Salespeople are often seen as solitary beasts, preferring to work alone as sole contributors to their particular territories and targets. Sales managers and directors, too, often run their teams as tightly run ships that are largely off limits to the rest of the company. It’s partly why sales has been seen as a ‘black art’ and not the replicable, scientific set of processes and skills that we now see playing out in modern sales theory and practice. While there are those high performers who still run their own operations and refuse to share their expertise and knowledge, they may not be tolerated for much longer as firms strive for wider, replicable top-class selling across the salesforce.
In turn, there is a much wider discussion now about the current practice and future of sales and marketing, with a ramp up in books and articles on many aspects of the disciplines, more training courses, more seminars such as the ISMM’s own series (which are increasing in frequency this year), and of course many online resources such as blogs, forums such as LinkedIn and copious comment and research from firms such as Miller Heiman, Huthwaite, Forrester, Gartner, IDC and others.
Of course, the internet has to some extent sparked the interest in exchanging information, but it is much more a driver of change in itself – the advent of so-called ’sales 2.0′ and all it means in buyer behaviour has provided a huge amount for us to talk about as the traditional world of selling changes dramatically. There are many other changes in recent years that also impact on sales and marketing – boom and bust, buyer professionalism, company regulation, privatisation, education in schools and colleges, demographics, customer service expectations, venture capital trends… the list is endless and feeds much debate and discussion.
Then there are all the traditional issues and questions, such as are salespeople born or made? Is sales talking to marketing and vice versa? How do you make the step up to sales management? And so on. The truth is that these questions are being hotly debated now more than ever, not only because a new generation of professionals needs the answers, but also because the way that the issues are addressed do change over time.
It’s evident from discussions on the ISMM’s LinkedIn group – membership of which is now over 1,000 after a few months of promotion – that both traditional and new issues are indeed in vogue. People still want an insight into improving presentation skills, getting sales reps to do their reporting, overcoming blockers to personal progress, how a salesperson’s job is defined, cold calling, and so on. But there is also strong interest in topics such as the latest CRM systems, new conferencing tools, how prospects are buying in the current business climate, new lead generation techniques, social media (of course), and much more. Notably, there is still ongoing interest in researching the factors that make a good salesperson, suggesting that the attributes in 2011 are probably different to those in the 1980’s.
In addition to seminars, executive forums and of course the yearly Successful Selling conference (which now has workshop sessions), the ISMM has also started a number of regional networking groups. These are just starting to take shape but there have already been successful meetings with themes that reflect ‘hot’ issues that many sales and marketing people are facing now.
It seems that sales has moved from being a relatively isolated profession to one where people are finding a lot of value in networking. Many successful junior salespeople have of course always latched onto mentors and coaches, usually in their company, but the less formal environments of online forums and networking meetings offer a much more diverse experience, often from very senior professionals working in different industries.
For salespeople working in smaller companies, in particular, such networking can be invaluable when dealing with complex issues in a long sales cycle, for example. Further, large sales organisations can be surprisingly inward looking and can benefit from fresh thinking from outside. In any case, another factor that has certainly increased in recent years is extended or virtual teams in bid and delivery work, with constantly changing partner companies and freelancers involved in each deal. Networking also serves to drive new business as well as to discuss issues, as few firms can afford not to look for talent that helps win more deals.
The talking will no doubt continue apace.
Taken from our magazine Winning Edge.
Published six times a year, Winning Edge is distributed to all members as one of the benefits of membership.
Tags: meetings, networking, peer, sales
