How We’re Killing Salespeople’s Careers—and How to Stop It

A big focus at ITSMA is on helping companies move from selling complex technology products to selling complex technology solutions (mixes of products, services, and intellectual property that solve a specific business problem).

Like learning a new language or a trying to master a musical instrument, getting products and solutions to coexist happily within a company (especially a big one) is a lifelong pursuit.

That’s because there’s a fundamental conflict between marketing and selling products and marketing and selling solutions. Products are visible and immutable; solutions are invisible and nebulous.

In addition, much of the body of knowledge about marketing and selling from which we have to draw is based on products. These two factors often make solutions the poor stepchildren to products inside companies. It’s easier to market and sell products, because products help sell themselves (and usually have higher margins), whereas services and solutions often require what has come to be known as consultative selling—understanding customers’ needs and selling to those, rather than creating and memorizing a specification sheet. And unless they are mere add-ons to products, services generally have a broader impact and therefore require building relationships at a higher level within the customer organization.

Marketers Have It Easier Than Salespeople

For marketers, the transition to solutions is straightforward, if challenging. Stop writing feature checklists and start getting more creative with the copy. Stop interviewing product managers and start interviewing customers and influencers. Solutions draw on the same core strengths of marketers—creativity and communications—as products do.

But I’m hearing from clients and researchers that the transition for salespeople is not nearly so straightforward. In fact, they talk about how vast swaths of salespeople need to be eliminated as companies transition from selling products to services and solutions. The estimates range from one third of the sales force, according to these academics, to as much as two thirds.

It’s portrayed as a DNA thing—some are born to do consultative selling and to have “executive-level conversations,” and some are not.

Hogwash.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I do think there is a gene for sales. Great salespeople truly are born, not made. They have genetic tendencies toward extroversion, confidence, hope (some would say denial), relationship building, and the real differentiator: emotional perception—usually expressed as the ability to “read people” (and one’s self).

Why salespeople can’t make the cut

But I think we start slicing the genetic material a little too thinly when we separate the product salespeople from the solutions salespeople. If you assume that we haven’t hired the wrong people from the start—i.e., the order takers who never really had any true sales skills, or people who are so inflexible or fearful that they simply refuse to try to make the transition—I think we need something else to explain why so few salespeople seem able to make the cut.

I see two big reasons:

Incentives. Salespeople are about the money. It’s the yardstick of success and self-worth. Companies need to make it worth salespeople’s while to endure the longer sales cycle and lower margins that come with services. Of course, devising those incentives, putting them in place, and driving the cultural change necessary to make them stick is a maddeningly complex process that helps keep consultants and academics in business.

Information. This is the one that’s actually within marketers’ control. Information, not DNA, is the most important piece of the consultative sale and the executive-level relationship. With customers able to do so much research online, the way to get in the door these days is to have information that isn’t readily available elsewhere.

Executives live under constant fear of myopia—that by focusing so much of their time on internal operations, they are missing something important out there in the market. Salespeople who can ameliorate those real or perceived fears with information—and keep doing it over time—will outsell the mere backslappers every time. The essence of this skill is always being able to answer the question: “What are you hearing from others?”

Information is marketing’s responsibility

It’s not salespeople’ responsibility to come up with the answer to this question on their own. Executives are looking for reliable, objective, and insightful answers that go beyond an anecdotal summation of what’s going on with the other accounts in a salesperson’s territory.

If marketers aren’t supplying salespeople with the answers they need, we need to think of ourselves as partly responsible for all those salespeople going out the door in the transition from products to solutions. We need to supply salespeople with the information that will create the impression among customers that they are missing something if they don’t stay in touch—an information dependency.

How to supply the information salespeople need

We need to set up a reliable pipeline of information that salespeople can access when and where they need it. Here’s how:

Get permission. Sales leaders need to agree that information is necessary for their people to succeed. If they don’t, the pipeline will feed into a black hole. You may need a third party, such as a sales consultant, to convince sales leaders that they need more than intuition to make the sale.

Create incentives for sharing. The information pipeline will be stronger if salespeople have a reason to share information about their own accounts with other salespeople and with marketing. Salespeople need to be active contributors to the information pipeline.

Monitor the chatter. Few salespeople have the time or the interest to give marketers updates on what they’re hearing out in the field. Marketers need to be able to capture that information by monitoring the channels that salespeople use to communicate with each other, whether it is through email or CRM systems. Marketing automation and CRM vendors are beginning to offer ways to capture that kind of information.

Do the research. Marketers need to do the primary and secondary research on markets and customers to lend the depth and objectivity necessary to create information dependency among customers. Surveys work particularly well for assuring customers that the information they’re getting is more than a veiled sales pitch.

Bring in the experts. Marketers need to identify and make alliances with internal subject matter experts, external academics, and analysts and filter and feed that information into the pipeline.

Make it a joint pipeline. The channel for monitoring the chatter needs to be integrated with the channel marketing uses to pump information to sales; salespeople need a reason to access it as part of their normal routine.

Make it self-service. Salespeople need easy access to the information that marketing gathers if they are to use it. If they can’t find the information they need, they will quickly lose interest.

Make it social. Take advantage of social media platforms to create information-sharing groups for salespeople. There are ways to create private groups so that the public can’t see your group members or the information you’re sharing. Yammer is one great example of this kind of tool.

What are you doing to enable your salespeople? Please tell me about your successes and challenges.

3 Responses to “How We’re Killing Salespeople’s Careers—and How to Stop It”

1. Jacob Stoller Says:
   November 9th, 2009 at 8:30 AM

   This is an excellent post, and I say that as someone who worked in B2B software sales for many years, and then became an independent writer. Consultative salespeople have to earn the right to question decision makers about their business problems. This is not an easy task. Marketing’s most helpful role here is not to position products, but to provide useful insights on issues that it’s the decision maker’s job to be current on. This is especially true in the software world, where decision makers have to worry about a host of other factors other than software, such as training, change management, redeployment of staff, alignment with other initiatives, etc.

2. Lynn Schumacher Says:
   December 7th, 2009 at 3:51 PM

   Not sure I totally understand the statement ” products being visible and immutable and solutions being invisible and nebulous.” Enjoyed the article anyway.

3. Chris Koch Says:
   December 15th, 2009 at 9:42 AM

   Hi Lynn,

   By that statement I meant that solutions have combinations of products, services, and customizations for customers’ specific business needs. As a total package, solutions are more difficult to explain and sell than products mostly because of the services and customization components, which are not as concrete as products. Hope that helps!

   Chris

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ITSMA specializes in helping companies market and sell services and solutions more effectively. We work with the world's leading technology, communications, and professional services providers to generate increased demand, strengthen customer relationships, and improve brand differentiation. ITSMA annual program clients include business leaders such as Avaya, BT, Cisco, Deloitte, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, and Tata Consultancy Services, among others. Our comprehensive research, consulting, and training on topics including ITSMA Account-Based Marketing℠, Brand Positioning, and Solutions Development provide the insight and experience companies need to improve business results. ITSMA is based near Boston, and has offices in London and Tokyo. Learn more at www.itsma.com.