The challenges facing sales leaders in the next couple of years. What you can expect and what you need to prepare for. SalesRehab - A Chally group partner.
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Sales leaders challenges
1. Challenges Sales Leaders
of the Future Will Face
Thoughts and predictions from the most eminent
practitioners and thinkers in the business.
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RIGHT PEOPLE, RIGHT ROLES,
RIGHT DEVELOPMENT PLAN.
TALENT ANALYTICS
2. Compensation
Value
What challenges will Sales
Leaders of the future face?
And how will they rise to meet them?
Technology. Globalization. Specialization. Speed.
We see predictions about their effect on business practically every day. But while the concerns of the “CEO of the
future” are often discussed and debated, what about sales? What will the sales leaders of the future need to do to
compete effectively?
To explore this question, Chally Group Worldwide co-founder and Chairman Howard P. Stevens sat down recently
with some of the most eminent practitioners and thinkers in the business: Neil Rackham, renowned speaker and
author on sales, and Andy Zoltners, Co-founder of ZS Associates and Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Profes-
sor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. As part of an ongoing
conversation about the future of sales leadership, Stevens asked them what sales leaders can expect in years to
come, and how they can prepare.
Education
Training
Consulting
Resources
Structure
Technology
3. Education vs. training
This begs the question of how the sales person of the
future can consistently perform in this new role as
a trusted advisor. Rackham sees an increased focus
on education. Rather than giving a lot of specialized
training to generalist, sell-me-this-pencil candidates,
he foresees recruiting people who have the specific
education and knowledge to deliver a higher level of
expertise. “We’re not looking for an MBA in sales, but
rather for the kinds of things that go into an MBA.”
Does this shift mean that sales people will become
management consultants? Perhaps. But according to
Rackham, the leadership role in high-level selling teams
might call for someone who finds and delivers the ap-
propriate expertise, rather than having it themselves.
As he explains, “a big eye-opener for me in some
recent research we did was that the best account
managers weren’t the ones who spend the most time
out talking with the customers. The top players spend
nearly all their time working internally. Why? Because
by focusing on the way the company serves the cus-
tomer, managing the relationship between the two
companies, they could create more value.”
Sales or Consulting?
Psychometric evidence tells a similar story. Chally
Group research shows that many of the characteristics
that are most predictive of high-level success in sales
overlap strongly with those that predict the best senior
managers. In practice, says Stevens, “Whatever their job
description may say, top sales people succeed by taking
on more of an internal management role. They manage
the resources in their company, orchestrating them to
meet the needs of a particular customer.”
He points to additional research by Arun Sharma,
Professor of Marketing at the School of Business
Administration at the University of Miami, indicating
that the top 20% of a sales force consumed 52% of the
company’s total resources. This supports the idea that
even today, success in sales leadership “takes people
who know how to manipulate processes within the
company to the advantage of their customers.”
A brief history of the customer
The first question was one that should begin ev-
ery sales conversation: what does the customer
need? All agree that today’s customers are mov-
ing toward a very different set of expectations.
Zoltners notes that thanks to the Internet, an in-
formed customer can learn about you and your
product, objectively and in detail, even before
the first contact. “So the traditional function of
showing that your mouse trap is better than the
next person’s mouse trap is no longer relevant.”
The more sophisticated, consultative function of
problem-solving could meet the same fate. Ac-
cording to Rackham, “Today the evidence shows
that sales people who can anticipate problems
are much more valuable that those who can
solve them.” One survey respondent put it this
way: “If I fall into a hole, most sales people can
help me climb out. But not many can prevent me
from falling into the hole in the first place.”
Stevens summarized the evolution of the cus-
tomer’s expectations in three stages. The first
stage of sales was simply to introduce a product
and demonstrate its value. The second was to
provide additional value by solving problems
for the customer. The third will be to tell the
customer what those problems will be before
they happen. While the best people have always
provided help and expertise, “now that’s just the
ticket to the dance,” says Rackham. “Today com-
petitive advantage comes from having deeper
insight and vision, all the time.”
4. Conserving resources
On the other hand, the same study showed that the
top 20% of performers brought in 54% of the business
– considerably less than what the “80/20 rule” of con-
ventional wisdom would predict. So the standouts fail
to significantly outperform average in terms of earning
a return on the resources they spend.
As Rackham puts it, “over-resourcing the best op-
portunities may be the most successful of all sales
strategies today. But it’s often simply the most senior
people who shout the loudest who can allocate those
resources.”
He believes that opportunity management will have
to be a much greater focus in the future. “In a world in
which it costs IBM half a million dollars in global services
just to bid on a major piece of work, this kind of infor-
mal approach isn’t sustainable. Organizations are going
to need much more rational decision processes.”
Managing through compensation –
or through management?
If the sales leaders of the future look more like specialized
business consultants, professional managers, or both, will
they still be compensated largely by commission?
Zoltners believes that this bias may be inevitable. “You
could change to another system tomorrow, but of course
you’d want to retain and motivate the best people.
So then the high performers would get more money
anyway through bonuses and the like, and your system
would get broken. I think the decisions companies make
usually are manifestations of their culture and their
beliefs, and sales compensation is deeply ingrained in
those. It takes an unusually strong company to overcome
the status quo.”
Rackham reluctantly agrees. “If you try to manage
by compensation you’re probably not managing by
management. The best system to me would be a bonus
system where the incentive and focus came from the cul-
ture and the management of the company. But I think we
may have no choice but to have a high level of incentive
compensation.”
54/20Rule
5. Making sense of customer value
Of course, not all sales efforts will depend on high-lev-
el professional expertise. Enabled by online technolo-
gies, the experts believe that more transactional sales
will continue to migrate away from face-to-face selling.
As the extremes of the spectrum grow farther apart,
customer segmentation will become more critical, and
more complex.
Rackham frames the divergence in terms of value: “If
you look at customer value there will always be two
components: the cost and the benefits. You can create
benefits by increasing the expertise and the like that
you give them. Or you can decrease the cost for the
more transactional customer. The interesting thing is,
customers are neither entirely one nor the other. It will
depend on the opportunity.”
So will we see companies actually developing two or
more different sales forces? He thinks so. “I’ve always
disliked the hunter/farmer model. I don’t think that is
going to predominate in the future. I agree that we
need something more subtle than that. The evidence
seems to show that the successful company has got
to be able to use multiple models and target them
appropriately.”
Structural change
Given all these issues and trends, what two things are
most likely to change in the near future?
The hardest changes may be in the area of structure.
How can companies segment their sales expertise in
a way that is both efficient for the organization and
meaningful for customers? Specialization gets very
complicated, says Zoltners. “You’ve got big accounts,
little accounts, U.S. accounts, and global ones. What-
ever structure you begin with needs to be extensively
customized, and flexible enough to adapt to changes.”
Technological revolution
The other major evolution will be technology. Zoltners
believes that innovation in the ways sales people can
touch customers, such as tele-presence technologies,
social networks, data analytics, and outsourcing, are
just getting started. “Even today, inside sales jobs are
growing three times faster than outside sales thanks
to technology,” adds Stevens. “According to Salesforce.
com CEO Marc Benioff, inside sales people are getting
higher close rates than traditional teams, in a third of
the time and at a third of the cost.”
Importantly, many of these advantages work in both
directions. Technology adds flexibility and conve-
nience to the sales process for customers. And those
who have a fairly clear idea of what they want can
go and find it. Zoltners points to recent SSC research
showing that before the first discussion with the sales
person even happens, many customers have already
made a first-stage decision.
The end of sales as we know it?
If these trends continue, what does the future look
like for the sales person? Rackham predicts that the
number of face-to-face sales people will fall, but the
demands on them in terms of job complexity will rise.
“That’s going to mean a different kind of person, a
different skill set, and different kinds of autonomy,
supported by an organizational structure that’s both
more rational and more flexible.”
Regardless of what insights, skills, and resources the
sales person of the future may need to bring to the ta-
ble, Rackham is confident that personal interaction will
continue to be a critical part of the process. “At the end
of the day we’re still talking about human beings mak-
ing important decisions. Sometimes buyers just need
your reassurance that a particular product is going to
fit their needs at a particular cost. Sales as we know it
will not just go away. I think we’ll all still have jobs.”
6. Neil Rackham
There are millions of sales jobs around the world today, but a large number of those are disappearing
every year. As technology advances and consumer demands increase, the idea of a salesperson as a
“talking brochure” is no longer valid. World class sales forces understand this and are making every effort
to adapt and maintain their positions of leadership in the marketplace. There is no greater authority than
Neil Rackham on where the selling profession is headed and what individuals and organizations must do
to distinguish themselves from their fierce competitors.
Having conducted the largest-ever study of professional selling – observing more than 35,000 sales calls in
over 20 countries, at a cost of $40 million in today’s dollars – Neil presents objective, quantitative insights in a dynamic, interactive
fashion that brings true learning to the audience. (The effectiveness of his teaching and training methods earned him the Instruc-
tional Systems Association’s lifetime award for Innovation in Training and Instruction.)
Many of of the Fortune 100′s largest companies in the United States, including IBM, Xerox, AT&T and Citicorp, have engaged Neil
Rackham as an advisor on sales performance. More than half the Fortune 500 train their salespeople using sales models derived
from his research. As a sought-after conference speaker, Neil has shared the platform with notable leaders such as Tom Peters,
General Colin Powell, Philip Kotler and many others. Using his signature combination of humor, passion and group interaction, he
stimulates and challenges his audiences to reach new heights in the world of professional selling.
Howard P. Stevens
Howard Stevens is Chairman of Chally Group Worldwide. Mr. Stevens specializes in leadership develop-
ment, succession planning, customer and market analysis, and sales benchmarking. He is the creator of
the original sales product lifecycle classifications and designed the major 5-year longitudinal study of
leadership development for the U.S. Department of Defense and NASA. A licensed clinical psychologist,
he is also known for his research and programs to develop a professional sales curriculum at the university
level. With diversified interests, he is the author of several books on sales and management (published in
multiple languages) including Achieve Sales Excellence, The Quadrant Solution and Selling the Wheel. He has
written many articles and is a frequent speaker and radio and television guest. His World Class sales benchmarks program has
been presented over 500 times across 30 countries for corporations, trade associations, government agencies, and universities.
He has been a guest on CNN, Bloomberg USA, National Public Radio, Radio Free America, and other business-based programs.
Mr. Stevens also taught “World Class Sales” benchmarks at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and other univer-
sities, and serves on the Sales Advisory Board for Ohio University and the Foundation Board of Wright State University.
Andy Zoltners
Andris A. Zoltners, Founder of ZS Associates, is a Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor Emeri-
tus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he had been a
faculty member for more than 30 years. In 1983, Professor Zoltners and former Kellogg colleague, Prabha
Sinha, founded ZS Associates. The success of ZS was recognized by their induction into the Chicago Entre-
preneurship Hall of Fame in 2005.
Professor Zoltners’ areas of expertise are sales force strategy; sales force size, structure and deployment;
sales force compensation; and sales force effectiveness. He has personally consulted for over 100 com-
panies in over 20 countries. In addition to his consulting, he has spoken at numerous conferences and has taught sales force
topics to several thousand Executive, M.B.A. and Ph.D. students. He has published more than 40 academic articles, edited two
books on Marketing Models and has co-authored a series of books on sales force management.
Prior to joining the faculty at Kellogg, Professor Zoltners was a member of the Business School Faculty at the University of
Massachusetts. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie-Mellon University.