The Missing Sales Link with Russ Sharer (May 3rd, 2023)

The Missing Sales Link: Russ Sharer, Chief Sales Officer, shares six valuable resources that can I.M.P.A.C.T. your sales team and sales goals. Time is valuable, so let's get to it:?

The Brooks Group will be attending and contributing to the conversation at The Purpose Summit at The University of Notre Dame, May 23-25. We are excited to offer our network special pricing to join us for this IMPACTful conversation.

Special Invite Link: https://brushfire.com/thepurposesummit/purposesummit2023/532986?group=7e6f9713ebe7486d9e43ef49221a2247&typecode=2023SPECIALINVITE

?

Everywhere I turn or scroll these days, I see the disruption that AI is causing or getting ready to cause in every industry.?Last month, I was at the ISA 23 Conference in Phoenix, and AI was a key topic there as well. For the first time, I heard a very interesting application for salespeople.?One of the distributors was discussing how long it took to train new salespeople on the connections of their very deep product catalog. Historically, they hired ex-tradespeople from the industry who would know the details of a job process and all of the necessary parts needed. When they hired outside the industry, however (which is ever more common today given tight labor markets), this kind of knowledge took a long time to teach and meant they lost out on a lot of add-on business at the point of sale.?Enter AI.?They had an app that could look at the items that had been entered into their purchase order system (completed on a tablet in front of the customer), and the app used AI to find suggestions for common add-on products.?The result was that the average PO size was up, the number of items was up, and new salespeople got extended on-the-job training via the AI tool.?These are the kind of applications I think will be most valuable for sales coming out of AI – those that save time in training, following up, or the other admin, non-selling time that salespeople must do today.?

?

I recently finished The Sales Innovation Paradox by Howard Dover, Ph.D. ?The author was looking at modern methods for sales performance optimization. There were a number of good takeaways from the book, but what struck me the hardest was how sales and marketing people had adopted technology that automate the prospecting process. Where once a salesperson had to pick up the telephone or craft an email, now automation could send a near-endless string of emails at a very low cost.?He discusses a Microsoft case study where they saw a 1200% increase in Sales Development Representatives over a very short period of time, all using automated prospecting tools.?They saw an increase in the pipeline of over 800%. Impressive.?But he goes on to mention at the same time that numerous SaaS companies rapidly scaled their outreach.?The results were tens of thousands of emails being sent every day WITHOUT a corresponding percentage growth in the number of buyers. As a result, the technique became not only less effective for leads but actually created ill will with potential customers. The lesson I take away – interactions have to be intelligent, not just frequent, and ultimately consider the person you are trying to connect with more than just hitting a given number of outbound messages a day.?Check out the book to see how automation helps and hurts companies that are not using it intelligently.?

?

The Sales Culture Insight is an anonymous organizational survey that uncovers perceptions around sales issues, sales management effectiveness, cross-department coordination, sales culture, sales performance metrics, and other critical areas — allowing you to gain a true understanding of the current "pulse" of your sales organization. It’s an effective tool to assess alignment across the sales organization, determine your team’s existing best practices, and identify critical development areas before engaging in a training initiative. Learn More.

?

Again, from the ISA 23 Conference, one of the key concerns of distributors was an increasing number of manufacturers deciding to go direct, leveraging electronic tools (maybe they should read Dover’s book). This is a periodic fear of distributors and, frankly, one that they should be concerned about. But the right way to frame the question is, “What value do I add to the manufacturer’s product?” Forty years ago, many distributors were essentially banks and warehouses. But what about now, when electronic funds transfers and overnight delivery are so common? Why would a customer want to work with a distributor rather than go direct??There are usually two key things that I hear: 1) kitting solutions – combining products from multiple vendors in a single order. Think about a customer job site – getting the product from 3-4 different pallets of boxes creates confusion, delays, lost productivity, and material. A second solution is the productization of industry knowledge.?For those distributors who have experienced tradespeople on staff, they not only understand how to complete the job, but also how to value engineer to lower priced material that will do just as good a job meeting the specification. There is a future for value-add distributors (they have existed in Europe for decades). So don’t fear your lines going direct – go out and offer the customer something they can’t get anywhere else.?

?

From Russ Sharer , Chief Sales Officer: One final thought from the ISA 23 conference. I’d ask many of the people I connected with how their business was doing. I’ve been around long enough to know most people will tell you “great” at first, but the longer the conversation goes and the more questions I ask, I feel I can get to the truth. The frequent message I got from the show was, “I know the economy is cooling, but my business is still hot.” People are reading the economic tea leaves and fearing there is a recession coming. But now they are booking and shipping products and not seeing any softness in their backlogs. Supply chain issues are much less prominent than a year ago. Even the labor markets have loosened up a little. My follow-up question:?What do you wish your team was capable of doing now that they may likely really need in the future??I understand markets will move up and down, but rarely do they ever go to $0. So now is the time to ready your sales force to win in whatever the market looks like in Q4. That’s what The Brooks Group has done for 45 years, and our team would love to talk to you about how we can help you end the year even better than you ended Q1. Contact us. ?