Good morning to you five o’clock eastern standard time on august, the third monday hope everybody is doing well staying healthy and being safe and we want you to enjoy another edition of hardison’s tips.
So i know you folks got to get going.
So, let’s get right into it.
For today this is a two-part, but this is something that i ran into over the weekend.
One of my former clients said asked me about outside sales people.
Are they obsolete? Now now he’s the cfo of a large distributing company that specializes in automation, equipment and they had just lost three field sales people and was thinking about replacing them.
But what kind of person should i look for? He asked, in light of all the recent all the radical changes that are going on in the economy, while his need for a solution was urgent.
The question he asked is every b2b sales leaders question over the next coming months, and that is this concept of outside sales professionals for decades, key account major account up and down the street in home sales outside sales.
People have been doing this for generations outside sales.
People thrive on that face-to-face relationship, their approach to the to the job will get to the car, go see, people get on the plane, go see.
People and the world is full of businessmen that have grown up on this sales model for the last couple of decades.
However, there’s been a trend enhancing the role to ensure that salespeople to be competent.
In some cases cases they wanted to make sure that the outside salesperson was effectively doing their job and not really padding a situation.
So leading companies have been involved in slowly making these changes for a time, and while the trend has been to move authority and accountability from outside to inside, it’s generally just been looked upon as not really a win-win.
Yet because many people, the decision makers, still love that face to face not over the phone that face to face when it comes to negotiating and closing deals.
So until recently, the covent lockdown had turned the world upside down and sales people with it all at once.
Uh people in the field sales people find themselves locked out of their customers.
Buildings can’t get in to see the decision maker face to face.
Those who were resourceful fell back on the phone and embraced the video technology to attempt to stay in contact with their customers, but they discovered that they needed to acquire an almost entirely new skill set with new rules and new procedures.
The new reality contains these elements.
Both sides of the sales sales people or the vendor side and purchasing people on the customer side have discovered that phone and video technology is far more efficient than face to face.
The economics of the equation are boy fruit of form.
Just look at the bottom line.
Here’s what i mean the typical outside sales call costs companies anywhere between 150 to 300 per call, whereas the typical inside proactive phone call costs a fraction of that, maybe five dollars a call.
So a decades long trend has just now been spotted in the mirror.
There has been a trend for purchases to make decisions on the basis of information with a live person being there, but now we’re doing it without a person being there.
15 years ago, for example, many surveys reported that 70 of purchasers said that they would rather have a good, catalog and knowledgeable inside contact than the traditional outside salesperson.
That tendency has been around for a long time, but now it’s been given some stronger merit.
A certain percentage of purchases are going right to the remote and trying to find a way to get to a quick and easy answer without having that outside sales person.
So what does it do the reduction of time spent by communicating with fewer sales people? I can automatically do what i need to do with this technology phone video get the contract in and done this way.
Instead of listening to excuses from sales, people who may have had too much to drink showing up late, whatever it may be, with that those days are about gone.
So am i saying that the traditional outside sales position is gone, the way of the dinosaur? Well, eventually, it will be because, if i’m locked out of a building, because the decision makers are no longer in the building they’re at home, i need to start thinking about something else.
Now.
This is not going to be immediate, but for those traditionalists for those outside uh closers for those people who can hop on a plane and close a deal in a second.
Those are about gone.
So, if you’re, not embracing technology, if you’re not trying to find a way to get to your decision maker, your purchasing manager and finding it easier for him or her to do business, maybe it is time for you to retire.
Change is the most difficult thing that a human being has to deal with, especially in the workplace when you are so successful being comfortable at what you’ve done now the whole world is upside down.
So you have a choice.
Do i keep abreast with the new technology and stay in the game, or should i hang up my shoes and said i had a good run now if it’s the first there’s many organizations, even your own, that will be glad to teach you on how to still Stay abreast sharp dealing with your client if your heart’s, not in it.
I understand that focus also so tomorrow.
We’ll look at part.
Two is the outside sales person obsolete? Don’t forget wednesday august the 5th 12 noon.
Partisans tips live.
We have our special guest.
Mr stan sher, who is one of the best when it comes to the automotive, bdc business development centers, and he will give us some insights.
What he’s saying with this covet going on so that’s wednesday, the 5th at 12 noon.
My students will be out for lunch, giving me an opportunity to give you some some mental lunch if you will so be there in the meantime, as always parting, this is brandon artisan for artisans tips.
You .
