This document discusses the need to transform sales into a true profession. It notes that many sales organizations are struggling due to factors like commoditization, smarter customers, and the internet shifting information to customers. To succeed, sales must focus on determining and communicating value rather than just features. The document provides examples of companies that have competed on value through approaches like guaranteeing outcomes rather than just supplying products. It argues for treating sales as a true profession with university-level training to develop specialized knowledge and skills.

1. TRANSFORMING SALES INTO A
PROFESSION
The Journey From Peddler To Value Creator

2. WORLD CLASS SALES FORCES
• ALLEGIANCE HEALTHCARE • GE INDUSTRIAL CONTROL SYSTEMS
• APPLIED INDUSTRIAL TECHNOLOGIES x 2 • GRAINGER INCORPORATED
• AT&T CONSUMER PRODUCTS • IBM GLOBAL SERVICES
• AT&T MIDDLE MARKET • JOHN DEERE
• AT&T GLOBAL SYSTEMS • MOORE CORPORATION LIMITED
• BOISE-CASCADE OFFICE PRODUCTS x 2 • MOTION INDUSTRIES x 2
• CDW • CORPORATE EXPRESS
• DU PONT • GLOBAL IMAGING SYSTEMS
• EXXON CORPORATION • INSIGHT ENTERPRISES

3. Many CEO’s should be really
embarrassed about their sales forces!

4. From Con Man To Consultant
.

5. Negative Sales Stereotypes

6. THE NEW SELLING OF AMERICA

7. Many Sales Organisations Are In
Trouble
Why?

8. Firstly Look At The Symptoms
• Pricing pressure
• Margin erosion
• Selling is much tougher
• Longer sales cycles
• Customers want more for less
• Inability to differentiate
• High selling/service costs
• Some customers unprofitable
• Forecast slippage

9. What’s Driving Change?
The usual suspects . . and some newer ones
• Commoditisation • The internet
• Competition • Consolidation of suppliers
• Pricing pressure
• Focus on value
• Capacity excess
• High selling costs
• Mergers & acquisitions

10. What Does This Mean For Sales?
• Even complex services will be increasingly commoditised and bought
transactional
• Customers are becoming ever smarter and more aggressive about
capturing a bigger share of the value their suppliers create
• Relationships that seemed protected and locked-in are being questioned
and are under threat
• Metrics driven, continuous improvement relationships have the best
chance of resisting the new purchasing pressures
• New enterprise relationships are supplanting traditional major account
relationships

11. The End of Sales As We Know It!
…and how to prepare for it

12. The Problem
Post-recession markets have changed the game permanently
1. There is little or no competitive advantage based on:
• Product quality (all serious competitors have the same)
• Cost (Supply chain management and Global sourcing level the playing field)
• Innovation is short lived
 no global protection of Intellectual capital, and
 even where it exists reverse engineering debases
2. The internet has switched the information advantage to the customer

13. The Problem
• Traditional Field or “Route” sales is shrinking (internet purchasing, on line auctions,
faster product life cycle from innovation to commodity)
• Traditional field salespeople will transition to telesales (but with dedicated account
management)
• Higher end salespeople will need a sophisticated understanding of the appropriate
market segment technology and market strategy PLUS the new sales skills as out-
sourced managers for their customers
• Sales will evolve to a professional level status with university preparation (providing
the base business savvy and sales skills, as well as the appropriate academic
background (Accounting, Finance, IT, Marketing, etc.)

14. The Problem
• Business will have to provide the “advanced training” according to their priorities
(Direct versus indirect, NBD, Acct management, Solution sales, etc.)
• As a result sales positions will bifurcate to high end “more sophisticated consultive”
sales teams and more highly educated telesales (with dedicated accounts)
• Individuals without university level sales training will gravitate by default to
transactional retail or personal service sales
• In the 60s, sales positions had begun to replace the highly paid union factory
worker as the middle income pool of citizens, now sales are fading as the last
upwardly mobile career path that didn’t require a college degree. (there has been a
loss of 2 million of these sales jobs in the USA in the last 3-4 years)

15. The Lack of Science Behind the
Problem
• Starting with Fredrick Tailor, business has progressively developed more systematic
disciplines:
 Moving from numerical process control, to total quality management (TQM),
to ISO, to business analytics and finally leading to today’s actuarial applications
and ultimately predicative analytics.
• But, even the rudimentary TQM and six sigma have never been applied to sales:
Until recently there has never been a “TQSalesM”
• The lack of truly analytic processes and disciplines have led to failure rates
unacceptable in any other business function
 20-25% customer churn,
 30%+ Sales person turnover
 40% Sales manager turnover

16. The Lack of Science Behind the
Problem
• Anecdotal personal experience substitutes for a sales science, even the sales
development books with a few exceptions have leaned on the “star” syndrome:
 I was a great salesperson
 This is how I did it
 If you do it you can be a great salesperson too!”
• This has led to the fatally flawed benchmarking and Top Grading approach to
looking for superstars
• Cases studies as proofs don’t pass the Hawthorne effect
 Vendor’s publish less than 2% of their attempts. Do we doubt that these are
their best results…and that 98% were less than completely successful?

17. Applying the Science of Total Quality
Sales Management
The Traditional Approach to Sales “Benchmarking”
ABC Company: 200 Salespeople and
$200M in Sales*
$90Million $104 Million
$750K/person $2.6M/person
Consultant Speak: Study the techniques of the top 20% and train the middle 60%
*Performance averages based on over 900 sales forces evaluated by Chally over 35 years

18. The Result
ABC Company: 200 sales people
ABC Company: 200 Salespeople and
$200M $200M in Sales
and in Sales
$94.5 Million
$90Million $104 Million
$104 Million = $204.5 Million
$750k/person $2.6M/person
$2.6M/person Total Sales
Improving their performance by an exceptional 5% each...
only produces a 2.25% improvement in sales

19. Applying the Science of Total Quality
Sales Management
If we now train the rest of the sales force and get a 5% gain, we get an
additional $5.7 Million

20. The Solution: Sales of the Future
Bottom Line? It all will start with you!
Universities and Business Will Make The Difference
Corporations Develop the Professional Specialties
New Bus. Nat. Alternate Territory Sales Product
Dev. Accounts Channel Mgr. Engineer Specialist
Core “University” Based Professional Sales
Competencies and Practical Research

21. CHANGING THE SALES MODEL
• It is becoming increasingly more difficult to
differentiate yourself by what you sell. If you
are unwilling, or unable, to differentiate
yourself by how you sell, then you will, by
default, end up differentiating yourself by how
much you sell it for.

22. Traditional Sales Training
What constitutes a good sale?
• The sales cycle
• Motivating to understand through the funneling concept
• Type of questions and their effect on the customer
• Understanding visible behaviour
• Psychology behind the use of words
• Developing your competitive edge
• Optimising what your business has to offer through features & benefits
• Dealing with the price issue
• Seeing objections as new opportunities

23. Traditional Sales Training
• Powerful Sales Process
• Prospecting techniques to fill your pipeline with good leads
• Ways to turn a cold call into a sale
• Sure-fire ways of getting the client to say “yes”
• Power-packed closing techniques
• Essential secrets from successful sales people
• Summiting sales steps

24. The 7 Customer Rules For Becoming
The New Sales Professional
• Salespeople take personal accountability for customers’ desired results.
• In order to personally manage a customer account, salespeople must
understand the customer’s business.
• Customers expect salespeople to be their representatives within the
seller’s organisation.
• Customers want salespeople to think beyond features and benefits to
applications
• The ongoing expansion of corporate boundaries has been accompanied by
a corresponding growth in customer demand for local, accessible sales
representatives.
• Customers expect salespeople to not only solve their problems during the
transaction itself, but throughout the full term of the business relationship.
• Because change is the only constant in today’s business-to-business
environment, customers expect salespeople to respond with proactive
continuous innovation to their spoken and unspoken needs.

25. The Issue Of Value

26. Changing The Sales Model
Value Earned Value
By The Delivered To
Supplier The Customer
Value – Price = Incentive to Purchase
Price = reasonably clear
Value = always obscure

27. Case Studies on Competing on Value
Chicken Feed Supplier
• Moved from supplying tons of feed to weight gain (nutritional value) per ton of
feed delivered.
Lubricant Supplier
• Moved from selling lubricants to guaranteeing machine up time.
Office Supplies Company
• Office supplies company used Activity Based Costing, Professional Procurement,
and Supply Chain Management to deliver office supplies to major corporations
with massive cost savings.
Hotel Group
• Used it’s understanding of a key customers business issue, and now offers staff
loyalty not just hotel rooms