LIFE AT THE SELLING FRONT: THOUGHTS AND REPORTS

THE GOOD OLD DAYS

Tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. (Times change and we change in them.) — Sixteenth century

WAS EVERYTHING BETTER IN THE PAST?

Do you remember the smile on Mr. Johnson's face? Until a few years ago he travelled the country, always friendly, smiling and waving at you from miles away. He was always there for his customers, always on duty for his renowned contractual partner. How wonderful those times were! Salespeople were truly busy with selling. They listened to their customers, focused on their core business and spent most of their time out of the office.

If a salesperson did hang around in their office, which was often just a home office, hardly anything happened except for an occasional phone call or the daily mail delivery. Sure enough, even then certain administrative tasks had to be performed. Data had to be filed into folders that, over the years, started to fill huge cabinets. Everything was neatly arranged. Though growing in volume, it remained manageable.

The world outside the office was still whole and healthy, with the customer at its very centre. Once a sales conversation had been conducted, a contract would be sent out. The salesperson would bag his success by hand, adorn it with a stamp and dispatch it. Licking or wetting the stamp was a ritual in itself. Depending on salespeople's diligence, commission statements would fill many pages. They would arrive in the mailbox, where else?

THEN THINGS CHANGED ...

In the mid-1980s the mobile phone appeared, ending this peaceful idyll. Round-the-clock availability became the epitome of a new quality of customer focus. Just give me a call! Those taking part in the first technical experiments would carry a case of considerable size equipped with a handle and telephone receiver. For security reasons, today's airlines would probably bar them from being brought into the cabin. However, to this day, you will still encounter field staff affectionately reminiscing about their first Motorola "bone".

The late 1980s brought the fax machine into the office. Letters could now arrive at any time of the day. Possessing a fax machine put you in the front row. In the early 1990s, digital phone networks became universally accessible. Modern-style mobile telecommunication was born. The devices were getting smaller. Having been the privilege of the technically advanced sales representatives, they now became an essential tool for every field worker.

Around this time, fax machines and traditional mail began to experience serious competition. The e-mail, which first surfaced in the mid-1980s, now began its triumphant advance. By the mid-1990s the World Wide Web made the Internet accessible for ordinary users. At around the same time, various applications changed everyday office life.

NOT TO MENTION TODAY

During the first decade of the new millennium, customer management programs and various online applications underwent further fine-tuning. Mobile access to customer data and various applications became routine practice in the sales process. Social networks such as Facebook, Xing and Twitter started to gain ground in the workaday life of an increasing number of sales representatives during the second half of the first decade. It remains to be seen which networks will remain relevant in the long run, what kind of new networks will emerge, and which will disappear.

In the era of the smartphone, what we are carrying with us at all times is not only the capacity to receive and make calls, but constant access to all of our e-mails and the full range of our social media activities. It goes without saying that customer data is available as needed. At any time, be it 7.10 a.m. or 11.30 p.m., office time never ends. We are equipped for any contingency. Welcome, sales of the future?

DO YOU STILL GET ALONG?

Many things have changed in recent years. Let us suppose a sales representative left our world in 1980 and returned thirty years later. It would certainly take some time to explain everything to him or her. Although deals are still being struck by human beings — one of whom makes an offer that the other accepts — the details of the procedure have changed significantly.

In today's environment, if you do not organize yourself and focus your attention you will barely be able to see any customer, due to an overkill of multidimensional distractions flowing in from all sides. Communication and administration needs alone can be overwhelming. In order to perform any task there is a need for an endless stream of back-and-forth mails, fax and text messages, phone calls and sometimes even face-to-face conversations. All of which takes up maximum time. All of which is invariably urgent.

Many business people, salespeople and sales representatives have got used to leaving their offices in the evening with various tasks unfinished. More importantly, they end the day without a valuable, measurable and presentable sales outcome. Of course, there have been similar days in former decades too, but now they have become more frequent. Today it is much more difficult to work in an organized way and to focus on the core business of selling. To be able to do so you have first to organize everything else — or to ignore it completely, thus risking an increased customer defection rate. This is no way to achieve outstanding customer care and customer retention.

Unfortunately, as a rule, salespeople aren't good at organizing. On the contrary, true sales talent and professional administration capabilities often seem to be mutually exclusive. It is necessary and helpful therefore to create automation systems to take care of the bulk of those tasks that simply have to be done. Great organizing skills are indispensable for anyone who wants to succeed in today's world of selling. A systematic approach to selling is all about standard practices and automatisms. It's these practices and automatisms that have to be filled with life when working with customers in today's world.

How do you manage your sales process? How do you organize your process of working with customers? Are any of your tasks done in an automated and highly professional manner? How do you guarantee that you can devote maximum time to your core selling activities? How do you make sure that your sales process is running smoothly, practically by itself?

For starters, I'd like to take you on a tour of how salespeople, employees and customers think. Each testimony comes from a real person I have met in recent years. They are all unrelated to each other. By the way, those of you who more or less recognize yourselves in what is described on the following pages aren't by any means in the minority ...

HEADING HOME

A man too busy to take care of his health is like a mechanic too busy to take care of his tools....