Category: Blog

Are You A Trusted Advisor?

Trusted Advisor

The Exciting Future of Sales is very bright for top producing sales representatives who can serve as a Trusted Advisor for their clients. Does this mean that if you are not perceived as a trusted advisor, there is not a bright future for you in sales? The short answer is Yes.

First, let’s define a professional sales representative. A professional sales representative who is capable of becoming a trusted advisor does not:

  • Misrepresent their company’s products or services.
  • Does not tell “little white lies” about their products or services.
  • Does not attempt to sell to a customer who will not benefit from the product or service.
  • Does not make claims that are not true.
  • Will walk away from a sale if it is not in the best interest of either the customer or the representative’s company.
  • Does not assert that they are salaried when they receive commissions or bonuses for attaining sales goals.
  • Does not promise anything that cannot be put in writing.
  • Does not sell for a company that tells them that they must do ‘anything it takes’ to make a sale without defining what that means.

So what is a trusted advisor? The Trusted Advisor by David H. Master, Charles H. Green, and Robert M. Galford offers the best description of a Trusted Advisor I have ever read. While this book breaks the goal of being a trusted advisor into three levels, “it is the third level that is the pinnacle of being recognized as such. This is the level in which virtually all issues, personal and professional are open to discussion and exploration. The trusted advisor is the person the client turns to when a problem first arises, often in times of great urgency: a crisis, a change, a triumph, or a defeat.”

There is no need today for transactional salespeople. Complex sales require those who have mastered different skills including negotiation, strategic and complex thinking, empathy, deep product knowledge, innovation, and a team approach to satisfying customer challenges.

The recognition of being a trusted adviser is vital if a sales professional intends to have a sales job in the future. Virtually all products and services purchased today will be made by buyers who don’t need a sales person to persuade them to buy because they can easily make the right decision by purchasing online. They have done their homework and have used big data to help them make an informed decision.

We realize that there are many salespeople and sales leaders who do not believe this to be true, but the reality is that most sales positions are no longer needed. 22% of the 4.5 million B2B sales agents now in the United States, will lose their jobs to e-commerce by 2020.  This projection is from Andy Hoar, a Forrester, e-business analyst.  Other analysts have projected that 95% of salespeople will be replaced with lines of code within five years.

Most salespeople do not want to hear this and claim that it is just not true. But, stop and think about it. What do salespeople offer today that buyers need? In the past, buyers wanted information about the products/services they wanted to buy, and they would interview 3 or 4 salespeople to learn how to separate the peanut butter from the jelly. Today, most buyers know more about the products/services they want to buy than salespeople do.

Other sales professionals insist that the relationship they have with their customers is vital.  To a certain extent, this is true. But, the nature of the relationship has changed. The previous relationship between wining and dining, giving tickets to the ball game, and other signs of appreciation have run its course and are forbidden by many companies.  Buyers no longer love Willy Loman

Top Performing Salespeople today are in demand as trusted advisors. They are the resource to which senior managers turn when faced with vital decisions about strategy and tactics necessary to help them change direction, design better products, or to gain a market advantage.  Buyers don’t view them as someone who will buy them lunch.

These Top Producers are dependent on support from within their company to help them develop products or services that fit specific needs. They spend most of their time working strategically with their client’s top management. They are supported by customer service representatives, assistants, and product specialists who help them craft meaningful solutions for clients.

You might be among those who ask who will do the prospecting, who will set appointments, and who will develop new business? Well, it won’t be salespeople. These functions will be performed by AI and Machine Learning. Top Performers will be supported by assistants who put them in the position to succeed. They will not spend hours entering info into a CRM. They will not make prospecting calls. They will not generate leads. They will not set appointments. Systems and Support will do that for the top producer.

Top Producers who are Trusted Advisors will play a vital role in the buying process. The marketing process and automated systems will put them in the position to do so. The Exciting Future of Sales is here today, and it’s going to get better.

You can learn more by reading The Trusted Advisor by David H. Maister and Charles Green. Amazon carries it. (And you don’t have to talk to a sales rep. to buy it.)

Harrison Greene is the Founder and Principal Consultant of Unique Selling Systems.  His blog is TheExcitingFutureofSales.com.  He lives in Lake Nona, Florida.  Email Harrison@HarrisonGreene.com

Selling With An Outward Mindset

Selling With An Outward Mindset

Professional sales people instinctively know that to be effective they must focus on the needs of their prospects, customers, or clients and not on their product or service.  This is often referred to as needs-satisfaction selling.  Sales Professionals have been trained  to place their client’s interests first by asking questions using a needs analysis and to finalize the sale only when the customer perceives that their needs will be satisfied.    Often referred to as a “consultative selling method”, it has been the engine of professional selling since the 1970’s when it was first introduced by Xerox as Professional Selling Skills.

There have been hundreds of books written about selling.  A quick Google search on ‘Books About Sales’ brings up about 202 million entries.  Their authors include highly respected sales experts like Neil Rackham, Robert Miller, Stephen Herman, Brian Tracy, Jeffrey Gitomer, Art Sobczak, Anthony Iannarino, and Tony Alessandra.   If you understand and apply what you learn from any of these authors, you will gain insight into how you can increase your sales success.

I recently read The Outward Mindset©, subtitled “seeing beyond outselves”, produced by The Arbinger Institute.  Arbinger helps people and organizations achieve breakthrough results through a profound change in mindset.  In my view, they have a vital message that business professionals, parents, clergy-people, educators and social workers must read.  It is an extremely practical, simple, and meaningful approach to leadership at any level.  It does not focus on sales, sales training, or sales technique.  And that’s why every person who engages in any aspect of sales or customer service should read The Outward Mindset.

The Exciting Future of Sales depends on sales professionals who can collaborate and communicate with others by having an outward mindset.  They must be able to change the way they see and regard their own connections with and obligations to others.  It is simply a matter of learning to see beyond yourself.   It elevates the consultative sales approach to a new level of effectiveness.  Here is an example of how an outward mindset can apply to a salesperson who wants to help a cleint:

John has a meeting scheduled with his client, Adam, whose company has  unexpectedly told him that he cannot renew contracts unless they have been reviewed by senior management.  Adam has lost his authority to renew contracts without approval.  Clearly, Adam feels his judgement and professionalism are being threatened and has concluded that  his job is on the line.  Adam tells John about his inability to approve John’s renewal and that he wants a completely new proposal that justifies why he should renew his contract with John.

Now John feels threatened because he thinks Adam feels that he has been price gouging him or thinks that John takes his business for granted.  John wants to react quickly, but what he really needs to do is to think with an open mindset.  He needs to ask himself what it must feel like to be Adam.  Adam is clearly threatened by this new procedure.   How can he help Adam gain the confidence of senior management to convince them that he is professional and competent?  How might he help Adam ensure senior management that he is acting in the best interests of the company with every contract he renews.

Having an open mindset like this might be difficult for a sales person who has always won business by dropping the price at the first sign of resistance.  Or he or she might have been trained that they need to establish a better ‘relationship’ with their customers and interpret that to mean they should entertain their clients, take them to football games, or to lunch and dinner more often.

With an outward mindset, John decides that he can help Adam learn how to negotiate better with his boss and with upper management because Adam has never had to do that before.  And, John knows of a negotiation seminar he can invite Adam to attend with him.  He is focused on helping Adam regain his confidence.

Addressing the question, “what must it be like to be Adam,” is far different than having a closed mindset that will cause John to want to make deals, delay the deadline for the decision, or figure out how to manipulate Adam to do what he wants Adam to do.

Sales professionals face an exciting future when they realize that the mark of a professional sales person is not tied to his or her ego and their need to be the best.  It is understanding that professional selling is not about selling; it is about helping the buyer succeed.

An Outward Mindset can guide you into an enhanced understanding of professional selling today and in the future.  It should be recommended reading for all sales, marketing, and customer service leaders and their teams.

___________________________________________________________________________________________

Harrison Greene is the founder of Unique Selling Systems, focused on helping senior sales management prepare their sales people for the exciting future of sales.  He is the author of The Exciting Future of Sales blog.  EMail:  Harrison@HarrisonGreene.com

For-Profit Schools — Sign Up or Be Accepted?

accepted-rejected 

There is a quandary for-profit (proprietary) technical schools and colleges.  They are being clobbered by federal regulations that place requirements on them that are not placed on not-for-profit educational institutions.  This Department of Education has increased this heat and shows no signs of abetting.

Many proprietary schools have been forced to close their doors because they could not attain the Department of Education’s requirements.  The quandary is that while ethical proprietary schools want to provide excellent education and training outcomes, they are are now feeling a loss in student enrollment. The unethical standards of some money-hungry technical schools have penalized well-run proprietary schools.

The history of unsavory for-profit institutions interested only in profit is well documented.  Their success was obtained at the expense of students who enrolled based on false admission promises. They were lured by claims of guaranteed placement in jobs they were told paid extraordinary amounts of money. These schools targeted those students who could receive the most financial aid. Proprietary schools that operated like that should not have the right to ruin the lives of students who were hopeful that the sacrifices they made to acquire a meaningful skill to provide a  future for themselves and their families.

Reputable proprietary schools are forced to increase their marketing budgets to increase the number of inquiries they receive.  They can no longer rely on radio and television advertising and are turning to new lead generation sources like social media, email, and inbound lead generation.

Since most proprietary schools have adopted a quantative admissions mindset that measures the number of inquiries that result in applications, it is doubtful that increasing inquiries will make a meaningful impact on student outcomes.  Quantitative admission systems were designed to put as many students in seats as capacity would allow.   But if those students are not capable of graduating because they had so many external pressures put upon them. Many potential students are in lower socioeconomic brackets and don’t have support from those closest to them. They have a tough time staying in class until graduation.

If an educational institution is truly interested in the success of its students, it must ensure that it accepts them based on qualitative criteria, not just on whether they graduated from high school or have a GED.  For-profit schools often emphasize securing admission deposits and scheduling a financial aid briefing.  Some schools that interview prospective students simply ask transparent questions designed to make the student feel that he or she is being interviewed.  Questions like how long you have been thinking about earning more or how much would you like to earn as a (technician, automotive technical, medical assistant, etc.)?   Seldom would the student be rejected unless the school could not help them attain enough financial aid to enable them to enroll.

Few schools try to determine if the student has the support and encouragement of their significant family members. Many don’t determine if it is realistic for them to work all day and commute to the school for evening classes, how much time the student is willing to study outside of class, or if they have transportation to attend class.

There must be a fundamental shift in the psychology of admissions.  A good school that operates in the student’s interest will want to know that, if accepted, the student has the desire, interest, motivation, and support of their significant others in evaluating whether they should accept the student.  The goal of getting another ‘sign up’ or ‘body in a seat’ must be shifted.

Instead, the applicant should feel that he or she is being carefully evaluated to determine if they will be able to become a graduate and that if they do, they will be considered for admission.  There needs to be an Acceptance Policy that measures a student’s potential for success.

If the applicant can not be accepted, it is the responsibility of the admissions department to propose another course of action or recommend a plan to help the student gain admission.

I have heard many school owners state that it is ridiculous to be qualitative because “I have seen many students who I didn’t think would ever graduate do so with great sacrifice and determination and others who I was sure would be a superstar student drop out after two weeks.”   Basing an admissions process on an exception is not a plausible way to make a decision that can affect a person’s life… forever.

The operating credo of senior management must be that the Admissions Department must conduct a meaningful interview to determine if the student can be accepted and has a good chance of graduating.  It must ensure that admission representatives are trained to recommend acceptance, when valid,  or to help the student find another pathway to success.

When Acceptance is the mindset of senior management, they will quickly see an increase in two vital metrics they are probably not presently measuring… the application to the start rate and the start rate to the graduation rate.  The real benefit will be that more graduates will find employment in the career for which they trained.

Harrison Greene is the founder of Unique Enrollment Systems and has helped small, independent proprietary, and nationally known multi-campus schools increase revenue through a qualitative method of enrolling students.  He can be reached at 508-400-6193 or through email at harrison@harrisongreene.com.

A Million Sales Reps Will Lose Their Jobs To E-Commerce by 2020

Yes, you read this headline correctly.  A million sales representatives will be displaced.

That is what Paul Demery, Managing Editor, B2B E-Commerce reports in an article that appeared on the Internet Retailer website.  He writes that those most likely to lose their jobs take orders for commodity products.

Paul’s website is https://www.b2bcommerceworld.com

He also cites a report “Death of a (B2B) Salesman by Forrester e-business analyst Andy Hoar, that projects 1 million sales reps, or 22% of the 4.5 million B2B sales agents now in the United States, will lose their jobs to e-commerce by 2020.

If you are a B-B Sales Representative or Sales Manager, you must read the rest of this article.  Your career and your income are in jeopardy and you need to be pro-active now.

Here is a link to the complete article:  http://bit.ly/2iENN5i

________________________________________________________________

Harrison Greene is the founder of Unique Sales System and specializes in help sales representative and their companies prepare today for the Future of Sales tomorrow.

He can be reached at 508-400-6193 or via email at:

harrison@uniquesellingsystems.com

Are You Like The Cobbler Whose Kids Have No Shoes?

cobbler

Buyers rule!  Remember that.  Today selling is different.  Sales people should understand that when a buyer seeks out that which you are selling he or she has probably done the research they need to decide if you are the vendor they want to consider.  If your company is not able to back up its claims on their website, the buyer will wonder why.

The last thing a buyer wants to hear is ‘we don’t have time to make sure that our website reflects the reality of what we are selling because we are too busy making quality products for our customers that we can’t keep our website current’.

If your company is unable to devote the time to keep its website current, why do they have it?  If the services, they offer are not accurately reflected in their public image (their website) how can they expect their prospects or customers to believe anything a sales representative tells them?

Recently I was told by the V.P. of Sales for a web development company that offers search engine optimization services (SEO) that the reason they don’t rank higher in their own web page listing is because they are like the cobbler whose kids have no shoes.  Well, if they can’t devote time to ensure they are ranking well themselves, why would I expect that they will know how to ensure that their customers rank well?

Is your company too busy to ensure that their public information and the tools you need to sell are current?  Can you engender the trust you must have to succeed when your company doesn’t provide accurate and timely information?

When was the last time you checked your company’s website?  Are you telling your customers the same thing they have read before they even contacted you?

Or do your kids have no shoes?

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Harrison Greene is the founder of Unique Selling Systems and specializes in helping sales organizations prepare today for the Future of Sales tomorrow.  He can be reached at 508-400-6193 or via email at Harrison@HarrisonGreene.com

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Watch Your Language

pitch-me

Are you using sales terminology that was created in the last century?  Does your sales language reflect the professionalism that you must have today to resonate with prospects and customers?

What do you imagine your customers or prospects think when you tell them you want to ‘pitch’ them?  How do you think they feel when you refer to the proposal you are presenting as a ‘deal’?

What does a prospect think when you call them and refer to them as a lead when they were simply requesting information?

Does the language you use reinforce in the minds of buyers and prospects that you are only looking for a sale?  Or, do they appreciate someone who speaks to them as someone who is interested in their challenges, problem, or opportunities?

Today’s sales professionals use language that focuses on collaborating to find the right solution for their customers not on finding the best deal for themselves.  They view requests for information as just that and do not consider the request to be a lead.  They view it as an opportunity to answer questions and find appropriate solutions.  And when the present their solution they never refer to it as a ‘pitch’.

There is a distinct difference in the mindset of a sales person who ‘pitches’ and of the sales professional who provides service, recommends solutions, and collaborates with his or her customers.

This is the second decade of the twenty-first century.  Have you evolved?  Or are you still out their ‘pitching’?

Harrison Greene is the founder of Unique Selling Systems and helps prepare sales people today for the Future of Sales tomorrow.  He can be reached at 508-400-6193 or by email at Harrison@HarrisonGreene.com

The New ABC’s of Selling

always-be-closing

At some point in the last century it became hip to teach sales representatives that they should…

Always Be Closing

Perhaps sales trainers who taught this mantra were under the impression that potential customers would love it if their sales representative greeted them with “It is nice to meet you. “Are you ready to buy today”, like the experience we encounter on the automotive dealership lot when we are greeted with a similar statement. And if the customer didn’t buy immediately, they were trained that they should be closing during every opportunity during the meeting. They were instructed to ask for the sale each time the prospect said something positive. Like, “gee that’s an interesting point”, followed by the sales representative saying “fine, let’s get started right now” or some other canned phrase.

Oh, how in control that was supposed to make the sales representative feel… just thinking that he or she was on the road to super success simply because they had the courage to ask if the customer was ready to buy right now! Did they believe that the customer appreciated being asked to decide before establishing that the customer had a need for the product or service being sold and a right to ask for the sale? Or did they think that just because the customer expressed an interest, they were just waiting to buy right now?  Did they think that the customer liked being treated that way?  Do they like being treated that way?

Well, apparently, some customers were so intimidated by the Always Be Closing approach that they bought immediately. But then… they frequently cancelled their contract or voided their purchase order as soon as they could. Sure, some sales stuck. But what about all those buyers who simply tuned them out and said ‘we’ll get back in touch with you” and never did? And then purchased from a sales representative who was more interested in determining their needs and if the product or service would benefit them? How quickly do you think customers who were pressured to buy would recommend that sales representative to anyone else?

Today, in the second decade of the twenty-first century professional sales representatives should…

Always Be Collaborating

The Internet has changed the way buyers want to do business. Today’s buyers, whether in a business or in a consumer environment, have done their research and know what they want and what they want to pay for it. They desperately need a sales representative to help them sort through their options, to help them develop ideas, and to collaborate with them from the moment they express an interest until they have decided how they should proceed. In short, today’s customers want their sales representative to collaborate with them through the entire buying process.

Collaboration is the sensible way of selling today. Collaboration means that both the buyer and the seller are vested in the buying process to determine the right solution for the buyer. The goal is not simply to get a sale, but to develop the right product or service for the buyer while respecting the buyers buying cycle. Done correctly, acting in the customer’s best interest can sometimes result in recommending another company’s product or service. When that happens, the sales representative establishes a level of Trust with that buyer that results in an opportunity to be called upon again when that buyer has another need. And, it results in referrals from a customer who believes in the sales representative’s integrity.

Does collaboration mean that the sales representative should never discuss helping the customer get started? What is does imply is that if the representative has collaborated and feels trusted, the next steps will easily occur and usually, the customer will ask what he or she needs to do to get started.

Tomorrow’s sales representatives who can adopt the mindset that their job is to help their prospects and customers find the right solution at the right time and at the right price will be Top Producers.

An excellent book that is helpful reading is: From Selling to Co-Creating by Regis Lemmens, Bill Donaldson, and Javier Marcos.

________________________________________________________________

Harrison Greene is the founder of Unique Selling Systems and specializes in The Future of Sales. You can read more about the Future of Sales at uniquesellingsystems.com.

Harrison Greene can be reached in Lake Nona, Florida at 508-400-6193 or by email at harrison@uniquesellingsystems.com and his Linked In profile can be accessed at linkedin.com/in/harrisongreene.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Virtual Reality… In Sales

Quantum shifts are occurring in the selling profession today.  These shifts are not a harbinger of the future.  They are the future.  And it is happening — now.

One of the major shifts in the sales process is that 80% of the average sales representatives in a Business to Business sales environment will lose their jobs.

The average representatives who have a demonstrated skill in areas like customer service, appointment setting, validating warm inquires, entering information into the CRM, etc., will be retained to support Top Producing Sales People.  This will enable the Top Producers to spend more time actually working with prospects and clients, developing new business through relationship-based consultative skills, and establishing collaborative associations with their potential customers and clients.

As part of this collaboration, Top Producing Sales People will be able to immerse their prospects and clients in a complete understanding and feeling of the product or service they are recommending to them.

One of the tools that will significantly impact clients is Virtual Reality Presentations.

Imagine the impact on a client who is able to actually walk through the details of the product or service in which they are interested with the ability to immerse themselves into every aspect of the product or service.  Imagine how a client will feel when, instead of looking at yet another PowerPoint Presentation, they will be able to feel intimately familiar with the product or service they are considering.

Now, for the first time, sales training has taken on a new dimension.  Role playing (the most dreaded training activity) now becomes one that the trainee observes in detail, as if he or she was actually part of this sales interview and presentation.

Product knowledge training is now robust and fun to learn because VR enables representatives to immerse themselves into the product in an exciting and comprehensible way.

Virtual Reality is now enabling this to happen through VR devices like Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR, HTC Vive, Google Cardboard and many others.  VR is changing the landscape of sales and, while in its infancy, is helping forward-thinking sales organizations make the buying experience more collaborative, immersive, and exciting, energizing, and effective.

­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­Harrison Greene, is the founder of Unique Selling Systems and partners with companies offering cutting edge technology solutions that revolutionize the sales process. He has been intimately involved with all aspects of the selling process as a sales representative, sales manager, and as V.P of Sales.   For the last 20 years he has consulted with large and medium sized sales organizations throughout the United States.

He can be reached in Lake Nona, Florida at 508-400-6193

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

 

 

Are You Relevant?

Change.  That’s the operative word and it is pervasive.  Change has become the norm, not the exception.  Change is the new normal.

We are confronted with change daily.  All segments of society are affected.  Change is no longer exclusively a business phenomenon.  It has become a societal phenomena, and it is happening at the speed of light.

Change is no longer dependent on attitude.  Listen to how we used to be instructed to deal with change:

Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself”.

Viktor E. Frankl wrote, “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves”.

Henry David Thoreau wrote, “Things do not change; we change”.

These great philosophers saw the power of individualistic change.  They inspired millions to take a good hard look at themselves.  They wrote what humanity needed to hear in order to cope with the change that has always existed.

Today there is a type of change that did not exist until about 50 years ago.  That change is Technological Change.  It does not depend on attitudinal acceptance.  It forces individualistic acceptance or rejection that is not dependent on our attitude.  Rejection of the power of technology is not an option; it is a requirement for survival in this century.   Acceptance trumps attitude.  Accept it or become irrelevant.

One segment of business that typifies the power of technological change is the profession of sales.  Most sales organizations know that change has begun.  Most sales representatives see it invading their domains.  CRM (Contact Relationship Management) software is now adopted by most companies as a required business process.  Salesforce.com, the leader in CRM systems, has become one of the largest and most admired companies in the world.

CRM’s were originally developed to help sales people by enabling them to list all of a customer’s information (address, phone, email, etc.) for each company and the contacts within that company.  And, it enabled the representative to enter notes and other valuable information.  It was the solution to transparency within the organization; anyone with access to the CRM could see what sales people knew about their customers.  Soon, the CRM became linked to customer service, marketing, finance and other departments, enabling them to be in the loop..

Interestingly, CSO Insights Sales Performance Optimization Study which surveyed more than 1,000 firms worldwide found that only 12.6 percent of the firms that are leveraging core CRM solutions reported seeing major increases in revenues per rep as a result of that investment alone.  More is needed.

Big data, algorithms, and analytics have given companies the power to understand their clients, their competition, and their sales people in ways never imagined previously.  They can spot trends, instantly adopt change, and measure results that informs the way they sell.  Sales that used to be developed by sales people are now developed by technology.  Transactional selling systems are now used by both B-C and B-B sales organizations

Companies that understand the value of CRM’s linked to other technological changes are not waiting for sales representatives to adopt them.  These changes are enabling sales without sales representatives’ acceptance or involvement. In the immediate future we will see top performing, highly trained, sales representatives involved in only very strategic selling environments that require buying decisions from many different constituencies within the company and that are driven by long selling cycles.   These sales representatives will be the “savants” (top producers who are highly skilled, superbly trained, technology competent, and who know how to build relationships, understand the buying processes of the companies with whom they work and who are seen as value creators by their clients).  These representatives will develop the new business and others will be transitioned to customer service reps for the delivery of products and services.  These representatives will ‘serve the savants’.

Technology is enabling this to happen now. If you have any doubt about that, look at Amazon and Alibaba.  Their technology has empowered buyers to buy.  The technology enabled buyers to get what they want, when they want it with the assistance of a new type of sales person called technology.

Both business to consumer and business to business companies are adopting systems like this and their success is not attitudinal.  It is technologically and ROI oriented.

A long standing model has been that 80% of a company’s revenue comes from 20% of their clients.  And for many companies 80% of their revenue is produced by 20% of their sales representatives.

No longer.  Companies don’t need and can’t afford the 80% of reps.

They have found the new representative named Mr. or Ms. Technology.  Technology will enable them to eliminate 80% of the sales team and morph the good ones from the 80% into customer service and inside sales assistants.  They will enable savants to produce more.

Look at the numbers.  To illustrate them, consider a company that does $100 million in sales revenue annually.

  • Assume that there are 20 sales reps.

 

  • 20% of them or 4 reps will develop an average annual revenue of  $20M each
  1. Each top rep. is paid $175,000 yearly
  2. Each top rep. costs the company .00875 of revenue

 

  • 80% of them or 16 reps. will each develop an average annual revenue of $1.25M each
  1. Each average rep is paid $80,000 each
  2. Each average reps costs the company .064 of revenue

What company today can afford to pay 80% of its sales staff $80,000 each for a return of only $1.25 M each?

What company can pay out $1,280,000 for 16 reps to generate $20,000,000 in sales when they can pay 20% of its sales staff $700,000 to generate $80,000,000 in sales?

Instead, progressive companies today are applying that $1.28M salary paid to 16 average reps towards marketing, big data, analytics, and more effective web-sites, blogs, inbound lead generation, and automated systems to fulfill business generated by those enhancements.

They are staffing more highly trained customer service/inside sales reps to serve the needs of Top Producing Sales Reps (the Savants).

Progressive companies are  increasing their search for more Savants who can be supplied with more warm leads, better customer service, and sales support.  This increased support will enable a heightened sales volume offsetting the necessity of paying for average producing sales reps.

Skills assessments like Assessments24/7 are being used to determine where the average sales representatives might fit into to this new model.  Some will be qualified to be terrific customer service representatives, some will be used to set appointments from warm leads for the Top Producers, others who are suited for transactional selling will fulfill orders, and some will be assistants for the Top Producers charged with keeping these Savants doing what they do best—developing new business.

The handwriting is not on the wall: it is creatively impacting sales teams today.

Are you and your company prepared to be part of this massive change to the structure of sales teams?

If you are not, you have some real decisions to make about your career path.

If your company is not, it might be on the verge of becoming irrelevant.

If you are prepared, keep learning, keep enhancing your knowledge, and decide exactly where you best fit in.  Are you a savant or do you prefer helping top producing savants become more effective?  Perhaps you love to service the customers the top producers develop.  Or, maybe your niche is transactional selling using the new tools for fulfilling buying requests.

A successful company will be built on adopting technology and utilizing sales people in these new roles.  Their survival depends on it.

A successful sales career will be built on understanding where you will utilize your skills tomorrow.  Get ready.  Stay relevant by understanding what you are really good at doing.  Then, Just Do It.
______________________________________________________________________________

Harrison Greene, is the founder of Unique Selling Systems and partners with companies offering cutting edge technology solutions that revolutionize the sales process. He has been intimately involved with all aspects of the selling process as a sales representative, sales manager, and as V.P of Sales. For the last 20 years he has consulted with large and medium sized sales organizations throughout the United States.

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.