The sales process has been changing dramatically over the past ten years. Ten years ago, sales calls required driving or flying to the customer location for long meetings with Power Point presentations and even product demos. You gathered a team of client technical people together and brought the best you could buy to present. The internet tools that were available did not provide and e-commerce and CRM capabilities of today. This caused delays in the decision criteria between the first meeting to closing the deal. This face-to-face still goes on however, with services like Zoom, Skype and Go-To-Meeting, a business can accomplish more clients each day than ever.
A business might have considered the relationship was established once the sale is made. There are many departments involved in the sale including: the finance department, manufacturing, marketing, shipping, admin and support. They all want to understand the dynamics of the sale to analyze for future marketing and financial needs. More than ever before, a sales person is required to write up reports of their successes and failures for the CRM (customer relationship manager) used by the organization.
In previous days, many sales reps were often mavericks, wheeling and dealing, building relationships through long lunches, sports/events tickets and more. Once the deal was done, they had an admin team and a finance office to put together the paperwork. They went off after the next client and so on and so-forth.
In my organization for example, I handle the sales and project management and I have a team of very talented web designers and graphics experts who take over the project. I find that sales reps I’ve hired in the past required so much management that I was either training, supporting or fixing customer issues in many cases. Today, we address most issues through conference calls, Zoom or other similar tools.
Our business is focused on longer term deals… sometimes 6-12 months at a time. It’s very important to get things right at the beginning and set expectations for the client early in the process. I’m able to future-design-in additional work with clients in the areas of marketing. It means more long-term relationship building and a trust with the clients that lead to referrals and more. It is worth it when this works well.
I’m fortunate that I have owned my company for twenty years and prior to that I was a Sales Manager and a VP Sales/Marketing for Fortune 500 companies. I have developed good sales skills and understand how to run a business. You may recognize your experience is in engineering or accounting and you need to find a sales person to bring the projects in to the company. This can work as well as long as you train your people to your culture and they understand and represent your brand ethically and with honesty.
Asset Business Consulting provides web services as well as consulting. If you are looking to take your business to the next step, give us a call 250.580.5250.