Being Sales - Part 4

Everybody is looking for good sales

Lately it seems to me that there is huge demand for sales. Almost every System Integrator or Disti has approached me in the last 3 months and asked me if I know anyone who might fit.

Many of them claim they have been looking for a year now and have not found anyone.

They have been working with anything from Friends and Family through head hunters and mass ads. Nothing comes up their fish net.

So what happened here?

What changed in the last few years which made it difficult for them to find the right people ?

The set of requirements changed vastly.

How come in a few years a set of requirements for the same role changed so vastly?

• The market years ago was closed and highly regulated by the governments which acted in many countries as a gatekeeper.

Through regulation, customs and various other restrictions they created a closed market in which the customer has fewer choices than today.

So actually distis/SIs were operating in "inside sales" mode - awaiting the opportunities much more than hunting for them.

Opening the market and allowing second and third sourcing, combined with a grey market infiltrating to almost any product, caused the work of SIs and distis to become harder.

All of the sudden the end customer had choices. Many choices. And even for the same exact product, the end customer had a few options to choose sourcing from.

It means that instead of the customer approaching the SI (which in turn addresses the disti) - There is work to do. And plenty of it. Each part of the chain must prove worthy of business with each other and all should show added value.

• The internet happened

Customers were living in the blind. No DataSheets, No SPECs, highly dependent on the distis/SIs to provide any needed data.

Nowadays, customers can look through Datasheets and online publications without someone to send it to them. Companies put their portfolio and SPECs online, which makes life easier for the engineers choosing the components or for the decision makers to make a clear safe decision in regards to which vendor/product they think of working with.

It also made the customers smarter and allowed for them to know where can they source the product in other regions, ask for pricing (which would be used to leverage the vendor they will choose to work with) and check the delivery terms for many products.

It also made them educated regarding the data which is not in the SPEC or the DS - There are plentiful reviews of almost every product even in the enterprise arena, which allow for the customers to get very good understanding of where one product can be better than the others and vice versa. A few years ago such data didn't exist and each and every product required preliminary testing. Now, some products can be eliminated without even testing just by reading reviews and advertised results of test beds.

• Too much Information

The customers became bombarded with data of all sorts, each vendor trying to show how he operates best, showing some numbers which are not necessarily relevant to the specific application of the customer.

Each product has endless papers coming with it (SW changes , HW changes, SPEC, Manual) and that is true for each and every component in the system.

But, what does the customer want? The end customer wants a working system for his application in the best manner and cheapest price. Does the above data help him (SPEC, Manual, etc..) ???? Partially. Very partially. That data does not guide him on "how to build the system", "how to configure it", "which components would be best for the application and the workload" and so forth.

So, given all those changes which happened in the last years, What is needed from a sales guy ?

1. A sales guy should give added value to the customer. Handing out DataSheets and pricing does not cut it any more.
2. A sales guy needs to be active. He needs to act where he thinks he might have the biggest success. No longer do customers call in, but rather he has to unearth the opportunities and chase them.
3. A sales guy needs to be active #2. He needs to recognize opportunities which seemingly might not be fit but with a bit of engineering twist might give an added value to the customer. He should be able to show the customer that given some changes in the system, it will perform in a better manner and cost less. That is engineering. A sales guy needs to be engineer.
4. A sales guy must understand systems.

The customer wants to build a system for a certain application. Application has a certain SW and HW environment. Certain requirements, certain input and certain output. The sales guy needs to know all the components. Not only what the function is but also all the possible vendors for that component, the models, the difference between them, etc. He also should know how the system is built, how it is integrated and what are the options to build it. How much power will it consume, what is the heat it will create, what is the operational envelope.Yes, Yes, Sales should know or at least understand the limitations.

5.Sales need to be up to date.

He needs to read the relevant material, know which SW vendor is partnering with which HW vendor? Which vendor is pushing which solution? What is the availability of those solutions? What is the availability of the components? What is the pricing of those components or systems? Who invested in which company and what does it mean? What is changing in the market in a strategic manner?

If years ago he didn't have to do it or it was very difficult to do - Now it is fairly easy with all online data.

6.Analyze and filter data

Sales guy can receive plenty of data and most of it will be irrelevant for him. i.e. his company will show WW charts which are completely irrelevant as he is in a remote territory with completely different market behavior.

He will get heaps of data from his company and from others which is not relevant to him due to the nature of his own customers or market. He will see biased data coming from either his own company and others. He needs to analyze and filter.

7.Must know how to eat Houmoos!!!!!!!!

To Conclude - Today's sales guy needs to be some sort of a superhuman able to do many things which were not required before.

Except adapting to his own company changes, he needs to read, analyze and comprehend heaps of data.

Then he needs to compile it to actionable data and maximize his profits accordingly.

So, are there no such people around???

Answer is that there are. The problem for the SIs and Distis is that their compensation plans and general HR behavior is still much similar to the ones they were ten years ago. Those are not tech start-ups but rather heavy companies making very small changes along a very long time.

More over, due to all that influx of data online, the customers are no longer ready to pay the price they used to pay before and now they are ones who set the margin, which is much lower than it used before.

So the distis and the SIs need to find much more sophisticated people, who demand a much higher salary and compensation package while they need to live off from a much smaller margin.

That my friends, is the core of the problem and also the solution.

What are your 8 9 and 10, which vary today than 10 years ago ?