B4

Peter Lindfield

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As the face of a company and the primary source of its revenues, the sales force is among an organization's most critical assets. And the importance of its role is only growing as competition intensifies, products commoditize and globalization forces increase. Competent sales management is the least expensive and most effective way to increase revenue and margins, cash flow market share, return on investment and net present value.

An effective sales organization is a great equalizer for smaller firms in every industry.

For companies of every size, it costs no more to properly recruit, train, compensate and evaluate salespeople. Effective time and territory management, forecasting, planning and budgeting cost no more than performing these functions badly.

Many companies are under significant pressures, such as internal strategic shifts, deregulation and globalization, and many sales organizations have lost track of customer behavior and best practices for succeeding in their industries.

The quickening pace of change, caused by global shifts and their local responses - including shorter product and service life cycles, longer and more complex sales cycles, more intense competition and declining customer loyalty - have dramatically changed sales processes, strategies and tactics. Salespeople are now challenged to showcase the benefits of their portfolio by quantifying how a product or service can lower a customer's costs, increase revenues and lower capital expenditures or working capital needs.

Traditionally, sales representatives lacked a business degree. Companies typically provided new salespeople with a week of product knowledge training, followed by a few days on basic selling techniques.

Today, companies are hiring salespeople with technical degrees or equivalent experience that is specific to the industry in which they will be selling. The top firms in many industries spend weeks annually on sales training and reorganize their sales organizations an average of once every five years. For leading firms, the cost associated with investment in sales is substantial. Companies in New Brunswick need to benchmark themselves against these best-in-class organizations to compete effectively.

Business schools initially missed the rising importance and changing nature of selling in a complex global environment, in part because they viewed selling as a craft or a skill rather than as a focal point for academic study. And sales management was generally taught as a class under the rubric of marketing, usually in an MBA program.

Courses in selling and sales management are still conspicuously absent in the curriculum of any university in Atlantic Canada. There are no sales executives-in-residence providing knowledge transfer and practical advice to faculty and students. And there are also no programs in sales for government officers, investors or industry analysts.

Without formal education in sales, it is much more difficult for investors to interpret business plan revenue forecasts. The result is that the financial risk associated with many business ventures is much less transparent than it might be.

In some industries, firms are dependent on suppliers for solutions to complex problems and it is commonplace for sales professionals to work closely with customers to address complex challenges. What's different today is that the solution sales model has become nearly universal in business-to-business transactions.

The solution selling model places new demands on sales professionals who now need a thorough understanding of the customer's business, the economics in which that business operates, and the degree to which the sales professional's own offerings can become integrated into that solution. Those new needs have, in turn, changed the profile of successful salespeople and forced their companies to provide significant intelligence and training in industry- and business-specific knowledge.

The pitchman of the early last century and the friendly presenter of thirty years ago are legacies of a past era.

Today, sales professionals frequently are outsourced business analysts whose task is to search for prospects to add value to their customers' operations.

The newest sales strategies are designed to ensure that sales professionals are able to productivity manage those opportunities. The best firms will establish a coherent path to sales excellence.

Enormous opportunities are ahead for New Brunswick companies. We would be investing well to initiate a tradition of excellence that mirrored those opportunities.

Peter Lindfield is president and CEO of Balanced Viewpoint Inc. He lives in the Fredericton area and can be reached at peter.lindfield@balancedviewpoint.com.