Death of a sales man - Version 2009

Beautiful truth.

I see this as a developing problem already when I meet with groups and discuss the evolution of social behaviors, especially when it comes to sales / marketing, it's been my expierience that even the sales managers are stuck to a set of old school 'rules' handed down by their company founder that is their Bible and they live (or are dying) by that.

In the technology field, I am even finding this same mentality sadly.  Marketing 'consultants' who refuse or resist to change their mind to what has already happened in the sales world. For whatever reason, the marketers feel like their 'techniques' are good enough and blame dropping sales or plumenting interest in their services soley on the economy.

I look forward to your white paper on this emergency situation - I hope you really spell it out, don't hold back, because this is going to catch up with the status quo very soon. Hopefully, before it's too late, we can lift our stubborn heads from the sand.

Keep me posted on all your posts! I love reading them, they are very refreshing.

Tim Moore
@twmoore

I also truly believe that the way we do Sales will change in the coming years. This is not related to the vertical or whether we sell to Tier 1 accounts or end-users.

In the future even a sales person has to spend some time in social networks and keep the communication up and running. If a sales person can qualify as a trusted adviser, customers will become advocates and spread the word.
If he/she can't - switching the vendor/brand will become very easy for customers, as information is available and findable. Negative products and services will fail or take seriously harm due to negative user comments within the Web 2.0 community (see an example).

 Doing Sales as part of a CRM 2.0 strategy will look different and require a cultural change - particular hard for all of the older sales people that did not get in touch with the new 'social web', yet... Generation Y will bring the requirements as part of their day to day experience.

I guess we will see some "Web 2.0 for beginners" classes as part of sales training, soon :)

Cheers,
Guido

interesting perspective. i totally agree with you that in the 'social web' world sales is a totally different approach from the classic 'process'.

However, sales in its foundation still works in the social web if done properly. What do I mean by this? At its core sales is about relationship and trust. These 2 ingredients are the foundation of of the Social Web as well.

If shortcuts are taken in the 'social web sales process' then the same effect will happen as in the real sales world. failure.

Your thoughts?

Great stuff!  This "shift" has been creaping up on us all for a number of years.  Unfortunately, more than just "sales attitude / competency etc" has been structured around these old concepts.  When I first introduced CRM to my company in the mid 90's,  I said you'll no longer sell anything but help people buy what they want / need - and was almost shot on the spot!

So, in order for this to change, entire corporate infrastructure based on the 90day drills, management styles and stock market impacts need to change....Now, that being said, the carnaige on Wall Street caused by people who, for the most part were perfect examples of why sales people have bad reputations, has cleaned up a lot of it.  I can only hope we do not need to go through that in other industries as well.

Steve:  Nice question.  I think so---know so.

These are very complex issues, we tend to over simplify them in these posts.  In spite of my criticism (consultants are supposed to find problems in everything), I see many companies/organizations moving in the right direction.  All with varying speeds, urgency and effectiveness.  Frankly, I wouldn't be doing what I do if I didn't see some strong indicators that organizations and individuals are doing this.

I spend lots of time with end customers, many of them say the same thing and we are seeing very profound changes in vendor/customer relationships.  Naturally, we would like to see these pervasive, more the rule than the exception, but there are great organizations.

In fairness, not all the blame can be laid on sales people.  Some of it is just bad management and leadership.  Read the newspapers for examples of this all the time.  You cited this issue in your company (in a separate post).  Even the strongest sales professional will find it difficult to survive in an organization that does not support him.

Also, I've noticed a strange phenomena.  Customer's have become so well "trained" that many do not want sales professionals to solve their problems.  I've seen situations where sales people have tried to understand the customer problems and sought to help them.  Customers put up all sorts of barriers and excuses, usually reduced down to, "stop all that crap, just give me a price and a data sheet." (In which case, the web is all they need.)

It is a complex issue.  However, my personal experience and from having worked with 1000's of sales people, we can better our profession and create real value for our customers.  The great news is true sales professionals have the discipline, courage, persistence, and intelligence to do this.

As a side note, the area where I am seeing the most profound changes to the positive is in organizations that are doing true partnering/alliance development (not just using the words as a fancy way of selling).  These are mostly very large deals, but I see the practices being extended into smaller deals.  From a coaching point of view I would study a lot of the really good work in partnering/alliance development and adapt some of the principles into your own relationships and work with customers.

Thanks for the thoughtful question!

I agree with many of your points.  I see things a bit differently (I'm sure you aren't surprised by that, Axel) with respect to where some components of some sales peoples' jobs are headed in the short term.  Technology, and more specifically, social media are playing a larger and larger role.  No argument from me there.  I know that as a researcher, as a business person, as a salesperson, and as a buyer!  I'm engaged. 

Here, however, are some points for consideration:

• Some major market segments are today very, very far away from regular and widespread use of social media between buyers and sellers.  Industries such as industrial equipment, insurance, and some sub-sectors of healthcare have a long way to go.  There are other segments as well.  Government sales is in that category.  Those lagging industries and local, state and federal agencies, for the time being, are employing more traditional ways of learning about products and services--Web 1.0--looking at alternative vendors' websites and discussions with salespeople and the experts they bring to the party.  Attempt to come at them through social media and you'll likely find no one at the other end of the tweet.
  
• Certain modes of selling will lag significantly in the adoption of social media as a selling tool and capability.  As one example, the success of the strategic account manager (SAM) presently depends on many of the more traditional sales skills and capabilities to drive the tens to hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue they each bring to their companies each year.  Will that change?  Sure.  But not this week, this month, or maybe even this year.  If the seller tried to alter that relationship it would be very risky.
  

I know there are many reading this that think that stuff is old and irrelevant.  I agree.  It is, but only in a minority of B2B selling situations.  Mainstream corporate and government sales success is still driven by overall compliance with a buyer-centric sales methodology.  I know some don't want to hear that.  But the fact is this: research proves that compliance with many traditional sales best-practices is getting the job done for many companies.

So, if my points about social media being relevant to a relatively small piece of the B2B market are correct, we are potentially doing a real disservice to many sales people and managers by distracting them with representations that the whole world of selling is changing, now.

I would estimate that 80 to 90% of direct salespeople in B2B sales need to get better at the more traditional approaches to selling--for the time being. This is important:  There is significant room for improvement in sales performance through sales leaders adopting the best-practices of top-performing selling companies in areas other than social media.

Here's the bottom line for me, Axel:  If a salesperson's buyers have really embraced social media as a way to establish and build relationship with those who would provide them with valuable products and services, great.  Those companies do exist.  But in general, and regretfully for some I'm sure, we're just not there yet.

I mean we can go on and on here - but PLEASE ask your respective clients if you could talk to a random sample of customers - not the well prepped show case "reference customer". Cost you 1 day in your life and may save you so many more. If not enter the words FORUM, BLOG, COMCAST or FORUM, BLOG, WASHINGTON MUTUAL or... replace any name with one of your choice check Facebook and LinkedIn groups. Leave your marble towers ...

Dave and Dave have largely written what I've just signed on to write! I had this discussion with Axel off-line today and I have agreed to disagree with him in certain aspects, esp. in the larger complex B2B world - but I would like to add something not yet mentioned either here or in the more disputatious thread that preceded it.

There are valuable lessons to be learned from the larger complex customer-driven sales process. Historically, sales. marketing, customer service/support, professional services, product development departments are silo'ed mini-fiefdoms with own top and bottom lines. With the emergence of social web/media companies way down the B2B/B2C scale need to learn from the team-selling that happens in complex sales where the sales person becomes more a market intelligence gatherer (i.e. who might need what we have), relationship and process manager/customer champion than in more discrete product sales.

Social media means the company has to work truly as a team where everyone from the mail person (if they still exist) upwards is considered to be part of the selling process. All these individuals are out there facebooking, blogging, twittering etc. On purpose or otherwise they are now all part of the front-line to the customer. Even the lowest ranking person could kill/complicate an otherwise perfectly matched need fulfillment through an on-line indiscretion or mistaken comment. On the other hand if a company's employees are genuinely supporting their organisation because it espouses the right ethics, values and commitment to customer service they could well cement the deal.

Time to rethink how an organization functions and is constructed. Roles they-are-a-changing, perhaps especially sales, but the imperative for an organization to generate profitable revenue does not. Social Media is coming, but like all things it will evolve and blend with what has gone before to create Web/sales/CRM 3.0+ down the road - we're still taking baby steps.

Axel is a true evangelist and speaks with the fervour of the prophet, you may not agree with him in all things (I don't) but he's getting an important message across.

Making "Educated Purchase Decisions" says it all. Have a quick look at Dave Steins blog where I tried to explain in more detail. And in regards to your suggestion in ERP. Would you mind return the favor? Sign up for some ERP related groups in Yahoo, Google, or other open or closed group. There you get an extra bonus - ERP users ;-) I unsubscribed from newsletters from the likes of IDC, Forrester etc. long time ago. I admit I was one of the people who paid for the "independent" research in the past to become a "recognized" player as mentioned by one of the "highly respected" research firms. We both have seen them go in the tank and still today struggling to stay alive.

Thanks to everyone for contributing to this debate.  I for one hope we are at the inflexion point to a "new of selling". 

I got into sales by accident in 1995 and as a former chip designer I could never understand that our approach made any sense.  I read all the books back then and they largely contradicted each other.  Finally in the last couple of years things are starting to make some sense to me but mostly because the Internet and social media has given us a catalyst to a new way of selling that may well be called “Sales 2.0” 

I hope that happens soon.

Extracting from my comment at #9 (am also farther down the comment count, too):

...rather than companies targeting ads based on x, y, or z critera, shouldn't the companies' consumers be creating the advertising as the next iteration of what they (and we) are currently doing by blogging, tweeting, and stumbling their products and buzz?

Why must advertising continue on the same path where the business generates it? Shouldn't the business receive the revenue based on the consumer generating the ads?

The sales man is dying, Axel. Some of them are already dead.

You can find me pretty much everywhere online @ariherzog

And I completely appreciate your thumbs down like others for the same reason. I'm NOT comparing myself with great leaders of our history - but they all got thumbs down when they proposed their theories in the first place. I also adopt to the idea that earth is not a disk. But on the other side, this is the most read and most commented blog post on TheCustomerCollective ever.

"10 reasons sales people should care about social media".

But if businesses miss to understand the real dynamics of Social Media - they may miss more than just a piece of information.