Change Management In Sales: The Seven Trends
In many areas of business there are significant changes currently within sales
. These are therefore covered on many sales training courses. Traditional sales have for a long time been losing significance as well as gaining new work emphases. The new media is opening unknown sales routes, and companies are now not exempt from new management techniques including lean and total quality management.
Management streamlining will lead to more decentralisation and individual responsibility.
In the course of lean management, the number of hierarchy levels is reduced in many companies.
The result of this development for many salespeople is a depersonalisation of management. Instead of having daily or weekly contact with their area sales manager, they report to the company via electronic communication.
Instead of beginning their sales route from work, they start from home and take on a great deal more personal responsibility than previously for planning and managing their own work.
On balance: the sales people become a sole agent. Some businesses have already arranged regular information exchanges in the form of regular group meetings in order to prevent the isolation of the sales person.
The evaluation of sales performance has to be fundamentally enhanced.
Simple gauges such as turnover or cover contribution are no longer sufficient. Independent salespeople naturally require less supervision and therefore benefit from having good sales training. Any company choosing turnover and cover contribution as assessment criteria are unaware of the extent to which the salesperson is exhausting their area potential, how many new clients they visit, how intensively they push new products etc.
Tip: Questioning your clients on a regular basis about their satisfaction with the salesperson is one possibility of assessing the performance of your sales team in future.
A qualifications divide is opening up in sales, because information technology is replacing previous specialist knowledge. In the area of High Qualification Selling the person is becoming increasingly important in the sales process, but the importance of information technology remains the same. An example is the progressive transition from mechanics to electronics in the mechanical engineering industry, which requires highly qualified sales engineers.
In Low Qualification Selling, on the other hand, information technology is becoming increasingly important and the people are being gradually replaced. This development is currently underway in banking where information technology (statement printers, cash machines, home banking, tele banking etc) is replacing people. On balance: caution must be exercised when categorizing products: not every high-tech product 'automatically' requires High Qualification Selling.
It is increasingly know that customers often buy products such as personal computers from discount stores without any advice.
One of the greatest challenges for sales is the transition from price selling to value selling.
As well as products, increasingly a service has to be sold. Selling value is a talent.
According to Professor Simon, this is the most current and explosive trend. If companies such as Vulkan-Werft remain competitive in spite of full order books, it is because they offer cut prices. Listing prices are still raised annually, but the prices left after deducting discounts and special conditions are still lower. Some companies such are going in the opposite direction in that they are lifting their discounts and going over to a net price policy.
The tightrope walk between individual and computerized sales continues. It is extremely difficult to maintain the balance between sales department costs on the one hand and client relations on the other.
Certainly, the costs of personal sales have improved in the last few years and will persistently rise. Information technology, on the other hand, is becoming increasingly cheap. The more thoroughly a company automates its contact with customers, the more anonymous, synonymous and disengaged it's relationship with customers becomes.
On balance: Over the years a patron builds up close, even seemingly friendly relationships with bank staff. This is unlikely to happen with a cash machine. With unspecified business relations there is the great danger that clientele will compare price and performance and buy for those reasons.
The sales department has to think much more in terms of net product and contribute to overcoming the distance barrier. Closeness to customers, customer relations and customer satisfaction are becoming increasingly of more importance. According to Professor Simon, "The client's voice must be forcefully imprinted into the company!"
The salesperson becomes a coordinating manager in that they unite employees from research and development, logistics, client care etc with (potential) clients.
On balance: Particularly successful companies will distinguish themselves in future through a high degree of marketing professionalism and a higher degree of closeness to their clients. 28% of clients who change supplier do this for price reasons, 19% are dissatisfied with product quality. 53% of all clients who change supplier, however, find fault with the poor quality of service and weaknesses in client contact.
The outsourcing of sales activities will increase.
An advancing number of businesses are treating their sales department as an independent corporate area in order to increase efficiency. This development offers a great opportunity to entrepreneurial types where an effective sales force that is skilled and has received good sales training can win additional business.
by: Richard Stone
Importance of Feedback in Reputation Management Stress Management; Lunch is For Wimps How Your Customers Will Find Your Debt Management Service Weight Loss Tips for Weight Management and Fat Loss Construction Management at Its Best Construction Management Companies Learn Pay Per Click Management Productivity And Time Management Anger Management: One Tool in the Peace Kit A Blessing For Senior Management Job Rotation as Career Development Mechanism for Management Trainee Officers (MTO's) Tips For Improving Supply Chain Management An Overview of Web Content Management System