The noble arts of selling and sales management have changed little in the past 200 years. The traditional model for sales operations evolved in the earliest days of the Industrial Revolution, and is still the basis of ways sales organisations go about their business, today.
It turns out dinosaurs are alive and well, when it comes to selling at least, and what other business people know about it. For the moment that is, but maybe not for long.
Granted, this is hard to believe. After all the world has changed a lot over that time, and the rate of that change is accelerating – with globalisation enabled by the anytime, anywhere, Internet. But most sales people, sales managers, and CEOs, still think selling is about finding somebody who will be fooled by the pitch, and sweet talked into signing a deal.
(Funnily enough, that’s what most Internet Marketers do. I suppose the Internet, in that case, actually propagates the philosophy. In many others of course, it undermines it. Freely available information, from comparison sites and user comments, enabled by the new technology are the fast talking heavy hitter’s worst nightmare.)
But for most sales people the new customer is empowered by the Internet and by competition. Buyer/seller relationships are driven by customers, and the old fashioned sales rep is as welcome as the influenza virus. Sales organisations will have to reengineer, or go the way of those other dinosaurs.
So says the ultimate business authority – the Harvard Business Review.
And its the message in our new eBook Reengineering Sales Management which combines an explanation of how the traditional thinking evolved, with stories illustrating how it fails, and with suggestions about philosophies, and processes and tools for the new paradigm.
