“Glenn, your championship of the sales optimisation cause is laudable. And I hear you, in terms us being no different to any other B2B sales organisation. We need it just like all the rest of them. But it just seems like there is a missing piece, before we optimise the sales team. There is an implicit assumption in your sales optimisation call-to-action that we have got the very raison detre of the sales team right, and that all we need to do now is to optimise.”
“Jen, you meticulously undertake your customer (including prospects, and recent customer defections) satisfaction surveys each year, and you cover all the elements of the total service offering? Yes?”
“That’s right, Glenn. And we always score quite well, across the board.” “But that is what bugs me. Again, there is another implicit assumption at work here.”
“The assumption that with the rise and rise of the educated customer, who does so much more of the supplier research and selection WITHOUT the input of competing Sales Execs than what we saw a decade ago, regular satisfaction surveying of them will give us the strategy input we need. But with this shrinking bandwidth for the sales team to really spread their wings and add value, how do we elevate the role of the sales team above and beyond traditional relationship management, sales and service? Something that fills a gap for the educated customer and gives them something they missed or do not know about? Which requires regular visits and input from our Sales Execs. Which in turn gives us real competitive advantage.”
“Wow, Jen. That’s some tall order. Sounds like we need to disrupt the long-standing role of the sales team and the nature of their business relationship with customers to understand that missing piece, before we optimise the sales organisation.”
“Touche, Glenn.”
Keep an eye out for our next post: How to disrupt first – then optimise your sales organisation
Want to learn more? Check out A quick litmus test – how relevant is sales team optimisation in your sales organisation?