selling author of Power Selling: Seven Strategies for Cracking the Sales Code and Wise Moves: 60 Quick Tips to Improve Your Position in Life & Business. - Visit George Ludwig's Website |
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