Emerging Trends in Professional Selling

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Every selling organization will need to strategize and determine their driving force. Clients require new methods of service and support. Moreover, the need for proximity and speed of service will require representatives to be more responsive. More important, managing account in silos and placing numerous impediments that create intra-selling competition hurts client relationships and destroys margins.

Talent – The diminishing labor pool and the constant drive for profits disables organizations’ capability to acquire the best talent. The largest asset of any organization is talent, especially sales talent.

Simply put, talent management and sales effectiveness needs to be at the top of every manager’s list.

Future sales leaders will require education acquisition. Simply put, selling is a profession and must be treated as such. Future leaders must engage in the proper education to increase proficiency and effectiveness.

Customer Service – Peter Drucker once stated that an organization exists for one reason: the customer. Future organizations require more suitable strategic methods and driving force. Fortifying organizational strategy requires sagacious attention to customers. Similar to sales, customers are the lifeblood of every organization. Competitive differentiation stems from the perceived customer value. Customers desire to be with those they trust; this is the key differentiator in a marketplace cluttered with vendors. Appreciation from your greatest asset takes no time and little investment, and pays a huge return.

Customer service extends internally and externally and relies on people, processes, and physical evidence. Selling professionals and peers will need to employ a true customer orientation, from answering telephones to returning phone calls. Procrastination and avoidance will be grounds for termination as organizations attempt closeness with customers. Also, processes must be efficient and client-friendly. Lengthy forms and waiting times only add frustration. Tomorrow’s leaders will constantly walk the process to eliminate tardiness and frustration. Finally, customer service requires a clean act. Selling professionals should dress differently, act differently, and speak differently. Take regular feedback on what clients believe about the firm and its employees.

While change is good, it requires adjustment. The future of selling requires changes to keep pace with generational and cultural shifts that create behavioral changes in decisions. The selling representative of tomorrow must work efficiently and quickly to maintain the pace. Failure of change leads to competitive elimination. These trends require you to not sit on your past but to begin creating a new future.

Major shifts in the science of marketing:

The early to mid 20th century saw a boom in the creativity and spread of the new form of product promotion – advertising. Combined with an emerging science of marketing, the rapid spread of print media and the growth of radio then television, advertising was thought to be the way to reach buyers and consumers with messages that would firstly inform and then motivate buyers to rush into shops or outlets to make their purchases.

“Who needs salespeople when we can harness the power of branding, marketing and mass advertising?” was a question that was posed by many at that time.

The end of the 20th century again saw a similar mind-set when the internet emerged as the new digital way to reach the market. The question posed was about the need for face-to-face sales encounters when all the information anyone could want was available at the click of a mouse.

Both predications of the death of the salesperson have proved wrong.

The salesperson and the sales function have continually evolved to adapt to changing market and business needs. The world no longer needs armies of brush, encyclopaedia or photocopier salespeople moving from door to door cajoling and enticing a (sometimes) ill-informed public with the virtues of their product, and then applying various tried and tested ways to ‘close the sale’.

Today, especially in complex business-to-business (B2B) environments, the salesperson is more important than ever. Whilst the world is awash with information and data, knowledge and wisdom remain difficult to find. Individuals and organisations making important purchasing decisions are looking for insights and value beyond the brochure that professional salespeople can bring to the table.

Hence, the challenge for salespeople and sales managers today is to adapt to changing market conditions and to deliver the value consumers and purchasers are seeking. Some of the sales techniques and methods that have evolved over the past few years will help meet today’s challenges – and some won’t. Today’s business environment is complex, and the application of simplistic approaches that worked in the past probably won’t work today.

Inevitably, change is essential to meet today’s challenges – and change is hard. The alternate, however, is even harder – obsolescence and failure.

21st century challenges for salespeople and sales managers

Change remains the single greatest challenge in the business environment. This is especially so for the function of personal selling. The last ten years in particular have seen the sales role come under great pressure as the tide of change alters how we sell and how we manage sales teams. These changes originate in a number of areas as follows:

• shifting demographics in our organisations as both Gen Y and Gen X assume leadership roles;

• continued globalisation of organisational activity as organisations look to grow offshore markets and split functions across borders to gain cost and logistical efficiencies;

• increased use of outsourcing of traditional core functions – often to third parties operating in different countries;

• changing expectations of organisational stakeholders as pressure is placed on organisations to act as responsible citizens, and not just focus on bottom line results. Paradoxically, many organisations are also under pressure by shareholders and investor groups to produce quarter on

quarter growth which often works against the longer term expectations of the organisation as corporate citizen;

• changes in technology which have resulted in the ability to communicate instantly across all parts of the globe, and to amass huge amounts of data