Life After the Death of Sales:

What the Next 5 Years Will Look

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Extinction is what happens once our shared history of what works takes us past the point
where we need to adapt. Consider CEOs in sales companies (like mine): We're past the
point of where we need to adapt, because the world of sales is no longer as it was.
Related: Why Your Sales Forecast Is Disconnected From Reality
Indeed, the era of selling in which we've long operated is dead. Significant shifts in the
business-to-business (B2B) buying process have transformed selling as we know it, and
hard work, charisma and a bloated database of personal contacts is no longer enough for a
sales force to succeed.
If you want to thrive in life after the death of sales-as-we-know-it, you must equip your
sales teams with the tools necessary for success in the new sales era now upon us. Your
companys ability to succeed will now be dictated, in part, by your ability to lead your
organization through adaptation and change. One of your weightiest responsibilities as
CEO will be not only planning for the future but also anticipating it. Heres a small
glimpse into some of the trends I believe will impact the world of selling over the next
five years.

1. Decision-makers will be even more

elusive.
If your sales team is having difficulty gaining access to decision-makers now, beware:
Direct access to these key people will continue to diminish in the foreseeable future. Time
constraints mean prospects, and clients are showing less interest in attending traditional
face-to-face meetings with salespeople. In addition, the buying process at many
organizations is being standardized to the point that an Excel spreadsheet often replaces
the salesperson.
Buyers are also increasingly choosing to use technology to manage purchase-transactions
rather than working with salespeople directly. In fact, Gartner estimates that by 2020,
customers will manage 85 percent of their purchasing transactions without talking to a
human. Some buyers are even bypassing the traditional sales process altogether and going
directly to providers and manufacturers, thereby diminishing the need for manufacturer
reps, dealers and distributors.
All of these factors combined means you can expect traditional cold-calling methods to
produce lower yields, to the point that having salespeople perform direct prospecting will
become cost-prohibitive.

2. Consultative selling will give way to

authority selling.
Most of us who have trained in sales since the 1970s were taught the principles of
consultative selling, but a new era of selling is emerging. As the market in which
companies compete becomes more complex, buyers are looking for insights that
provide them a marketplace advantage. This means that your sales team can no longer
compete on what makes you better according to your value systems of performance.
Instead, you now have to compete on how you can offer value outside of your quality,
level of service and price. In other words, your sales team needs to become an industry
authority, not just a company consultant.
Related: Why the Future of New Business Is Social Selling
A consultant asks, What is your pain? An expert says, Here is your pain. But an
authority is able to determine, This is the pain of your industry and how you can
uniquely overcome it. Industry authorities create unique courses of action that help
companies gain market position. Authority selling is the approach that moves you further
up the organizational ladder of buyers and gives you the advantage in a competitive
comparison. If you want to get into the executive decision-makers office, your
company has to offer insight as an authority, not a consultant.

3. Sales roles will become more

specialized.
While salespeople will still exist, their future roles will look very different. This does not
mean that there will be fewer jobs per se in the world of revenue generation, but those
jobs will look different from what we now call sales. The role of salespeople will
become more specialized, and will include, but not be limited to:
Traders -- Although not titled as such, this will be the role of many of the people with
sales titles. Their real role will be to facilitate the quoting of commodities and near
commodities in roles titled account management, inside sales or customer
service.
Designers -- Solution architects will continue to be in high demand for opportunities in
which the prospect has been qualified for a diagnostic session. Customization and
tailoring of pre-packaged and modular solutions will be the choice for companies that
want to limit the risk and cost of completely built-from-scratch approaches.
Project managers -- This function of collaborative coordination between customers and
providers, including supply chain management, enterprise resource planning and
logistics, will grow in importance for the larger contracts in the market.

Lead generators -- This area will continue to evolve as the technologies adapt to the
filters and barriers that organizations put between buyers and your revenue generators.
Social media, outsourced meeting makers, earned media and other mechanisms are
entering and developing in the market for the single purpose of getting higher up the food
chain in the buying organization as a way to bypass the structured purchase.

Life After the Death of Sales

The world of sales does not change in a vacuum. There are signs of this change all around
us. Astute CEOs decipher these signs and adapt, instead of clinging to what worked in the
past but will no longer be successful in the future. Remember, extinction is what happens
when the shared history of what works takes us past the point where we need to adapt.
Many companies will face extinction over the next five years, but those that adapt will
thrive in this new era of selling.

Weekly Sales Meetings Matter

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Guest Faculty Post by Tim Searcy

As a salesperson, I did not always appreciate the value of a weekly sales meeting with my
boss. I was always prepared; my boss rarely was. I spent most of my time answering
questions whose answers were available in my report or defending my integrity against
an onslaught of skepticism. Although my supervisor would imply that these meetings
were to assist me, they were a check the box function, except when the overall
numbers for the firm were down. If the sales team was behind, the questions became
more insistent and more accusatory.
It doesnt have to be that way. A decent weekly sales meeting can be painless, helpful
and productive for your sales representatives. It requires a bit of a change in three things
that HBS believes have the highest leverage: Mindset, Mechanics and Magic.
Mindset

This is not a team sport. I am opposed to team meetings in which every salesperson reports
out on the previous weeks activities. Dont waste time in-group meetings. Sales is golf,
not football.
It is not the managers meeting.This is your sales representatives meeting, and the
agenda items, updates, and outcomes are his or her responsibility.
You BOTH need to be prepared.Manager and representative alike needs to be prepared,
having reviewed the same information and with a clear idea of what you each want to get out
of your time together.

Mechanics

Preparation: Insist each representative provides an advanced report including all movements
since last meeting. Important issues and information must be presented in the format of an
agenda with a clear outcome that defines success.
Brevity: Meetings should last no more than 30 minutes. More than 30 minutes usually
devolves into storytelling and a focus on motion versus actual movement within the pipeline.
Structure: Break the meeting into three 10-minute segments:

1. Good News: review of last weeks accomplishments and movements with the
targeted accounts.

2. Anticipated Movement: discuss the coming weeks anticipated movements and the
necessary steps that will be taken.
3. Broader Updates: Discuss updates from the company in policy; deal with agenda
items that either party has which do not fall into a movement category, and to
address strategy on accounts that are large, complex or require more or different
company resources.

Magic

Strategy versus tactics:Sales leadership is much more about the strategy to win a whale
sized piece of business than the tactical movements of accounts working their way towards a
finish line. You lead by about anticipating what can happen with a large account and helping
your sales representative use process, system and creative ideas to navigate.
Training versus coaching: Weekly sales meeting are primarily a coaching function. You are
not building new skills, but rather increasing your representatives efficiency and
effectiveness.

Your goal in sales meetings is to keep the workflow moving at optimum speed with
minimum friction. This steady cadence of accountability will instill confidence in your
salespeople individually and demonstrate both respect for their efforts and their time. In
short, weekly meetings will stop feeling like a game that no one can possibly win.