I recently had a conversation with an L&D Director who talked about re-vamping their entire sales curriculum to meet the needs of the marketplace. Like many companies, this Director's customer base was narrowing - not only because of the poor economy, but as a result of consolidations, merger, takeovers, etc. The result, of course, is fewer but larger customers and significantly more at stake in every sales call.
Think of it this way, if you had 100 customers originally, and you make a mistake during one of the sales calls, you still have 99 more opportunities to get it right. So, you can afford to send some of your "greener" sales reps to call on the companies where potentially making a mistake and losing a sale will have, perhaps an impact, but not a "miss the target number for the period" impact. You can afford some time to bring your sales people up to snuff and let them "cut their teeth" before assigning them to your top tier customers.
Now, let's say your industry experiences a huge consolidation and you're left with 40 customers who have bought out, outlived, absorbed, etc. the remaining 60. A mistake in a sales call means only 39 more chances to get it right. Now, you may have a real problem.
This is exactly what we're seeing with many customer companies. The result: Companies are loath to assign less developed sales people to accounts; they demand significantly better and broader skills, abilities and knowledge from their sales people. Does the phrase "we want a business manager not a sales person calling on our customer" ring a bell? Enter the Learning & Development professional!
I'll explore some of the topics relating to this issue over a few weeks. This week, let's start here:
THE QUESTIONS FOR YOU:
Have you experienced your management/sales management insisting that your sales people become business managers? What'
s driving this at your company?
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