Building A Sales Force For The Future - Today

Many factors are driving various trends in sales, including new technologies, new buying patterns, new selling techniques, more e-commerce and more competitive channels.

With all of the changes to the salesforce precipitated by these factors, many IMARK member distributors are considering how they are going to build sales teams to fit the dynamic market conditions of the next five years.

The National Association of Electrical Distributors (NAED)’s Education and Research Foundation recently released “Emerging Sales Forces,” a white paper supported by the foundation’s Channel Advantage Partnership that delivers predictive scenarios to help electrical distributors create and maintain sales teams that will address the evolving ways that customers will select electrical supplies. The research project was commissioned by electrical distributors for electrical distributors. The research findings were published in a 50-page document, which covers this topic in great detail.

To review an executive summary of “Emerging Sales Forces” or to purchase the complete white paper, click here.

For this article, we’ll focus on two scenarios that the researchers expect to be of paramount importance for electrical distributors: “Sales Force Sophistication and Business Acumen” and “Embracing the Internet of Things.”

Salesforce Sophistication and Business Acumen

In the first scenario, new technologies, innovative products, shifting profit needs and changing sales expectations mean that the relationship-only selling style used by many outside salespeople will become less relevant and be replaced with more consultative selling.

 

Specific factors that will drive the “Salesforce Sophistication and Business Acumen” scenario include supplier development of innovative products, such as smart lighting; advances in technology, such as the Internet of Things and connected home devices; increased demand for data for decision making; new definition/types of “value,” services like customization and customers’ need for solutions.

As a result, many outside salespeople will need to develop a deeper understanding of their customers’ businesses. Outside salespeople will need to understand customers’ problems more broadly and offer more customized solutions. They will need to better profile customers and spend more time with fewer customers. They will also have to collaborate more with inside salespeople, specialty salespeople and supplier salespeople, as well as have the ability to solve problems and customize solutions with the use of technical information and resources.

Signposts that would lead to the “Salesforce Sophistication and Business Acumen” scenario include an increasing need for vendor pre-sale technical support, vendor insistence on greater technical sales skills, higher new product quotas, as well as losses to competitors with heavy investments in sales technology.

NAED’s white paper recommends various strategies that electrical distributors can embrace to deal with this potential scenario.

These tactics include:

• Developing a profile of an ideal consultative salesperson and assessing existing salespeople against that criteria, as well as hiring new salespeople that meet that criteria.
• Developing appropriate technical training and consultative sales training internally, through suppliers and/or with the help of third parties.
• Increasing investment in sales technology, especially data analytics.
• Redesigning pipeline milestones to fit solution-selling.
• Adjusting outside/inside sales staffing, likely adding more of the latter.

The Internet of Things and ‘Millennial’ Decision-Makers

Research shows that the owners of homes, offices, commercial buildings and factories will buy a huge assortment of connected devices. These devices will generate petabytes of data that need to be stored, monitored and analyzed. It is projected that 30 billion objects may be connected to the Internet of Things by 2020…This is expected to grow at a rate of 15-20 percent annually between now and 2020.

Meanwhile, nearly half of B2B decision-makers are millennials (ages 18-34). Forty-two percent of B2B decision-makers use mobile devices during their decision-making process. Their comfort with technology will drive distributors to incorporate more technology into their businesses.

It is not unusual for millennial B2B decision-makers to complete the following steps before they engage with their suppliers:

• Conduct an initial online search
• Compare prices/features online
• Watch videos (if applicable)
• Read online reviews and ratings
• Visit online forums

Not surprisingly, it is expected that the value of face-to-face communications with suppliers will decline for many of these customers.

Conclusions

NAED’s white paper draws the following conclusions:

• Electrical distributors will need to get closer to the leading edge of technology to remain competitive with other distributors both inside and outside of the industry.
• Salespeople will need to become more knowledgeable about using technology.
• The industry will see a shift to more inside sales reps with fewer outside sales reps. To that end, successful distributors will re-write inside sales job descriptions and hire more aggressively for these positions. Also, they will develop clear-cut career paths for these inside sales reps.
•  Electrical distributors may need to broaden their product offerings to compete with distributors serving other channels.

NAED’s white paper essentially provides a transition plan for distributors from today’s selling environment to that of the future. The paper identifies signposts electrical distributors can look for to determine if and when these scenarios will come to pass.