My view on the digital evolution of Sales Force

Digital solution providers have focused their efforts on literacy in two primary targets: the world of marketing & caring (social media, eCommerce, Customer relations, ...) and production (process control, factory automation, Industry 4.0). I see in consumer goods and sales companies, some key figures who remain "uncovered" by a systematic process of digital training: the sales force.

There are mainly three reasons for this exclusion:

1) because the sales structure is often considered less relevant and modern in a world increasingly crowded of digital sales systems (social media, viral marketing, eCommerce, BtoB platforms, ...);

2) because listening skills, persuasive skills, or "relational" knowledge of one's customers (the one not recorded in the administrative archives of companies) seem to be legacies of the past;

3) or again - when the centrality of the sales force is not questioned - because it is thought that the salesperson is a sort of natural talent who, with a good product and a well-written and evocative brochure in his hand, makes a killing thanks to the knowledge of a few sales techniques

Most of the digital applications developed for the sales force are in fact under the label of Sales Force Automation, and their goal is not properly the transformation, the rethinking of sales activity in the age of the Web as the automation and efficiency of the more bureaucratic activities of the salesperson: "human" sales techniques have not changed much despite the digital revolution. In my opinion, this represents one of the areas with the greatest potential, where digital technology can contribute quickly and effectively to boosting a company's overall performance: not only in terms of cost reduction and general efficiency, but above all in terms of enhancing sales skills, sales effectiveness and sales productivity, understood as the number of customers managed per unit of time. Successful selling, in fact, requires not only the ability to persuade but - more and more - the ability to listen actively, to create empathy, to know how to choose the right moment to introduce specific topics and/or proposals and to know how to use the right language.

Therefore there are three areas of sales in which digital can make a difference:

1)     Nomadic office - First of all, it's clear that salespeople want to be with the customer as much as possible, but they can't avoid performing office functions. The turning point is therefore the nomadic office, i.e. being able to "carry around" all the most important office functions and transform not only a temporary office but also a hotel room, your car or even a coffee shop table into "your" office. The expansion of mobile networks (4G-5G and Wifi networks) along with the continuous innovation of portable devices (from small PCs, powerful and with large screens, up to smartphones that allow you to be always connected and be able to receive at any time the most urgent information "as if you were in our office") has made it less and less necessary to have a personal and exclusive assigned physical office. Large companies are now increasingly adopting remote working modes for their employees, who are beginning to work systematically outside the office.

What are the main activities that a "portable" office must enable?

• Meetings (alignment and progress), conducted both one-to-one and one-to-many;
• In-depth activities on specific topics, carried out either by accessing the company's information archives or by interacting with "experts", or by gathering information autonomously.
• Administrative activities that complete the business process (from the filling out of expense reports to the more delicate activities of payment management);
• Production of reports to inform on commercial progress and/or any deviations from the budget and to account for specific activities considered important regardless of their measurable effect;
• People management: moments of listening or structured feed back relating to the performance of their employees;
• training and self-learning activities.

All of these activities are now possible from a nomadic office; and this frees up time for client meetings. Some activities - for example, meetings - turn out to be more effective and economical if carried out in a smart mode, remotely. Provided, that is, that you know how to use digital technology in an expert and conscious way and that you always have everything you need at your disposal: not only the PC, connectivity and charged batteries... but also the necessary information and documents, your own notes on the subject, ...

2)     Visit planning and preparation. The second area is visit planning and preparation: here digital tools can support many important activities. Three in particular can significantly affect sales performance.

• Targeting: identifying and evaluating priority customers to visit. Even when the company makes lists available, the ability to read additional information on the Web about that customer, combined with knowledge of the context in which the customer operates, provides the salesperson with much more information to effectively prioritize and plan visits.
• Information enrichment: often the company's databases indicate the customers (current or prospects) with the greatest potential but say little about how to sell: as a matter of fact, the ancient art of rhetoric teaches us, any persuasive argument (even the commercial one) a result of combining the "objective" elements of the offer with the specificities of each customer - characterized not only by a commercial history and by belonging to a socio-demographic category, but also by his interests, his predispositions, his commonplaces and stereotypes, his idiosyncrasies. Therefore, it is in this activity of informative enrichment of the company archives - by definition neutral and soulless - that the successful seller stands out. And this activity can be extraordinarily enhanced by digital technology... both in the process of collecting information that integrates the standard customer profile and in the way the information collected is stored, managed and reused whenever necessary.
• Preparation of customized material: sales tools - presentations, brochures, basic offer, email contacts, scripts for a "cold" phone call, ... - can be customized according to the individual meeting with little effort. This is made possible not only by the ease with which the tools can be customized today (so-called desktop publishing) but also by the fact that the best have previously integrated the company archives with their own information useful for this type of customization. This preparation activity is also very useful because it spures the seller to imagine the interview before it happens, anticipating predictable questions, fears, pre-judgments to be dismantled....

3)     Smart selling - Finally, smart selling, which gathers together - under this heading - all the techniques and tools that allow the salesperson - in his interaction with the customer (both visually and remotely) - to be effective and, ideally, to sell the desired product or service, obtaining at the end of the meeting a formal commitment (ideally a signature on the contract). Two aspects particularly benefit from digital tools:

• the communication process: high-quality presentations, documents tailored to the customer's needs, and being able to show highly suggestive videos (or very clear and detailed explanations of a product or service) are the new and highly effective tools available to the salesperson.
• the digital signature - in its various forms (both as a specimen and through the use of passwords) - allows the finalization of the contract even at the client's premises. In this way it is possible to transform into an impulse purchase even the sale of products that require careful evaluation and that often lengthen the decision-making process when the persuasive activity is not connected with the closing of the contract (which once had to be done necessarily in the company).

What to do?

First and foremost, we need to focus on effective digital education of the sales force. Too often the effort has been predominantly training (to specific tools) and not in an educational manner. Not only Sales Force Automation tools, but also individual productivity tools - e-mail, skype, production and management of documents, search for information on the web, organization of one's personal knowledge in digital format, ... - must be taught. And this must happen not necessarily by training people to employ them, but by perceeiving them as tools capable of rethinking - and if necessary transforming - enhancing sales activities as a whole.

In fact, it is important to be able to grasp the analogies but also the specificities of the digital medium. The Digital Transformation does not take place by making use of digital media as was done before (even if better), yet by bringing into play different things (obviously with greater added value, leaving the back-to-back and ordinary activities to the machines and, above all, eliminating activities that are no longer necessary or not so fruitful). It is precisely in this area of "creative destruction" of work habits that important immediate benefits can be generated. Nevertheless our rules, our daily rituals, our pre-judgments die hard. As Einstein noted, "it is easier to break an atom than it is to break a prejudice."

Secondly, we must learn to exercise critical thinking and monitor the uses of digital tools. In fact, the most threatening and subtle risk is that digital technology will "slip through our fingers" without us even realizing it. We can list primarily four causes:

·      NON-USE: ignorance about new possible solutions that may solve new issues and/or ameliorate well-known issues);

·      NAIVE USE: stabilizing behaviors learned as a neophyte, when moving the first steps into the digital world;

·      WRONG USE: material errors or presence of excessive volumes of use without consequent actions of containment;

·      ABUSE (conscious): use of digital for personal purposes or deliberately damaging to the company. This requires constant monitoring not only of the adequacy and modernity of the technological tools adopted, but also (perhaps most importantly) of the adequacy and correctness of user behavior.

In this regard the case of e-mail is quite emblematic: from being a revolutionary communication system and a tool for improving productivity, it has turned - in many cases - into a real nightmare. It's not rare to find people receiving as many as 300 e-mails a day, and some companies have calculated that many managers devote almost one day a week to managing their mailbox. Undeniably a process that has "gotten out of hand." However it's not that the email system has "broken down"; it's the process resulting from the interaction between technology and human behavior that has become critical and ineffective. With just few e-mails exchanged, the problem did not arise, indeed the benefits were considerable; but once the volumes of use exceeded a certain threshold, the system became "sick". Thereby, it is mandatory to observe how digital is used.

To a greater extend the evaluation of time also requires a critical attitude: time management is, indeed, becoming one of the major and critical challenges in the age of the Web. Digital systems promised to save us a lot of time; yet "everything became faster so that there would be more time. There is always less time."

Hence we should costantly consider how we allocate our time, periodically measuring how we devote it (which is often very different from how we THINK we not only allocate it but also have allocated it); make TODO lists as well as NOT TO DO lists, where we note the things we DON'T have to do (making sure we've eliminated them from our agenda); or even minimize multi-tasking, since neuroscience has demonstrated that we are sequential beings and doing many things at once - in an attempt to imitate computers... reduces rather than enhances our productivity.

Thirdly, it is necessary to strengthen the persuasive, negotiating and listening skills of the sales force - notably in the digital age are crucial - since they often have to interact with the digital environment. Furthermore must be adapted to this new communication contexts. Persuading via Skype, or with a short memo attached to an email, or by setting up a mini-site to explain the product with a lot of video intervention, or granting a short interview that is then transformed into a video pill on Youtube ... all this requires specific skills and a certain consolidated practice. Not to mention designing an interactive customer dialogue system or giving a 15-minute presentation at a TED Talk or devising a questionnaire that highlights what we do not know about our customers.

The art of rhetoric, as the ancients teach us, is in fact a mix of theory and practice - of knowledge and know-how – in which hard skills are bundled and mixed with soft skills, the richness of the contents requires sophisticated linguistic skills to express oneself effectively. A persuasive speech is in fact - as Cicerone reminds us - an indissoluble mixture between res and verba, between arguments and expressive forms. Aside from being a discipline, rhetoric is therefore what the ancient speakers called techne: not only technique, method, but also art. Its complexity depends on its ambiguity:

• because it designates both a spontaneous skill and a competence acquired through teaching;
• because it designates both a simple technique and, on the contrary, that which in creation surpasses technique and is due exclusively to the genius of the creator.

Taking that into account it requires both study and practice, both memorization and critical thinking. It follows that we should free up some time to have more often a read, observe more carefully, practice wherever we can, and - above all - reflect on the results to improve ourselves....

Thus digital could profoundly transform the role of the salesperson, in particular boosting the performance of the brightest. Provided that there is awareness of these opportunities and sufficient time is devoted to systematically addressing this great opportunity.

But how many Steering Committee and Board Members know how to deal with Digital Transformation? In my experience, I've often seen only slogans and no concrete executive plan.