The Future of Your Sales Team: It’s Inside...

This year, I anticipate we will see a reduction in external sales positions of around 20%: 10% will be lost for good, and the other 10% will move inside. I believe that this pattern will continue for the next three years, until we are left with less than 10% of the total sales population working externally. The reasons for this are obvious: Advances in technology mean that we can communicate just as easily from our desks, using video conferencing etc.

Jonathan Farrington

If Jonathan is right, IT solution providers’ current sales processes, existing sales teams and management systems will begin to change over the next 18-24 months. He joined me in a recorded discussion on this subject last week. The Top Sales Management website contains a number of wonderful resources on sales leadership from 15 consultants from all over the world (including myself).

I thought the quote above would help stimulate your future thought processes relating to your sales organization. Jonathan is a global sales thought leader and the excerpt comes from an editorial he wrote for Top Sales World magazine.

As CompTIA members (both vendors and solution providers), we need to think through the impact of our own technologies, and how they affect our mutual relationships and the growth of our industry. I believe we are currently at “level two” of the sales technology sales maturity curve. CRM is maturing and applications such as WebEx/Lync/GoToMeeting, VARPortal, and Channel Eyes are being used daily. Social media and video are all having an impact and making a shift in the selling model. As these tools mature into a “level three” ease of use with integration and additional customer assimilation, the natural adoption curve will accelerate.  This trend will allow for a sales team and sales process to easily shift to an inside approach.

Cloud applications will force even greater demands on vendor/sales/customer collaboration, with its lower margins, additional functionality, increased transactions and expanded distribution needs (more on this in future blogs). As customers become more comfortable with technology, newer and younger salespeople enter the workplace and the cost of running a sales organization grows (Gas=$4.50 per gallon). A solution provider’s sales leadership has to consider alternatives and begin to transition their teams and processes to the best alternatives. That includes leveraging technology to lower costs, improve prospecting and customer touches, and advance sales training.

Social media as we know it today, will evolve to “Business Media” and as salespeople, prospects and clients have learned to use Twitter/Facebook /LinkedIn tools ,and even CRM,  however the future will bring “Sales Collaboration Networks” that will be Cloud based and provide highly interactive communication channels between sales, vendors, and clients.

The result? Prospects will accept this kind of communication and both parties will interact comfortably.  The benefit of utilizing these kinds of new tools and moving to an inside sales approach will be your pipelines will expand because now salespeople, salespeople will uncover more prospects, manage additional prospects, make more contacts per day and increase their ability to address more business needs. By incorporating these kinds of tools and changing the sales process with more powerful business social media tools you will achieve a lower cost of sales, another requirement for Cloud based partners.

I would recommend that you begin to re-design your sales process map (everyone should have one) to include the use of Unified Communications and web tools that streamline the sales process. Take your sales methods beyond the simple use of marketing pieces and experiment with new ideas, such as performing quarterly reviews via video conferences.

During the interview mentioned above, we discussed how the metrics will change, sales training will be altered and efficiency ratios and cost of sales will be improved through the further utilization of existing technologies, as well as the addition of new ones. Let me know if you agree with my thoughts…

Listen to the discussion, consider your options and begin to make the right moves—it will pay off.

Ken Thoreson is president of Acumen Management, a firm that “operationalizes” sales management systems and processes.  Over the past 14 years, his consulting, advisory, and platform services have enhanced the sales efforts of partners throughout North America. Contact him atKen@AcumenMgmt.com and visit his blog at www.YourSalesManagementGuru.com.