Doctors of Selling

I have written several posts this year on the topic of selling and the future of salespeople.  A good many of the articles involve Google because I think one of the central themes in Google's business is to eliminate the inefficiency of the sales process in general and salespeople in particular.

Clearly the sales process and salespeople are vulnerable.  Salespeople strike out much more often than they make contact -- so much so that a part of sales training is to help salespeople handle the rejection.  If a salesperson only closes one out of ten deals -- the salesperson is not producing value ninety percent of time!  That is a pretty fat target.

On the other hand, if salespeople could close 100% of deals, they would be considered "order takers" and replaced by automation.

Salespeople are purveyors of information.  They help people with problems find the solutions.  Hey, that is the business Google is in - helping people find information.  Could it be that if Google did its job better, anyone looking to buy anything could find that thing without the aid of a salesperson?  For more on this see my post earlier in the year about the Changing Role of the Salesperson.

Enter the paid trusted advisor.  Some will say this is that consultative selling stuff all over again, and maybe so, but either way salespeople as we knew them are on their way out.  They will be replaced by consultants that get paid to advise.  Instead of thinking of this as consultative selling, I prefer to think of it as Doctors of Selling.  The salespeople that survive will be specialists -- just like doctors.  They will be paid for all of their time, and they will differentiate through reputation and brand association.  

Selling to the Enterprise is Hard Work

Selling is getting harder and this is causing a vicious cycle.  The harder it gets the more desperate salespeople get.  Desperate salespeople do unseemly things (lying to my gatekeeper is a minor offense compared to full on deception through the sales process).  Bad behavior by salespeople brings down any prospect's willingness to engage in any sales process -- making selling even harder.  And so on...  The deflationary trend in the economy only amplifies these problems.

Some companies get around this by eliminating salespeople all together.  Amazon and Google really don't have salespeople.  They have developed self service sales processes and have lowered their prices to a point where customers sell themselves.  I have a few posts on the topic of selling, here is a list.

Companies that sell complex products or services to big business clients (aka the enterprise), do not have the luxury automating and lowering the cost until the thing sells itself.  The most dramatic proof of this can be found in the sales and marketing budget of Salesforce.com.  I have a few posts about that as well, here is another list.  

What then do we do in an age where white papers and webinars and spam are well, just spam, and salespeople don't add value because any person with both the technical capability customers value and the social skills to be a salesperson increasingly chooses a technical career?   Here are two trends I have observed in the marketplace that may be the manifestation of this new reality:

Consolidation

Companies that know how to sell have a big advantage. Oracle is a company that knows how to sell.  Their sales practices are both legendary and ruthlessly efficient.  Sales and marketing at 20% of revenue may seem high, but only a fraction when compared to Salesforce.com's 50%+.  Think of it this way, when Salesforce.com spends a dollar on sales and marketing -- it gets $2 back.  When Oracle spends a dollar it gets $5 back.  Big difference.

It is this ability to sell to the enterprise that Oracle is counting on when it buys all of those companies.  Here is a blog post on SoftwareAdvice that has a great chart of the last 100 or so Oracle acquisitions.  There is no reason to think that Oracle is going to shy away from exploiting its unique ability to sell to the enterprise.  Gotta wonder of Oracle could fix Salesforce.com's cost of selling.  Hmmm.

More Dependence on Partners

Microsoft is a company that knows how to build partnerships.  In fact, running its channel partner program may be its core competency.  Microsoft partners know that Microsoft is committed to making them successful and both Microsoft and its partners invest side by side in the pursuit of new business.  Dell has recognized this and is working hard to build out a channel partner program as fast as possible.  If you sell to the enterprise, partners are critical.  

Consolidation + Partners = Opportunity

If companies that know how to sell to the enterprise acquire other companies, and companies that know how to sell to the enterprise rely heavily on channel partners, then the real work is going to happen when combining channel partner programs of merged or acquired companies.  We already see a great deal of this, and I suspect there will be more in the near future.  

The bottom line:  Highly valued high performance partners will benefit through this evolution.  Low performance partners will be redundant.  

The Changing Role of the Salesperson

There has been a great deal of talk about how the role of the salesperson is changing.  This includes the extreme proposal that salespeople are not needed at all.  Being a salesperson at heart, I am unlikely to gravitate towards my own extinction.  I do think the role is changing significantly from that of an augmentation of the product or service to that of an advisor supported by the Brand Promise.

Selling Was:  Salespeople have historically been used to fill the inadequacies in the products or services made by their employers, and create relationships with customers.  The result:  customers feel connected to the salesperson, who is accountable for product or service performance,  more than the company.

Selling Is Now:  Through the success of Dell, Amazon, and Google, selling now often happens without the aid of a salesperson.  The customer arrives at the purchase decision independent of the manufacturer or salesperson.  In some cases, particularly when involving technical complexity or variable services, third party providers have emerged to help customers with the buying process.  These VARs, consultants, and specialists advise the customer and charge for their time.  Since they are not employed by the manufacturer (their business card has a different name on it), they are not identified with the success of the product or service or as accountable for outcomes.  

Selling Will Be: Manufacturers will rely more heavily on the Brand Promise to frame the relationship with the customer.  Salespeople will increasingly be outside the manufacturer and offering services to compliment the product -- often incorporating several products into a solution.  Products will become increasingly standardized and manufacturers will have decreasing capacity (and inclination) to handle exceptions.  This will turn the 80/20 rule up side down -- and customers will be served if they are a good fit, and the customers requiring an exception will go to different manufacturers catering to their profile.

The missing component:  How do align these outside salespeople with the Brand Promise.

People You Like

People buy things from people they like.  I don't think this is changing.  In many cases (see previous post) we end up buying things without any people involved.  At those times, we are buying things from brands we like with processes we like.  Well, we probably don't like anything about it much, but we seem to be doing it anyway.

Whenever possible at the grocery store I use the self check out line.  The line is often shorter, but the real reason I do it is the experience with the real person has disappointed me so many times.  How many times has the check out person said "I can't wait to get out of here; my shift is almost over" when you ask how they are doing?  Yes indeed I would rather talk to a machine than someone like that.

When buying something more complex than groceries, say a business service for example, I would much prefer to have a competent and credible salesperson to help me make the best decision.  With the right person I get a much needed education, make a better choice, and probably even spend more money.  In addition, if something goes wrong I have someone to turn to for help.  I am still the buyer and it is still buyer beware, but with a salesperson I have someone with me to help.

Without a salesperson, I become the salesperson -- and that is a whole new level of buyer beware.

Yes we do need salespeople in our business ecosystem.