The Great Business

Challenges of
the New Millennium
Page

A Brief History i

Credits ii

Introduction and Methodology iii

90 Global Sales Executive Contibutors iv

The Great Business Challenges of the New Millennium 1

The Building Blocks of the Great Companies and Corporations of the Future 7
The Minority Report 15

The New Role of Sales: The Driving Force 16

Beyond a Career to a Profession 21

The Information Age Will Drive the Global Economy 27

Internet Technology Will Be the Sales “Kit” of the Future 33

The New and Still Emerging Sales Vocabulary 38

Success CAN Be Predicted

PO Box 20490
Dayton, Oh 45420-0490
Telephone
(country code 001)
(937) 259-1200
Blank Page
 A Brief History

T
HE HR CHALLY GROUP was founded in 1973 through
a grant from the United States Justice Department.
The grant funded the creation of actuarial assessment
techniques and a validation technology that accurately predicts
on-the-job effectiveness.

Today Chally serves over 2,000 customers globally. Chally

assessment services are offered in several languages and are
available online via a Web-based system.

Customers invest in Chally solutions for improved candidate

selection, employee and organization development, and for a
profitable increase in sales performance. Chally maintains the
leading database of sales benchmarking information. To advance
its core technologies, Chally has developed a sophisticated,
expert system to objectively evaluate candidates and predict
customer-purchasing decisions.

The HR Chally Group

Corporate Headquarters
PO Box 20490 n Dayton, OH 45420-0490 n Telephone (937) 259-1200 n Fax (937) 259-5757
Email: chally@chally.com n www.chally.com

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – i

 The HR Chally Group Research Team
Howard P. Stevens
Gerald M. Lerer
John G. Wood
Sara C. Stevens
Cheryl D. Gier
Susan B. Pearson
Saundra Thomas

A Special Thanks To

Martin Andersen Michael J. Griffin Nirupama Subramanian

MbO International CEO Director
Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd. Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd.
Alpana Banerjee India, Indonesia and Singapore India, Indonesia and Singapore
Director
Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd. Ole Staib-Jensen Harry Syahrial
India, Indonesia and Singapore President Director
MbO International Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd.
William L. Crone India, Indonesia and Singapore
Professor of Marketing Avesh Jha
Texas Christian University Consultant Sandra Talogo
Fort Worth, Texas Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd. Director
India Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd.
Indrani Dutta India, Indonesia and Singapore
Consultant Thomas W. Leigh
Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd. Tanner Chair of Sales Management Andrew Wee
India, Indonesia and Singapore Terry College of Business CEO
University of Georgia Cornerstone Mentoring Systems
Tobias Feldt Athens, GA Singapore
MbO International
Vishal Manchanda Steven A. Yudhiyanto
Peter Gilbert Consultant Consultant
President Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd. Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd.
Growth Partners India, Indonesia and Singapore India, Indonesia and Singapore
South Africa
Jerry Marterella Andrea Zavakos
Tony Gower President SPHR
Sales Director Lincoln Consulting, LLC Brower Human Resources
Miller Heiman Consulting
UK Dr. C. Gundu Rao
Director of Training and Research
Asia Productivity Pte. Ltd.
India, Indonesia and Singapore

ii – © The HR Chally Group www.chally.com

INTRODUCTION AND METHODOLOGY
I
n 1992, Chally inaugurated a groundbreaking project to identify the future of
sales as a profession, in particular, the steps necessary to create a “world class”
sales force. That research project focused on interviewing over 60 top sales
executives from many of the largest and best known sales forces in the country.

In 1992, “Consultive Selling” was perceived as the key to future success. Sales
executives were most concerned about switching to “added value” selling and
de-emphasizing volume. There were concerns about the speed of technology
changes, products maturing to commodities, and even government regulation. But
beneath all the specifics was the need to change internal traditions and culture, to
secure a seat for sales at the executive and boardroom tables, and to become a key
resource in their companies’ competitive strategies.

Taking the input from these sales executives, Chally redirected the research during
the last 10 years toward the more pointed, objective (and quantifiable) data that
customers can provide. Chally interviewed over 23,000 business decision-makers
and asked them to rate, in depth, the salespeople who called on them as well as
the vendors they represented. These same customers also provided purchasing
information from all the vendors they rated. With this information, Chally was
able to rank 7,200 sales forces in 20+ industries and, most critically, statistically
identify the specific salesperson behaviors that caused a customer to select Vendor
“A” over Vendor “B.”

Finally, the rankings identified the very few sales forces that achieved “world
class” performance in the eyes of their customers so that we could, with
permission, benchmark their sales practices and metrics. These reports have been
distributed to over 3,000 companies, and are still requested on a weekly basis.

Late last year, ten years after the original research, Chally went back to leading sales
executives to get their perspective on the future of sales in the new millennium.

We broadened our scope, however, and interviewed over 90 executives from

across the world, including The Americas, the UK, Europe, Scandinavia, the
Middle East, South Africa, and as far as the Far East and the Pac Rim.

The following report documents the impact of sales today and an in-depth
prescription for the changes needed to succeed in the future.

We hope you find it valuable.

Howard Stevens
CEO
The HR Chally Group

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – iii

 Participant List

United States & Canada

Abbott, Tom Vice President, Human Resources Holophane

Beavis, Laurie Sr. Planner SaskTel
Bohay, Phil General Manager, Customer Services - Business Sales SaskTel
and Solutions
Broomhead, Mike SVP, Business Development Trusted Edge
Brownrigg, Geoff President & General Manager Huffy Service First, Inc.
Brunjes, J. Christopher Director of Business Development Mindbank Consulting Group
Butler, Rick Director, Global Sales Compensation & Recognition Lucent Technologies
Carpenter, David Sr. Vice President Chr. Hansen
Cavanagh, Tom Senior Vice President, Direct Sales Element K
Falbo, Tony President, CEO Qore Business Solutions, Inc.
Flatt-Pappan, Carol Director Global Sales Training and Development Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.
Garrett, Dan VP & Managing Partner of Global Health Solutions Computer Sciences Corporation
Georgis, Nick Senior Vice President Schwab Institutional
German, John Heavy Duty Market Manager Federal Signal
Gonzalez, Carlos VP Sales Lennar Corporation
Groudas, Mark VP North and South American Operations Waters Corp.
Grove, Dave VP of Sales, Marketing & Merchandising Corporate Express
Hansen, David General Manager, Fleet & Commerical Operations General Motors Corporation
Hodgins, Jeff Vice-President, Worldwide Sales Initiatives and Storage Tek
Executive Assistant to the CEO
Holland, David M. VP & General Manager Sales and Service Relizon Company

Keesey, Ken Vice President, Customer Services-Sales SaskTel, Canada

Lipsey, Crawford Vice President & General Manager Holophane
Luker, Jack VP of Sales xpedx
Luongo, Peter A. President and CEO The Berry Company
Mackie, Scott General Director ACDelco
McArthur, Gary VP-Corporate Development Harris Corporation
McCluskey, Keith President Credit Acceptance Corporation
McNallen, J. Michael Vice President, North America Gases Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
Miller, Duane Executive Director GM Parts Business Channel
Milliken, Chris President & CEO Boise Cascade Office Solutions
Muthe, John A. Chairman of the Board AmSan LLC
Nesbit-Lofton, Frankie Senior Vice President/Director of Sales and Service Hibernia National Bank
Ouimet, Claude Sr. VP Sales & Marketing Interface Flooring Systems, Inc.
Parisi, Robert Group President Domestic Market Dendrite
Pelligrini, Anthony Senior Vice President, Marketing and Engagement CompuCom
Services

iv – © The HR Chally Group www.chally.com

Podowski, John Director, Strategic Business Development Halliburton Energy Services
Reese, Sam President and CEO Miller Heiman
Ross, Douglas Manager Microsoft Services Microsoft Enterprise Services
Rossman, Joel Vice President of International Sales UPS
Rude, Mike Vice President of Human Resources Stryker Corporation
Sable, Ronald Senior VP Public Sector Guardent
Schafer, Scott VP of Sales and Marketing Reynolds & Reynolds
Sink, Greg VP/GM Federal Signal
Skura, Gary CEO Buffalo Hospital Supply
Smith, Brooke Vice President, Sales and Marketing Corridor Consulting
Stevens, Howard P. CEO and Chairman The HR Chally Group
P.Tubridy, Gary Senior Vice President The Alexander Group
Tyrone, James Senior Vice President of Sales MeadWestvaco Papers Group
VanHootegem, Tom Director of National Accounts Boise Cascade Office Products
Vellucci, Vinnie Group President Arrow Electronics, Inc.
Velordi, James Director of Solutions Selling PolyOne Corporation
Walker, Donna Director of Sales Operations Corporate Express
Wichman, Paul Vice President Western Division Sales Schwab Institutional
Wilson, Craig Director of Corporate Marketing International Paper
Wood, John G. Vice President of Business Development The HR Chally Group
Ziessler, Steve Vice President of Sales Kimberly-Clark Corporation

Europe

Carver, Claire Sales Manager Abbott Laboratories

Davies, Steve Head of Business Markets O2
Fenger, Michael General Manager Nilfisk-Advance
Ladishensky, Peter Export Director William Demant - Oticon Denmark A/S
Oldenburg, Claus Head of Nordic Nordic Novartis Ophthalmics
Rajadhaksha, Vinay Software Business Unit Head, Europe L&T Infotech
Roffee, Brian Business Development Manager Schlumberger/Sema
Schmidt, Lars Sales Director Nestle’ Denmark A/S
Thaarup, Steen Director of Sales Alk-Abello’
Thomas, Patrick Sales Director AON
Varby, Bent European Service Director Applied Biosystems
Williams, Ian Group Development Director Kingfisher
Woods, Paul Training and Development Director WorldCom
Anand, K.B.S. VP Sales and Marketing Asian Paints

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – v

 Asia, Middle East, Far East, and Africa

Anand, K.B.S. VP Sales and Marketing Asian Paints

Ashali, Bapak Joshua Sales and Marketing Director PT Lautan Luas Tbk
Bambang, Bapak Paulus Managing Director Astragraphia
Cassels, Alan Country Manager PT Birotika Semesta/DHL
Worldwide Express
Cheong, Tan Gim General Manager, Asia AIA Insurance
Chong, Joel Technical Sales Manager NEC Corporation in Asia Pacific
Civera, Daniel Asia Business Manager ST Microelectronics Asia Pacific
da Silva, Glenville Vice President & General Manager Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited
Gangopadhyay, Sudipto General Manager HSBC Bank, Mumbai
Keunen, Jereon General Manager, South East Asia Philips Electronics
Koh, Anthony VP Sales LSI Logic, Singapore
Kurien, Bijou Chief Operating Officer - Watches Titan Industries Limited, India
Lowe, Michael Vice President Sales & Marketing, Asia Beyonics Technology
Miller, J. Sales Director AST
Putera, Anak Agung Gde Vice President MetLife Sejahtera
Seidl, Randall Managing Executive, Corporate and Global Markets Telkom
Shankaran, Anand General Manager - Sales Wipro Infotech
Sharma, Ram Managing Director Becton Dickinson India Pvt. Ltd.
Sobti, Atul VP, Marketing and Sales Hero Honda Motors, Ltd.
Srinivasan, Ganesh General Manager, Qatar Gulf Incon
Wagle, Dhiren Country Manager Bio-Rad Laboratories India Pvt.
Ltd.

vi – © The HR Chally Group www.chally.com

 The Great Business Challenges
of the New Millennium
What will be the three most important challenges
companies will face moving into the future?

Controlling for commoditization

%
Protecting intellectual capital
Managing the product life cycle
R
Building and retaining customer loyalty
e
Globalization, increased competition
s
Managing costs, improving processes and solutions
p
Improving communication systems
o
Strategic decisions that bring value to customers
n
d Making sales a core part of the organization’s competence
i Partnering/oursourcing with others, collaboration, co-opetition
n Currency issues, world economy, banks
g Consolidation and competition for alliances
Dealing with the conflict of globalization versus local responsibility
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

The King Is Dead … Long Live the Customer

T
he newfound and still growing “power to the
customer” has made him King, and not just in PR,
value statements, and training phrases of the past.
The information explosion, easily and instantly available
through the Internet, diminishes corporate pricing
strategies, marketing positioning, and even customer
service ratings.
Yet personal relationships between customers and
salespeople will remain important. In fact, such
relationships will become more important than ever,
because they will help companies fight the ever-stronger
pressure toward commoditization. What’s more, without
maintaining close relationships with their customers,
salespeople will not be able to provide the customized
solutions that customers will demand in the future.
Tomorrow’s executives will find themselves even more
drastically squeezed between the conflicting and increasingly
complex demands of the customer and the growing pricing
pressures of the competitive market. The need to protect
margins and increase profits will remain at risk
So say the 100 leading sales executives, individually
interviewed by The HR Chally Group and its affiliates.
With extensive price and competitor information in
hand, customers are demanding more and higher-quality
products and services.

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – 1


“Since our customers continue to have
increasing expectations, we’re constantly
trying to figure out how to be better at what we
do. We’ve initiated a seven-figure investment
into Six Sigma and hiring the black belts that
you read about with GE, etc., to drive out poor
quality to increase the efficiency … sometimes
just minutes quicker.”
Keith McCluskey, President,
Credit Acceptance Corporation
Customers want tomorrow’s newest innovations NOW.
And they will demand them at the lowest possible price.
It’s a buyer’s market and it will continue to be for the
foreseeable future.
Protecting Intellectual Capital
T
his will add a whole new challenge in protecting
intellectual capital. The pressure on companies to keep
up with the competition has made reverse engineering
a well-developed technology. Even in western economies
where the patent laws are fairly rigidly enforced, it’s quite
legal to disassemble a competitor’s product and gain access to
their proprietary systems or otherwise unravel their corporate
assets, as long as the “proper” procedures are followed. In
third world economies, the problem continues to be nearly
unstoppable. For years, “copies” of brand-name products
were easily mass-produced and sold through a wide variety of
distribution channels. Today, however, the “apparent quality”
of retail products is often indistinguishable from the original.
This is easily accomplished in music, or other electronic
products and services, but it has also spread to industrial
products and even to sophisticated business services.
The second form of intellectual capital is the total corporate
knowledge base residing across all the employees. With
reduced company loyalty, companies are finding that
major investments in retaining existing, especially senior
technical and managerial, personnel will be an ever growing
necessity.
The Wal-Mart Phenomenon
C
ompetition for business among suppliers will
become even more intense than it is today. So will
the market pressure driving products and services
toward commoditization. Wal-Mart has become the largest
company in the world by constantly controlling and
reducing costs in every step in the supply chain. They have
succeeded beyond anybody’s wildest imagination. From a
2 – © The HR Chally Group
small local chain that originally avoided urban markets,
they learned how to wrest control from even the major
manufacturers that supplied them.
Faster Than a Speeding Bullet
W
al-mart’s strength has been in handling data and
information. The speed at which information
flows and triggers business processes even without
human intervention is awesome. Today, the processes of
scanning a box of diapers at the checkout counter also
creates an invoice for the manufacturer, schedules another
replacement including a shipping schedule, and finally,
notifies a warehouse to restock the inventory at that precise
store. Wal-Mart continues to excel at driving down costs,
and therefore, lowers prices as a competitive advantage.
Being able to manage data in real time, fix problems almost
as quickly as they happen, and react to their marketplace
with incredible speed drives their advantage.
“We’re looking at the speed of change. The
change will be very rapid and relatively short.
Most companies do a lot of planning. Definitely,
you need to have immediate shelters, budgets,
and all that, but at best you can only talk about
a two or three year vision. Now you see industry
leaders, top-notch businessmen, who when
presenting at briefings always maintain low
visibility into the future. They can only see the
next three to six months. More than that and
they are afraid to make a prediction.”
Michael Lowe, Vice President
Sales & Marketing, Asia, Beyonics Technology
To survive in this climate driven by the success of Wal-
Mart and other major cost-driven companies, tomorrow’s
competitors will have only two strategies in their arsenal:
1. To intimately and deeply understand
what their customers really want and
need more effectively and more quickly
than their competitors.
2. The ability to develop and produce a
solution in a progressively timely and
cost-effective manner.
To add to the pressure of keeping their costs down,
executives will be continually trying to differentiate
themselves in a marketplace that resists differentiation.
This will typically require developing different distribution
channels and information/marketing channels: email, direct
mail, catalogue, direct sales, etc., to reduce cost but still
tailor the right mix for that market segment.
www.chally.com
In fact, some executives argue that much of the
“maturation” in specific markets may be superficial
because we don’t understand the customer enough to see
the differences between customers in the same market
segment. These executives suggest that the key approach
will revolve around delivering added value through the
Internet including: service, distance training and learning,
web-based updates to software, etc. However, competitors
will still need to grow share, volume, and revenues.
Success will depend on their ability to:
1. Clearly articulate the value of their
products and services, and
2. Create some kind of personal or
individual relationship with their
customers in order to combat their
dogged pursuit of lower prices.
“There is a difference between selling and
value managing. Selling is about what you want
the customer to hear about your product and
your features. Value managing is understanding
what the customer needs, providing the benefits
the customer is looking for, and having that
customer understand how those benefits
translate into either a better top line or a better
bottom line. It’s no longer about what we want
to push. It’s got to be about what fulfills the
customer’s need and what will do that profitably
for both parties.”
Craig Wilson
Director of Corporate Marketing
International Paper
Customers’ Expectations Are up …
and That’s Only the Beginning
E
mpowered customers will make even greater
demands for quality, innovation, service, and low
prices – all with the attitude that if Vendor A can’t
supply them with these things, Vendors B, C, D or X can.
Customers will be more educated than ever, largely due to the
Internet and high-speed/real-time information technology. They
will have more product and market knowledge than ever before.
Many of the “best”, i.e., most viable and profitable customers, will
not only identify tight strategic directions; they will also hold their
suppliers accountable for helping them move in that direction.
All the public relations “spin” that marketing people might offer
won’t overcome the need for cold, hard proof of the benefit they’ve
delivered. Customers will establish measurable criteria to actually
assess their suppliers’ ability to help them meet their strategic goals.
www.chally.com
Consequently, sellers will have to learn their customers’
goals in detail and be ready to demonstrate how their
products and services can help their customers reach them.
“You have to achieve company-to-company
collaboration, both in a technical perspective,
in a business process perspective, and in a
people perspective. The automotive and the
pharmaceutical sectors are good examples. They
have a number of people they outsource functions
to. They can outsource manufacturing, document
production, and they can actually outsource
research and development. Consequently, the
large pharmaceutical companies are focusing
on only the highest value in the value chain
to dominate. The challenge is: how do you
integrate this group of different outsourcing
companies together with different needs and
different requirements and get a very successful
economical flow from the beginning to the end of
a process?”
Mike Broomhead
SVP Business Development, Trusted Edge
It’s Inevitable – There Will Be Pressure
on Your Prices and Margins in Spite of
Your Added Value
D
espite all their customers’ talk about strategic direction,
the fact is that many – if not most – customers are
working and will continue to work to strip the “value-
added” pricing argument from suppliers’ offerings, and to line
up their suppliers one next to the other in an attempt to drive
down prices. Some already view this customer response with
irony and frustration. After all, they have worked hard to define
their value in the market. Yet, after establishing what they
thought were long-lasting relationships with their customers,
they have found those relationships to be as fragile as the next
company’s lower price.
“The inefficiencies in the marketplace that
companies have been able to exploit in the past
are disappearing. So trying to maintain your
reason for being and maintaining your sustainable
competitive advantage in the marketplace is
going to be even more difficult.”
Scott Mackie, General Director, ACDelco
© The HR Chally Group – 3
That trend will continue in the future. The winners will
have to figure out ways to bill for unbundled added
services that customers will otherwise take for granted and
not expect to pay for. Not even high-tech companies will
be kept immune to this pressure toward commoditization.
All suppliers will struggle to differentiate themselves,
even as their customers are better equipped and more
strongly inclined than ever to resist such differentiation.
The New Mantra: Maintaining Margins
M
aintaining margins in such an environment will
be a huge challenge for companies. Mistakes
that might have been forgiven or at least hidden
in comfortable profits in the past will not be forgiven in
the future. Internal inefficiencies cannot be tolerated.
“Companies are going to have to be willing
to change the business model, the way they
measure success for everything including how
they price, where their margins are, and where
their value is. They’re going to need a whole
new value proposition.”
Anthony Pellegrini, Senior Vice President
Marketing & Engagement Services,
CompuCom
Companies will be driven hard to keep tight control of
production costs, overhead costs, interest costs, and
product costs.
Globalization Will Contribute
to the Pressure on Prices
Y today?” will replace the familiar, “What
es, globalization can open up opportunities to sell
products and services in new markets around the
world. But most top sales executives believe that
globalization will only add more competitors to the mix.
Not only will globalization create more competitors, but
new and unfamiliar ones. Incumbents won’t always be
prepared for or even understand the technologies and
marketing techniques that these overseas competitors will
be introducing to their markets.
4 – © The HR Chally Group
“Globalization has started a chain of activity
that everybody has to live with. In India the
whole debate is about capturing sales and
service, as well as manufacturing. We’ll get the
opportunity as we develop the competency. We
need to ensure that our office infrastructure is
strong. China is one opportunity open to us and
it is huge. If we can do it in manufacturing we
can do it in other areas like pharmaceuticals
and service. Consider global service from India
rather than just products made in India. It is a
wonderful opportunity … anything you want,
service, manufacturing, and especially telecom,
is growing up.”
Atul Sobti, VP
Marketing & Sales
Hero Honda Motors, Ltd.
Consequently, surviving incumbents will be the quickest to
identify, analyze, and develop a new competitive advantage
to offset their new competitors. Companies who themselves
are entering overseas markets will carry their own sets of
challenges with them, say the respondents. They will
have to learn the cultures, customs, and nuances of doing
business in foreign countries. Their new customers won’t
offer them much slack as they climb the learning curve.
Using “expatriates” transferred in is likely to be a recipe for
disaster. People not thoroughly versed in the local language,
idioms, morals, and customs will be seen as outsiders and
suffer the resistance to choose “foreign vendors” over
more familiar and often better trusted locals. The general
concept of “market globally, sell locally” will be tough to
implement, but those who don’t won’t survive.
Customer Satisfaction
Won’t Guarantee Customer Loyalty
“What are you going to do for me
have you done for me lately?”
C
ustomer loyalty will continue to ebb, say survey
respondents, and the ability to respond rapidly
to competitors will be a key challenge in the
future. Product life cycles will continue to shorten; and
manufacturers will be pressed to shorten the concept-to-
product timetable and then shorten it again. What’s more,
they will have to make sure their new products and services
hit dead in the center of the sweet spot, because they will
have a shorter period of time in which to recoup their
R&D costs and profits.
www.chally.com

Tailored Solutions
Will Drive Competition
“You need to know your customer at both the
economic buyer level and at the user level, whoever
it is that consumes your product or service. You’ve
got to differentiate those audiences and really
understand them. An economic buyer would like
to minimize choice to get the lowest cost; the end
user would like to maximize choice … conflicting
agendas there. Once you understand both sides
of that customer, you try to provide the low cost
solutions with personalization. And that’s mass
customization.”
Tom VanHootegem, Director of National
Accounts, Boise Cascade Office Products
M
any sales executives believe that their number-
one challenge in the coming years will be getting
to know more about their customers than anyone
else. That’s not easy, particularly for companies that have
subscribed to the “build it and they will come” mentality.
(Or “build it and hope and pray they will come.”)
Tomorrow’s customers won’t be looking just for products;
they’ll be looking for solutions and services. In order to
deliver them, companies will have to know everything
about their customers’ organizations, and how their
products and services touch them. What’s more, not only
will companies have to figure out their customers’ current
needs, but they will have to work hard to anticipate their
future needs as well.
“To avoid being transactionally-based, you
must take the time to understand both your
client’s business and the industry in which it
operates. This involves taking a close look
under the covers to figure out not just how to
serve your client and your client’s client, but
also the industry as a whole. Everybody talks
about serving the customer’s customer, but not
the customer’s industry.”
Dan Garrett, VP & Managing Partner
of Global Health Solutions
Computer Sciences Corporation
Just as suppliers will face quick-paced competitors, so too
will their customers. Since every customer is also a supplier
the pressure will continue along the entire length of the
supply chain. The commodity providers near or at the end
www.chally.com
of the supply chain will be unable to escape or pass it on.
Every customer/supplier will want and need vendors who
can help them respond to their changing markets quickly
and effectively.
It’s not surprising that the respondents place a premium on
building and nurturing customer-oriented organizations.
Gone are the days of broad-based, shotgun sales and
marketing, say the respondents. Companies will have to
pursue more customized solutions for their customers or
face extinction.
The Human Factor
O
nly by hiring and retaining the very best people –
salespeople, operations people, etc., – can companies
hope to thrive in such an environment, say the
respondents. But finding such people is a challenge.
“At the end of the day it’s not a plan or even a
solution. It’s having the people who can continually
modify the plan and build new solutions.”
Peter A. Luongo, President and CEO
The Berry Company
Winners will hire people who themselves are committed to a
customer-centric approach to the market, and then build internal
systems and processes to “institutionalize” it. By removing all
the internal obstacles that hinder smooth and productive work
relationships, companies will free themselves up and allow
their employees to focus outward on the only thing that matters
– the customer. It will mean changing people’s mindsets from
product-centric to customer -- or service-centric. Successful
companies and effective salespeople in this new environment
will focus less on features and benefits, and more on filling the
customers’ overall needs. In a market in which customers see
most of their suppliers and products/services as commodities,
the only distinguishing characteristic of a company will be the
people who personally call on the customer. Those people will
become the all-important drivers of the new market.
“I see way too much time being spent on
‘people monitoring’ and ‘managing exceptions.’ All
that leads to this internal focus that takes you away
from the customer. You end up building all these
administrative walls just to make sure you’re doing
what you said you’re going to do. And so much of
that can be combated if you make sure to bring in the
right people in the first place.”
Sam Reese, President and CEO
Miller Heiman
© The HR Chally Group – 5
Companies dedicated to finding such people will still
face the challenge of keeping them. Retaining people
and maintaining their enthusiasm in the midst of tight
margins and the commoditization of their products and
services is a tough order. As the Baby Boomers retire in
droves, companies will be challenged to understand the
next generation and to acclimate them to the needs of the
new market. The “golden days” of selling and competing
during the 1990s may never be seen again, and the shock
will be hard for many younger people to absorb.
“Business is becoming so competitive.
Is there enough time for fun? Do employees
have fun at work? I don‘t think they do. When
I think back to business … okay, it’s a little bit
like looking through rose-colored spectacles
at how things used to be in the past, but l
think they had a lot more fun at work than I
do now. One of the challenges is how to have
fun and not become too serious and boring? If
you’re boring, then you’re not interesting when
you talk to your customers.”
Alan Cassels, Country Manager
PT Birotika Semesta
DHL Worldwide Express
A significant addition to this “people theme” is an
anticipated demographic challenge. Companies will
have to invest in ramping up or replacing mismatched or
retiring staff skills with new talent that recognizes that:
1. More specialization will be required
(specialize to professionalize).
2. New multinational/cultural experience
and skills will be required.
6 – © The HR Chally Group
3. The Baby Boomer generation will be
retiring in substantial numbers. We
collectively will be losing knowledge.
To reduce the drain, we will need to
redefine the role of older employees,
who may want to work longer, but not
full time, to capitalize on the critical
asset of their knowledge. This is only
one issue that will drive a new approach.
4. The need to ramp up new people more
quickly to fill leadership gaps will
require companies to customize offers
to different high potential individuals,
which flies in the face of today’s
traditional internal equity issues and
standardization.
5. Companies will also be dealing with the
work versus personal life “balance” that
is increasingly important to today’s
knowledge-based workers.
6. And finally, companies will be
reorienting their corporate cultures to
adapt to the increasing switch to a more
fluid and often matrix-based
management structure versus the more
rigidly fixed and linear reporting
relationships of the past.
In a Nutshell
I
n short, leading sales executives envision a tougher new
world – one in which they will be constantly challenged
to identify their customers’ most intimate but constantly
changing needs, and then to respond quickly and cost-
effectively – and still execute better than the competition.
www.chally.com
 The Building Blocks of the Great
Companies and Corporations of the Future
What are the most important strengths companies
will need to develop to overcome these challenges?

Operational excellence, quality, and cost control

Talent acquisition and retention

Become employee and customer focused

% Penetrating the customer’s P&L drivers

R Making sales a core part of the organization’s competence

e Versatility, flexible, and fluid organization

s
Educate our employees so they can sell better
p
o Developing and promoting people faster to fill leadership gaps
n Partnerships
d
Customize offers to attract the right people
i
n More action learning groups vs. classroom style

g Lead/participate in socially responsible programs

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Taking on the Future

“The customer is a lot brighter now than he used to be. He’s a lot better
informed and a lot more demanding. That development in itself is forcing the
pace of change. It’s driving prices down. And more and more salespeople feel
like they are forced to talk about price.”
Alan Cassels, Country Manager, PT Birotika Semesta, DHL Worldwide Express

T
he huge challenges companies will face (including much shorter life cycles and rapid commoditization,
the growing shift of negotiating power to the customer, and new competition from globalization) will
drive a new economy and a new definition for building business success.

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – 7

 “As products and services become
more mature, more commodity-like, it’s
more challenging to distinguish one’s
offering from that of competitors. Vendors
will need to understand the customer at
a much more in-depth level, as well as
know the customer’s people in-depth and
(disseminate) that knowledge more deeply
into their own organization to tailor their
offerings very precisely.”
James Tyrone
Senior Vice President of Sales
MeadWestvaco Papers Group
It’s not surprising that sales executives believe that collecting
and maintaining intimate customer information well beyond
the traditional definitions of CRM will be little more than the
table stakes to enter the competitive game.
“If ultimately you don’t have the ability
to differentiate yourself, all you’re doing is
playing a price game.”
Steve Ziessler, Vice President of Sales
Kimberly-Clark Corporation
To get beyond survival, and to grow both margins and
profits, the successful companies of the future will be
forced to become true customer experts. They’ll need to
track and “own” new levels of information and real-time
data. CRM will have to detail not only the purchasing
and operating needs of customers, it will also be required
to describe and track customer’s markets as well as their
customer’s customers’ needs and challenges.
Internal Data and Database Mining
Won’t Be Good Enough
A
cquiring the information and data to support this
level of customer expertise implies more than just
understanding the customers’ needs. Relying on the
typical qualifying data collected in the prospecting process
or even the more elaborately tracked purchasing databases
will not suffice. Companies will have to burst out of their
traditional habits to become true learning organizations. In
this context, the subject is more than the customer, it’s the
strategy of the customer:
1. Within their own unique competitive challenges,
2. Within their economic landscape, and
3. Within their customer’s market and industry.
8 – © The HR Chally Group
“The key word that I like to use is ‘currency’
and having ‘currency’ with the customer. If you
haven’t got the sort of business acumen and
the political acumen to be able to work with
customers and bring real added value in your
exchange of ideas and opportunities you can
suggest, then you are no longer relevant.”
Phil Bohay, General Manager
Customer Services
Business Sales and Solutions, SaskTel
It’s likely that external information far beyond the offerings
of today’s “Competitive Intelligence” techniques will
differentiate those sellers who are able to develop customer
loyalty from those who don’t.
The Organizational Charts of the Past
Will Mark the Tombstones of the Failed
B
eyond learning, of course, comes execution.
Companies that can adapt to new realities in the
market will succeed.
“Internally we know we have always done a
great job of developing programs. But you can
have the greatest programs in the world and if we
don’t have great execution in the field it’s going to
flounder. So we’ve got to be able to aggressively
step up the execution of our programs.”
Carol Flatt-Pappan, Director Global Sales
Training and Development
Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.
In order to achieve world-class execution, companies
will have to toss out the outdated internal organizational
structures (silos) that had forced them to focus more on
their internal departments, power structures, and corporate
politics than on their customers. They will need to become
more integrated company-wide, bring down the walls that
separate departments, and enlist everyone in the company
to focus on the customer in a coordinated effort.
“Sales must complete its integration within the
whole organization, i.e., aligned and connected
with marketing, R&D, logistics, manufacturing,
and in the generation and maintenance of up-to-
date client information.”
Paul Woods
Training and Development Director, WorldCom
www.chally.com
The Demand for Real Leadership
T
o become a learning organization that is focused
on and responsive to its customers’ changing
needs, companies will have to be led from the top.
Tomorrow’s great corporations will have to develop strong
leaders and cultivate a workforce of talented, bright, and
adaptable people.
“The sales role, as a sales ‘professional’ will
be defined toward customer advocacy, both as
a development role as well as an execution role.
Salespeople, I hope, will be more empowered
to make decisions on behalf of the organization,
within the guidelines.”
David M. Holland
VP & General Manager Sales and Service
Relizon Company
Salespeople will typically be the leading edge using their
knowledge of the customer and knowledge of the talents
within their own organization to figure out how their
company can deliver the value that the customer seeks.
“The sales professional will have to
become more competent in the issues that our
customers are grappling with. Customers are
demanding solution-based value propositions
that bring measurable value to their bottom-
line. Product features and benefits are still
important, but the thrust of our propositions
today must be based on a more elaborate
set of value drivers. The ability of the sales
professional to rise to this expectation can be
a key differentiator.”
Jack Luker, VP of Sales, xpedx
Inside the successful organization of the future, product
developers must translate the customers’ changing needs
into new products and services. Tomorrow’s corporate
leaders will have to discover new ways to make sure
that everyone in the organization – product managers,
salespeople, marketing people, top management, etc.,
– keep their eyes on one thing: the customer. The old battles
for power and inclusion will have to be conceded.
The sales force will have to actively participate in the
overall management of the company. Individuals will also
be responsible for developing alternative strategies for
customer contact that might not include them but would
still cooperate with their activities.
www.chally.com
“The challenge will be to grow revenues
in a profitable and productive way. Revenues
are going to have to grow at a faster rate than
expenses. Sales executives are going to need
to improve the productivity of their organizations.
They’re going to have to get smarter with how they
use both human resources and alternate sales
channel resources, because they’re going to have
to introduce alternate channels to develop leads,
to improve service, and to improve coverage on
small business and middle market companies that
they’re not covering well today, and lead all of this
additional channel resource into existing sales
organizations to improve productivity. And when
it’s done right, then an organization is going to
have a finely working machine that will separate
itself from its rivals. That’s what I think the best
sales executives are going to be up to in the next
few years.”
Gary Tubridy, Senior Vice President
The Alexander Group
“Salespeople are going to have to really
partner with their marketing people, not ‘that’s
my account,’ ‘I own that account,’ and ‘I’ll bring
the manager in when I need it.’ An integrated
marketing program really allows the rep to
keep the company ‘top of mind’ across all the
different marketing vehicles: email marketing,
direct marketing, catalog distribution, etc. It will
be an integrated approach and a partnership
that doesn’t exist to that level today.”
Dave Grove
VP of Sales, Marketing & Merchandising
Corporate Express
Expanding the Definition of
Customer Relationship Management
T
op sales executives repeatedly emphasize that
successful companies will need new and much more
intensive customer relationship management skills.
Not only are they referring to the widely promoted software
solutions, but also developing outstanding communication
skills with their customers. Only by getting to know
their customers both as business decision-makers and as
individuals will salespeople know what they need, and
what kinds of new products and services should be offered
to them.
© The HR Chally Group – 9
What Does Knowing the Customer
Really Mean?
I
t means knowing the market in which the customer
operates. Successful companies will make it a point
to learn about their customers’ challenges. What are
the trends in their industry that will affect them? How
can the supplier respond by developing new products
and services to help their customers meet those trends?
“Having all the data in one place and
having the methodology that you use to drive
that throughout the life cycle and to all the key
players consistently is increasingly critical.”
Steve Davies
Head of Business Markets, O2
This will require a new mindset for the company’s
marketers and salespeople, because it will call for
selling for the long-term. Companies will have to be
able to answer this question: “How can our offerings
position the customer (and thus ourselves) for success
five or even ten years from now?” The challenge will
be to more quickly change the mindset of salespeople
and others into taking that long-range view. This will
require revisiting traditional and often “sacred” concepts
of compensation to resist the temptation of setting
performance goals based on reacting to a very short-term
view of quarterly or even monthly results including the
company’s stock fluctuations.
Salespeople who really get to know their key customers’
decision-makers as live human beings with their own
concerns, hopes, expectations, etc., will experience
more success than those who do not.
“From my perspective, the key for any
sales organization on a go-forward basis
is to borrow a phrase from sports and ‘be
the customer.’ You can only do that by
penetrating, infiltrating, and customizing your
business selectively to key customers.”
Geoff Brownrigg
President & General Manager
Huffy Service First, Inc.
10 – © The HR Chally Group
Salespeople who meet their customers on this level
will go further toward securing a customer for life.
But that approach, as critical as it is, will only create
the opportunity to take the next step: getting to know
and support both the economic decision-makers as
well as the actual users of the product, and be able to
understand and react to the differences between the
two without being perceived as “siding” with one over
the other. While the economic decision-maker wants to
minimize choice to reduce complexity and inventory,
and therefore, cost, the user usually wants to broaden it.
Stronger salespeople will learn how to walk the fine line
between these agendas.
The Critical Role of the “Personal Touch”
in Developing Customer Loyalty
S
uccessful companies will depend on their ability to
develop a “personal touch” to build relationships
and to profile their customers’ key issues and
possible solutions. Only that level of established trust
will provide sufficiently penetrating insights to enable
them to correctly prioritize their strategy and then
develop products and services that offer their customers
exceptional value.
They will also use it to identify which customers do
NOT warrant much time and effort.
“One important role of sales is to identify
the winning customers of the future. If you work
with customers on those total systems solutions,
then you can only engage with a limited number
of customers. So the most important role is to
define who will be the winning customer that
can drive significant sales.”
Jereon Keunen, General Manager
South East Asia, Philips Electronics
In other words, companies that can measure the
profitability of specific customers will be able to use
their resources more wisely.
www.chally.com
It Isn’t About Getting to the Altar ...
It’s About Never Getting Divorced
S
uccessful companies will pay continuous attention
to their customers – at least their profitable ones.
Neglecting customers through the life of a contract,
then lavishing attention on them a few months before
contract renewal, simply won’t work in the future.
“It’s important to choose a solution
to offer to the customer that, in the early
stages of the relationship, contributes to a
discussion of the longer-term plan for both
hardware and software: a roadmap. And by
doing so, we can actually build a barrier to
discourage the customer from searching for
a different supplier later on.”
Anthony Koh
VP Sales, LSI Logic, Singapore
It is only through continuous attention that they can
identify opportunities to offer new products and
services for their customers’ changing businesses.
They know that if they ignore their customers, their
competitors – either from this country or another
– will take notice.
“It will be a great challenge to balance
the short- and long-term drivers of our
business, keeping a focus on innovation while
producing short-term results. Taking the time
to be innovative for future growth can easily
be lost.”
Michael Fenger
General Manager, Nilfisk-Advance
Successful companies will impress on their employees
that customer focus begins from the moment the
customer makes contact with the company (or vice
versa), all the way through to the processing of the
invoice. This means that everyone in the company – not
just the field sales force – will have to get involved in
customer relationship-building. Companies that can
do this will find that their customers will treat them as
partners, not vendors. Customers will recognize that
the company is looking out for them, not just making
a buck off them. They will feel they have a relationship
with their suppliers. They know they can count on their
supplier and not just to stock inventory on their behalf,
www.chally.com
or send someone out to fix equipment. More critically,
they’ll expect the supplier to share more true intellectual
resources with them than ever before.
“If you partner with the right key customers,
including both manufacturing and R&D, it
can be mutually beneficial to all. By sharing
intellectual property to the benefit of these
customers, many times you can develop and
deliver new products and technologies, not
only to their benefit, but market-wide.”
Mark Groudas, VP North and South
American Operations, Waters Corp.
Internal Assessment and Readiness
to Change
I
f knowledge of the customer is a necessary
strength for companies in the future, so too is
an in-depth understanding of its own resources
including accurate S.W.O.T. (Strengths, Weaknesses,
Opportunities, and Threats) analyses of all its strengths
and weaknesses. How else will management match the
strengths of its company with the needs of its customers?
Managers will have to ask the right questions: Do we
have the right product to meet our customers’ needs?
Do we have the right people in place?
“There has to be a commitment from the
top to develop people, and that includes the
managers responsible for implementing the
strategies to develop people. If these people
are pressured into getting results first as
has been all too frequent in the past, then
supervision and all other things related to
developing people will be number two.”
Anak Agung Gde Putera, Vice President
MetLife Sejahtera
And finally, do we have the ability and the desire to
handle scenarios that will unfold in our industry and
select the plan that best fits our resources?
© The HR Chally Group – 11

“Every organization would just like to be
number one in the industry. In reality, every
organization cannot be number one. Maybe
number two or number three in their industry
is okay. The organization must ask itself what
it must do to get to their target position. The
organization must come to the table and be
open and honest about what it can and cannot
do with its resources. Once it comes to that
realization, then it can choose its market and
go after it aggressively.”
John German, Heavy Duty Market Manager
Federal Signal
Companies will have to develop the strength and
wisdom to know that they can’t be all things to all
people. There may be some business they have to walk
away from.
“No longer can a company profess to be
an ‘all in one’ company that can do everything
for the client. Those days are over. It’s almost
come full circle. Years ago, business was
very focused and then it became ‘we can
do everything.’ Now it’s returning to being a
focused business and delivering from its core
strength.”
Tony Falbo, President, CEO
Qore Business Solutions, Inc.
Change Is a Given ...
the Speed of Change Is the Challenge
“We’re in a disposable society. If you can’t
answer (the customer’s) questions now, while
he’s talking to you, he can just get on the
Internet or talk to somebody else and, if they
provide the answer, then that’s who they’re
going with. If I say, ‘I’m going to have to get
back with you after I check on it,’ then you’re
off to the other supplier.”
Gregg Sink, VP/GM
Federal Signal
12 – © The HR Chally Group
C
ompanies must develop the strength to make
changes based on what they learn and respond
rapidly to changing market conditions. If the dot-
com revolution taught industry anything at all, it is that
they can, and sometimes must, morph into just about
anything they choose. Success in the future will depend
on companies’ ability to morph into something that
addresses real customer needs and then change again as
a result of the next thing they learn about the customer.
Cultivating a learning organization will be a key strength
for companies in the future.
“If you’re going to be a consultant for
customers you’re going to have to have enough
knowledge around different processes that the
customer is using so that you can look for
opportunities and take advantage of them and
know who, within your own company, you can
call on to provide that value. Rather than being
product-oriented, we’re going to have to be
more process-oriented around the customer’s
operations.”
J. Michael McNallen, Vice President
North America Gases
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc.
Success in the future will demand that company leaders
create an environment in which learning to change is
welcomed and even embraced. Going one step further,
it demands that companies develop a process to plan for
and exploit change. In other words, success will hinge on
getting people used to the unexpected turns and twists in
the road, rather than resisting them.
Not all will be ready or even able to change. Successful
companies will develop processes to identify their
employees’ strengths and weaknesses. With that
knowledge, they will place people in the tasks and
jobs for which they are best suited, and in which they
can most benefit the company and the customer. They
will train and incentivize their workers to do the jobs
that are most critical to the company’s success.
“Any company is only as good as the
weakest link. We must continually move
people around to gain the appropriate
experience. AON’s strategy is based upon
frequent moves.”
Patrick Thomas, Sales Director, AON
www.chally.com
Successful companies will also learn how to
identify which of their employees’ skills are
transferable, so that when new assignments,
challenges, and opportunities arise, they can
quickly make the necessary adjustments.
Companies in the future will understand that rapid
changes can be effected only by exploiting the
flexibility of their work forces, that is, creating ad hoc
teams who can assemble when needed, disband when
no longer needed, and regroup when a new need has
been identified.
Self-Knowledge
W
inning companies will have learned the value
of evaluating their internal and external
processes on a regular basis. It will be critical
to understand where and how to cut their costs – a
continuing need in the future. Such evaluation can help
them recognize that the technology they implemented
several years ago is outdated or unnecessary, or that
steps they built into their manufacturing processes in
response to market conditions of several years ago are,
today, costing them time and money.
“The bottom-line is the people. Unless we
get the really good people, we will not be able to
become a cost leader. And that is the only way
to thrive when the margin is going down and the
selling price is going down. In order to improve
the bottom-line, we need better cost efficiency.”
Bapak Joshua Ashali
Sales and Marketing Director
PT Lautan Luas Tbk
Successful companies will learn that just introducing
new features or benefits to their existing products
or services may not help them in the market. They
will develop the skill to think outside the box, and
recognize that understanding and responding to
customers’ ever-changing needs may require them
to develop entirely new products and services. Some
companies, particularly those with strong engineering
traditions, may have difficulty embracing such
“outside the box” thinking. Yet successful ones will
change their mindset from “How can I build a better
product,” to “What does my customer need?” The end
result might not be another product, but a new service,
or the discontinuation of an existing service, or the
shelving of a product while still in the development
www.chally.com
stage. But having all the data in one place and having
the methodology that you use to drive those decisions
throughout the life cycle and to all the key players
consistently will be increasingly critical.
Better Communication
S
uccessful companies of the future will study
their customers and learn how to provide
them exceptional value and, most importantly,
clearly articulate that value to them. They’ll cut
through the jargon, the marketing “hype,” and tackle
the simple questions: What’s in it for the customer?
How is this product or service going to give the
customer a competitive advantage? How will it save
the customer money?
“Clients now are really looking at every
dollar that they spend and saying, ‘How do
we get value of this?’ So, number one is them
getting value. We need to look at how do we
make our company more effective in the eyes
of our clients and that’s not just making our
company more effective or more efficient, but
how do we demonstrate it?”
J. Miller, Sales Director, AST
Having communicated the value of their products and
services, successful companies will have the courage
to ask for higher prices, when they are warranted. And
commit only to the customers who care enough to pay.
“We need to understand what our
customers ask from us and then we need to
charge for activities that they want us to do.
It’s the old activity-based costing module. We
need to look specifically at every customer
and determine ‘break even.’ We have to make
sure we’re not losing money. And for a sales
guy, I hate to say this but sometimes you
actually have to fire some accounts.”
Gary Skura, CEO, Buffalo Hospital Supply
Not only will successful companies work to improve
communications with their customers and prospects,
they will improve intra-company communications
as well. If one part of the company learns something
important about a process or market or customer, it has
to be communicated to all that might benefit. Sharing
© The HR Chally Group – 13
knowledge avoids re-inventing the wheel, and with all
players up to speed, less explanation is required to make
quick changes and become more nimble in the market.
That is the core of the learning organization.
The Increasingly Critical Role of HR
“Very few sales forces have good
relationships with their human resources
functions today and I think they’ve missed the
boat. Because a good HR function that can
get people, help them keep people, and help
them develop people is, on the face of it, an
extraordinarily great advantage for every sales
organization to have.”
Gary Tubridy, Senior Vice President
The Alexander Group
T
op sales executives believe that an effective human
resources effort will be a key ingredient for success
in the future. Rather than focusing merely on
compensation, insurance, or pension issues, tomorrow’s
HR professionals will play a crucial role in the changing
management process. Successful companies will develop the
know-how to put the right people in the right positions at the right
time, with the right values and the right skills and drive. They
will recognize that is the only way to avoid lost productivity and
the need to fire those who are ill-suited to their jobs.
“It’s a continuous battle to have and keep
quality people that have a real desire and
attitude and aptitude for the business. To find
those people is one main thing but then to hold
on to them becomes even more difficult.”
Randall Seidl, Managing Executive
Corporate and Global Markets, Telkom
Effective HR departments in the future will help top
management understand that the demands of the market
require a new kind of employee – one who can become
a true “student” of his or her customers, and who
is prepared to articulate the company’s value to the
customers. Only through better recruitment and constant
training – as well as an exciting, non-threatening, and
even fun place in which to work – can companies expect
to retain their key people.
14 – © The HR Chally Group
Successful companies will nurture the concept of
corporate family – that is, providing an atmosphere
in which employees feel safe and provided for, and in
which their right to leisure time is respected. Successful
companies will make sure they maintain a sense of
humor in the midst of hard work and slim margins. And
successful companies will learn that they can retain their
best people by showing them that they have an exciting
and profitable future at the company.
“I think companies are going to have
to rethink roles that older employees can
play, because they’re either going to want
to stay in the workforce longer, they’re not
going to want to retire sooner, or they’re not
potentially going to be able to retire sooner.
And companies are not going to ... companies
can’t afford to lose that knowledge base. So I
think one thing is with older workers, they’re
going to have to figure out new or modified
roles that they can play, but they’re not going
to want full-time jobs potentially. So, I think
that’s one area that companies are going to
have to rethink.”
Mike Rude
Vice President of Human Resources
Stryker Corporation
Successful companies will recognize that with diversity
comes strength. They will help their employees
respect each other’s differences in nationality, values,
or language. They will recognize the talents and
contributions of older workers.
“It’s all about being able to manage diversity.
That’s a broad term for a lot of things. It’s not just
race and gender. It’s about managing people who
have diverse lives, understanding different cultures,
understanding what motivates one employee over
another. And if they aren’t successful at that, they
will not be good managers.”
Duane Miller, Executive Director
GM Parts Business Channel
They will understand with the impending retirement
of the Baby Boomers, they must prepare for the future
by cultivating strong young leaders. They will make
an effort to know what their employees aspire to, and
how they can help those employees reach their goals.
www.chally.com
 “The sales training function will be responsible
for taking traditional line of business people who
don’t have sales experience, but have domain
expertise, effective communication skills and
are proven aggregators of information. We will
invest to bring their careers forward by putting
sales methodology around their experiences
and make them into the effective salespeople
who can bring together teams and put together
solutions that master the clients’ requirements.”
Brooke Smith, Vice President
Sales and Marketing, Corridor Consulting
Successful companies will resist the pressure to
compete with their competitors solely on price. People
would rather work for a dynamic organization that is
changing and improving its offerings to its customers –
and profits as well. The trick, of course, will be to keep
a close eye on the company’s workforce without losing
sight of the customer. It’s a balancing act. Successful
companies will never lose sight of that.
“Ultimately, it’s the quality of all the people,
and the skills they bring to the table. And there
are no shortcuts or easy ways to find them.”
John Podowski, Director
Strategic Business Development
Halliburton Energy Services
www.chally.com
The Minority Report
W
hile this report reflects the
overwhelming view of the great
majority of leading sales executives,
there were exceptions. Not all believed that a
major investment in developing an in-depth
understanding of individual customers was
practical, with or without technology.
“With 15,000 dealers today, CRM
is not a viable proposition. I cannot
manage relationships with 15,000
dealers. What I can manage better
is an effective system of working
that facilitates good relationships
between my people and the dealers,
transparency in operation, fairness
in operation, a regular system, a
promise of delivery of product or
service quality, the type of activities I
do with him to create demand at his
shop, the promise of some amount
of brand pool or demand pool
that facilitates this. I can generate
sales for the dealer. The possibility
of conflict reduces. And then it is
then easier for the salesperson to
develop relationships.”
K.B.S. Anand
VP Sales and Marketing
Asian Paints
In addition, an organization that feels that
new product development will be their major
strategic competitive advantage instead of
building stronger customer relationships may
run counter to the prevailing wisdom.
“The change is to go from
consultative sales to more of a closing
sale. Because in our pharmaceutical
business we are going to launch many
new products and will need to drive
those launches aggressively.”
Steen Thaarup
Director of Sales, Alk-Abelló
© The HR Chally Group – 15
 The New Role of Sales: The Driving Force
What roles will sales play, and how will sales have to change
or develop in order to drive their company’s growth?

More competence “consulting”

% Develop “currency” with customer; learning relationship management
Know customer better than competition; business and industry savvy
Selling the benefit downstream, teamwork, partnering, and bringing resources in
R
Cultural sensitivity; wearing a global hat
e Salespeople will have to deliver value themselves
s More education/training
p Sales managers have to lead/coach instead of sell
Rising to the more sophisticated playing field (technology/automation)
o
Defining the ideal customer; willingness to leave dying markets
n Process oriented
d More specialized (finance/eng./IT)
i Speak “louder” to management; empowered to make quick decisions in field
Managing time
n
Charging for added value services
g Formal market assessment responsibilities
Learn to use administrative support
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

The Salesperson of the Future Will Be an Added Value “Personally”

W
hat roles will sales play, and how will sales have to change or develop in order to drive their company’s growth?

“The new and most critical role of the salesperson will be to manage the relationship
with the customer and not to execute the various action steps. This may require 18 months
to train them to be process-oriented and strategic and not just think of the short-term.”
Nick Georgis, Senior Vice President, Schwab Institutional

The culture change for both salespeople as well as all the other functions within the corporation will be dramatic and
often painful. Not only will they need to learn new strategies to engage, understand, and respond to customers, they will
have to learn to grow the business within each customer or target other customers that offer growth opportunities.

16 – © The HR Chally Group www.chally.com


“The role of the salesperson will change. It
will require position expertise. They’ll have to
manage a total service, because “It ain’t about
product anymore.” It will be more important
to penetrate existing customers and expand
share versus expand market.”
John A. Muthe, Chairman of the Board
AmSan LLC
Salespeople will have to step up to their new and still
emerging role. They will not only be the first line of contact
with the customer but also be the primary information
source representing customers to their companies. They’ll
have to educate the rest of their company about what they
have learned. This will include the sales force being equally
represented in the “C” suites of corporate America. They’ll
even need to interact directly at the board level. Those
who cannot elevate their usefulness, internal status, and
credibility will end up being outsourced as a function.
“The role of sales will change from an art
to a science … driven more by knowledge and
information and innovation and trust than ever
before … much more professional, (and) more
predictable than what we’ve had.”
Duane Miller, Executive Director
GM Parts Business Channel
For this to occur, salespeople will operate less like islands
(“This is my account and don’t go near it!”) and more
as team members. Those who cannot or will not will be
liabilities to their companies.
“I don’t think the salesman of the future
will still belong to a sales and marketing
organization. He will belong to a business unit
or to a group that is much more focused on the
customer than the traditional functional parts
of the organization like sales and marketing
organizations.”
Daniel Civera, Asia Business Manager, ST
Microelectronics Asia Pacific
Relationship building with customers will continue to be
vitally important for the sales force. But the salesperson will
have to keep in mind that he represents a larger entity - the
company – and that he must draw on all of his organization’s
strengths to provide solutions to his customers. To support
this newer role, compensation concepts for sales will have to
go through a major re-alignment. Compensation will focus
www.chally.com
much more on longer-term issues such as customer loyalty
and retention, and be focused more on the company’s “share
of customer wallet” than just overall volume or other purely
top-line measures of success.
The rest of the organization will have to respect the sales
force’s customer knowledge and expertise.
“The ability to forecast accurately will be
a critical function for sales, whether it is at
the unit level, dollar level, or simply regarding
market needs. The traditional approaches of
providing rough estimates or best guesses will
just not work in the future.”
Rick Butler, Director
Global Sales Compensation & Recognition
Lucent Technologies
Sales will have to overcome the stereotypes of “glad-
handers” and overly optimistic “promisors” who have
little concern for the cost of the commitments they make
to customers. This newfound respect must start with upper
management. Some companies will have to reinvent
themselves as sales-oriented organizations, with a true sales
culture imbued in them.
Information-gatherers
H
ands-down, sales executives believe that
salespeople can no longer be (or be perceived to
be) product-pushers. The idea of a company’s R&D
and manufacturing departments dreaming up products that
they think customers want, and then pushing them out to
their customers, will lead to a company’s death.
To overcome their past reputations, many sales forces will
have to reposition themselves to add value. Their efforts
must be perceived as being in the best interest of the
customer by providing technical business advice beyond
the application of their product.
“For individual salespeople the difficulty is
re-learning many new diversified technical and
professional skills and for sales managers the
difficulty is to plan and motivate the resources
for growth.”
Joel Chong, Technical Sales Manager
NEC Corporation in Asia Pacific
© The HR Chally Group – 17
Indeed, this may be the most effective way to fight
commoditization. And salespeople will be the key to
making it happen.
As their company’s representatives in the field,
salespeople are potentially the best students of all. It’s up
to the salesperson to “penetrate, infiltrate, and customize”
for the customer.
By becoming business-savvy themselves, salespeople
will come to understand the financial motivations of
their customers and then base solutions around those
motivating factors. In some instances, they may rely on
industry consultants to help them get up to speed.
Companies will recognize that their salespeople are
barometers of changes in the market, and will encourage
them to hone their skills in this regard. They will need
to understand that their salespeople – as the front-line
information-gatherers – can gauge the direction of the
market better than anyone else in the company. If the
company chooses to listen, it will learn how to take
advantage of the intelligence that its salespeople gather.
Salespeople as Educators
W
hat will salespeople do with the knowledge they
gain of their customers’ businesses? They must
first communicate it to their companies, and then
help their companies translate it into reproducible, saleable
solutions. Only those reps that can give up the independent
and autonomous “island” mentality will succeed.
To be the point force to gather new market needs and new
market solutions and bring them back to the enterprise is
time-consuming, so salespeople who work against a financial
performance standard will have to be rewarded for taking
time out from selling to work with their peers in the office.
Those administrators, manufacturers, marketing, and finance
people on the inside will have to recognize the importance
of the salesperson in their overall operations. The sales force
can be the “voice of honesty” in the organization, speaking
the customers’ truth, rather than that of management.
“Salespeople will have to learn “focused
messaging” to convert their good oral
presentation skills to sharp, clear, and concise
writing and memo skills to communicate with
time-pressured PCOs.”
Claire Carver, Sales Manager
Abbott Laboratories
18 – © The HR Chally Group
Only by understanding the limits and capabilities of others
in the organization can salespeople make sure that their
companies are both able and willing to meet the needs of
their customers. This way, salespeople will avoid over-
promising what their companies can do for their customers.
At the same time, they will be in a position to take part in the
creation of new products and services for their customers.
Ironically, not only will reps have to be students of their
customers, but they’ll have to be students of their own
organizations as well, and that training will be in-depth
and tough. Many feel that the “professionalism” of sales
will ultimately follow the business education of other
specialties. This may include getting an MBA just as
engineers, accountants, or scientists might. Salespeople
will learn to understand their customer’s business plan
every bit as well as understanding their buying needs.
“We actually train them for the toughest
circumstance. We put them through formal
training, we put them in situational training,
and we put them in front of the TV camera and
microphone. We give interview training, by that
I mean we’re sitting down on a TV program
where the host you’re going to talk to knows
about your business, and he’s pretty hard on
you. He questions … he’s done his research
on the corporation, and you … “Didn’t you
lose such and such a deal? I mean could you
really be doing all that well.” He asks the hard
questions so that when once they’ve had the
formal training, the situational training and then
you put them through this, when they come
out there isn’t much in the way of a challenge
that they haven’t already seen. So they’re not
unprepared to respond to it.”
Ronald Sable
Sr. VP Public Sector, Guardent
In some ways, salespeople will also be catalysts of change
for their customers, say the respondents. By virtue of
their exposure to a broad segment of customers, they can
convince their customers to do things differently, to employ
new business models or technologies.
Becoming students of their companies will be essential for
tomorrow’s reps for another reason as well. Tomorrow’s
customers will look with respect on salespeople who can
answer their questions quickly and decisively. “I have to get
back to you on that” is a response with which customers are
losing tolerance. But the only reps that will be able to give
quick and decisive answers are those who fully understand
their companies’ capabilities.
www.chally.com

“There is a difference between selling
and value managing. Selling is about what
you want the customer to hear about your
product and your features. Value managing
is understanding what the customer needs,
providing the benefits the customer is looking
for, and having that customer understand how
those benefits translate into a better top-line
or a better bottom-line. It’s no longer about
what we want to push, it’s got to be about what
fulfills the customer need and what will do that
profitably for both parties.”
Craig Wilson
Director of Corporate Marketing
International Paper
All of this is not to sell short the power of product training.
People sell the best if they are intimately aware of the
products and services they’re selling.
“We’ve built our company on the
recognition that all companies are going to
have to work smarter and not just harder.
And companies only get smarter by investing
in their people … that said even that process
has to be smarter and more efficient. Hence
e-learning can be a big part of that solution.”
Tom Cavanagh, Senior Vice President
Direct Sales, Element K
Many top sales executives suggest that companies will
transform themselves into sales-oriented organizations,
in which all or most employees will be expected to solicit
business in their normal course of activities. In such an
environment, salespeople will be needed to educate these
non-professionals about sales, and help coordinate all the
selling efforts being undertaken company-wide. Seldom
have salespeople seen themselves in leadership roles in
their companies. But that will change in the future.
New Kinds of Relationships
S
ome companies will rely on telemarketers and
the Web to present products to their customers.
In these companies, salespeople will be expected
to focus on selling company-to-company solutions, not
just products.
www.chally.com
Not a new concept (some executives even apologized for using
a cliché), “consultative selling” is what tomorrow’s companies
will demand from their salespeople, say the respondents.
Another term is “solutions selling.”
But relationship-building in the future will be different from
in the past. It will be based on a profound understanding
of the customer, not the desire to convince them that they
should buy a product or service. Salespeople will have to be
well read about the industry into which they sell, so they can
put conversations with customers in their proper context and
perspective. By “speaking the language” of their customers,
salespeople will instill their customers with confidence and
trust. What’s more, they will bring back to their companies
better, more accurate information on the market.
Building solid relationships will make the salesperson the
“compelling choice” for their customers. Even so, expect
fewer golf games and lunches. Customers don’t have time
for them anymore.
“I think we’ve been living in a fast world but
it’s going to get faster. “How fast can you give
me an example?” “How fast can you develop a
product?” “How fast can you get it to market?”
“How fast can you get the information to the
customer?” “How fast can you integrate it into
this product?” “How fast can you ship it?” “How
fast can you receive the money?” It’s going to
come back to real time.”
David Carpenter
Sr. Vice President, Chr. Hansen
Selling will also become less of an art and more of a science,
in the sense that companies and customers both will place a
greater emphasis on salespeople’s knowledge, information,
innovativeness, and trustworthiness. Being more sophisticated
themselves, customers will respond to more sophisticated and
knowledgeable salespeople.
In the past, sales has been a talent that people either had or
didn’t. That will remain true for the heaviest hitters, “hunters”
or “rain-makers,” of the future. But a new class of professional
salespeople will develop and apply the newer professional
standards of the science of sales.
If it’s true that selling will become more of a science and less of
an art, then it’s also true that the skills required for outstanding
salesmanship can be transferred to new sales reps. Companies
that can affect such transfers through training programs will
strengthen themselves for the future.
In the future, formal education will become an important part
of the salesperson’s resume. Companies will recruit graduates
with degrees in sales because they will have already learned
the basics of this new science or technology of sales.
© The HR Chally Group – 19
Sales Management
“The sales manager level has often been
left out of the role of being the key change
manager. And he is the person that can most
effect the motivation, behavior, hiring, firing,
and the true production of value in the people
that he has at his disposal. That layer has
been neglected for way too long. That level
has a great diagnosis and coaching capability,
which must have fundamental goals beyond
revenue to include how many successful
people it can produce.”
Jeff Hodgins
Vice-President, Worldwide Sales Initiatives
and Executive Assistant to the CEO
Storage Tek
M
anagement’s role in sales will evolve as well. No
longer will sales managers be needed primarily
to help close difficult sales. Rather, sales
managers will have to train their people how to earn the
respect of ever-more-sophisticated customers.
“I’ve got to figure out how to develop my
talent pool at the district manager, director,
and vice president level in a faster way. We
can’t begin to create the changes we need
without excellent execution at their levels.”
Scott Schafer, VP of Sales and Marketing
Reynolds & Reynolds
And they will have to learn how to use the intelligence
gathered by their sales force to make strategic selling
decisions, such as which customers to emphasize, which
to refer to telemarketing, and which to phase out.
Management will be called on to explain why the
company is stressing solutions selling and teamwork and
how salespeople can get on board.
20 – © The HR Chally Group
“The sales manager has to embrace a
host of new tools and learn how to use those
tools well enough to teach his people how to
use them. At least from our own perspective
here, we know that our people are often still
using the old ways.”
David Hansen, General Manager
Fleet & Commercial Operations
General Motors Corporation
In turn, managers themselves will have to adopt the same
professionalism and information-gathering habits that they
expect their people to adopt.
Only by doing so can they sit with other managers in their
organizations – such as the heads of finance, operations or
marketing – as equals, offering the valuable input that can
only come from sales.
But for salespeople to cease being islands, product-pushers
or golf pros, they must see some payoff. After all, change
is hard. Management must see to it that the money is there.
But at the same time, they will have to show reps that the
rules have changed. Statements like “My accounts are my
accounts and my job is my job” just won’t cut it any more.
“In a fast moving environment careers
develop quickly. Managers are younger, less
experienced, and typically possess more limited
management ability. But we still have to develop
management ability within a management team
of varied “talent” and within a fast moving, high
pressure, results-driven environment. To have
credibility a sales manager must have had a
good sales record BUT it’s critical to remember
that the best salespeople are not always good
sales managers.”
Paul Woods
Training and Development Director
WorldCom
Sales will continue to be a lucrative and exciting profession.
But those entering the field will have to know up front that
they can’t sell how their fathers or mothers did.
www.chally.com
 Beyond a Career to a Profession
What will be the most difficult challenges
for salespeople and sales managers?

%
Sales managers need to see global picture; market, not sell
Learning more advanced selling techniques, relationship differentiation

Becoming technically proficient in new tools

R Maintaining existing relationships while building new relationships

e Navigating cultural differences/diversity; dealing locally with global approaches

s Selecting and retaining good sales talent

p Adapting to change

o Compensating for longer sales cycles

Integrate with rest of company/teamwork
n
Balancing home and work life
d
Providing value-added solutions
i Dealing with distributors who don’t want to specialize/upgrade technically
n Broadening the peripheral vision for all related topics to effect your customer or your sale; staying current and up-to-date
g Dealing with global competitors you don’t know

Developing a personal sales process

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Professional Sales
Will Be Taught in Our Colleges along with Every Other Business Major

“Companies spend billions of dollars in research and development ... and millions in setting up
infrastructure in their companies. But few companies really invest a whole lot of time or money in
training the people who have to sell, which is, if not the most vital role, among the most vital roles within
a successful organization. You’ve got to have a great sales team and few companies spend a lot of
money doing it. So, if more salespeople could get a formal education it would really be a great thing.”

Carlos Gonzalez, VP Sales, Lennar Corporation

T
he biggest challenge for many salespeople will be learning
that they are part of a team. Traditionally, salespeople
were drawn to the trade because of the entrepreneurial-
like sense of autonomy, independence, and the desire to have
personal control of their own destiny. Many salespeople handle
their own “territories” as their own businesses or profit centers
be they geographically, product line, or customer based. But the
“territories” and private fiefdoms of the past that have been so
dearly controlled will become increasingly obsolete, particularly
as globalization expands the market.

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – 21


“Our U.S. salespeople are now faced with
the challenge to think globally. It no longer
suffices for them to control product design in
Minnesota if they don’t have the infrastructure
and the sales support in Asia to capture the
production order. If they’re working with a
customer during conceptual design all the way
through production, they now have to ascertain
where production will occur and alert our sales
groups in other parts of the world in order to be
able to capture the production business.”
Vinnie Vellucci, Group President
Arrow Electronics, Inc.
The field sales force of tomorrow will have to work more
with inside sales, marketing and product management to
bring success to their companies. No more calling the shots
by themselves out in the field. No more “Here’s what I’m
going to sell, now leave me alone so I can go sell it.”
Companies will be challenged to inculcate their sales force
with this new mindset. They will have to make major
adjustments to existing compensation structures, perhaps
allocating a larger portion of their sales reps’ compensation
to salary and less to commission. This will allow companies
to not-so-subtly exert more influence on the reps, bringing
home the message that the rep works for the entire company,
not for just himself or herself.
Teams
P
roducts and services are becoming more complex.
Selling is not a one-person job anymore. Not only will
salespeople have to get used to working in teams with
their sales colleagues, they will have to get used to working
in shifting, ad hoc teams – virtual teams, depending on the
task or customer at hand.
The challenge for sales managers in such an environment is
creating compensation systems that recognize the individual
contributions of each member of these ad hoc teams.
Salespeople will also have to recognize that the people
“back home” are an important part of the team. They
will be challenged to bring back information about their
customers’ needs to people inside their organizations,
including those in marketing and product development.
Then, having worked with their colleagues to craft
solutions to address their customers’ needs, the sales force
will be expected to deliver the solution to customers in an
easily understandable way.
22 – © The HR Chally Group
These may well be difficult changes for “lone ranger”
reps to make. Sales reps can be too protective or even
possessive in the field. “My accounts are my accounts and
my job is my job, and nothing that management says has
any effect on me.”
That’s why their managers will have to demonstrate the
rationale for the changes, then pick the best teams for the
particular job or customer. They will have to make clear:
1. Why the company is changing its sales
strategy.
2. How reps can succeed in the new
environment.
3. What’s in it for the reps.
Sales managers will have to become excellent communica-
tors, in addition to being coaches and counselors. Above all
they’ll have responsibility to make sure they can maintain
adequate coverage because some reps won’t be able to
make the transition.
“You should expect a certain amount of
turnover. You should be prepared and have
adequate strength in the ranks to be able to make
sure if somebody leaves, you have somebody in
place who can replace the position as quickly
as possible, so you don’t lose your place in the
market. If you make sure as a company that you
systemize these customer relationship building
aspects then you stand a much better chance to
be able to replace them.”
Bijou Kurien
Chief Operating Officer – Watches
Titan Industries Limited, India
Managers will evolve into “grand conductors” of all the
resources their companies can bring to a particular client.
They will prioritize resources, bring together teams, then
motivate those teams to fill individual customers’ needs.
They will also be challenged to serve as watchdogs to
make sure that ideas don’t go too far afield.
To some extent, sales managers may have to insert
themselves between the sales reps and their customers
in order to reinforce the notion that the company – not
the sales rep – owns the customer, say some respondents.
This will take time, effort, attention, and guts on the
manager’s part.
www.chally.com

“Coaching does play a more important role,
than just teaching in the classroom. You go with
your team member out into the field on the site
where he is actually demonstrating his skills
and tell him how to improve his skills. That is
more relevant than classroom training.”
Dhiren Wagle, Country Manager
Bio-Rad Laboratories India Pvt. Ltd.
Complacency
A
ccepting key changes will be an important challenge
for salespeople in the years ahead. Salespeople, like
all of us, can become complacent. They expect
today to be like yesterday. But in the future, they’ll have to
not only accept change but expect and embrace it.
Salespeople face a unique challenge in that, to a large
extent, they can control how much money they make
if they are highly commissioned. If they reach a point
where they’re comfortable, they may see less of a need
to hustle. They may resist finding new customers,
mastering new sales technologies, or learning more
about the industry they serve.
Consequently, sales managers will have to encourage, and
sometimes force, their people – especially the older reps –
to take advantage of productivity-enhancing technologies,
such as PDAs and laptops.
In addition, they will have to create the kinds of
changes that will keep their people enthusiastic,
challenged, and motivated.
Young people raised during “easier” times will represent
a different problem. During the growth decade of the
nineties everybody was buying. Sometimes selling didn’t
require much more than answering the phone. People
raised in these times aren’t used to frequent objections or
very long stress cycles.
“In order to motivate and energize the
young people that are coming up nowadays,
employers are going to have to be able to
understand the nature of the beast and be able
to cater to, and motivate, these kinds of folks.
Some of the things that motivate me aren’t
going to motivate them.”
Robert Parisi
Group President Domestic Market, Dendrite
www.chally.com
Managers will have to be fearless in telling complacent reps
that they must do more than merely maintain their current
base of business. They must take a hard-nosed look at their
reps’ numbers, customer base, and market-at-large, then
make the tough decision as to who stays and who goes.
In the face of such major changes, salespeople themselves
will have to take time out to learn how and why to change
their approach to their jobs if their companies fail to
provide it. They will be challenged to honestly look at
their strengths and weaknesses, and then make decisions
about what they need to do to become the very best
professionals they can.
Hunting for New Business
S
ome executives believe that salespeople were spoiled
in the 1990s by an abundance of business. Many
companies grew through acquisition, and, as one
sales leader says, business was “handed off” to reps. Few
had to scour for new accounts and market share. But now,
they are facing that challenge. The question is, can they act
as hunters and find new business? And can their managers
devise incentive systems that reward salespeople for
rousting up new business?
There is little doubt that only a small percentage will
develop the talent-based skills to excel at new business
development. True “hunters” are hard to find. One key
will be to distinguish those who can hunt (and few
hunters do a good job of customer service after the
close) and those who can maintain and penetrate existing
accounts. Often the skills for both are so different they
are not interchangeable.
It’s possible that cost control issues will assign the
“hunting” role to field reps supported by “farmers” who
remain inside and continue to support and penetrate the
newly acquired customer.
Managers will be challenged to match salespeople to these
very specific but different objectives and monitor their
salespersons’ performance and activity goals.
Whether selling from inside or out in the field, the product
line and services will become more complex and their
market complexity will also grow.
“As we introduce more and more new
products, how do we keep our sales force from
becoming generalists? How do we structure our
sales force and create channels within the sales
force to properly address the different markets
that are available to us?”
Crawford Lipsey
Vice President & General Manager, Holophane
© The HR Chally Group – 23
Without micromanaging, they will have to make
sure their people line up their appointments to
yield the greatest productivity, make prospecting
calls where appropriate, and, above all, identify the
biggest opportunities.
While working to develop quality salespeople, sales
managers must still respect salespersons’ rights and
expectations to have a rich life outside their job.
They will have to respect a diversity of lifestyles and
cultures, and make an effort to learn what motivates
one salesperson over another.
At the same time, the salesperson himself or herself
will have to take responsibility for balancing work and
home life. Given the ease with which people can work
at home – laptops, cell phones, PDAs, etc. – the need to
do so will become greater than ever.
“In two or three years we’ll be able to
access I00% online, even having more and
more training available online rather than
face-to-face classes. And when office space
becomes a premium and we can’t afford it,
reps working from home will need the tools
that they can use to manage their accounts
and manage their funnel. You know, it’s funny,
when we talk to some of our competitors and
other people that we know in the industry you
would think are probably utilizing a big CRM
package, sadly, they have had to strip it down
to next-to-nothing just to be able to live with
it because they just can’t work with anything
that’s so complex.”
Donna Walker, Director of Sales Operations
Corporate Express
The Push/Pull of the Global Market
G
lobalization may prove to be one of the
most difficult challenges facing tomorrow’s
salespeople.
24 – © The HR Chally Group
“Since salespeople and managers are
typically required to operate across multiple
business sectors, our big challenge is how to
segment the markets and structure the sales
organization and then finding and developing
the right people, e.g., AON is now recruiting
recognized industry experts from key sectors
and then educating them in the insurance
business.”
Patrick Thomas, Sales Director, AON
Rather than service just one site, a salesperson may
sometimes have to service multiple sites scattered
around the world. They will have to learn how to
think globally, become broader in their thinking, and
understand what their customers’ needs are around the
world. High-performing salespeople may be asked to
become global account managers.
Meanwhile, managers will have to learn how to motivate
their salespeople, who may be spread around the globe, to
use technology, so they can keep in touch with each other
and their peers. It’s part of fostering the team mentality.
Rather than adopting a simplistic push mentality,
tomorrow’s salespeople will have to work with their
marketing departments to create “pull” for their products.
In other words, rather than dumping products onto their
distribution channels, tomorrow’s sales force will have to
help the dealer move that product off his shelf.
In such a system, the sales manager will have to
facilitate good relationships between the manufacturer’s
salespeople, the dealers, and the end consumers. They
will have to exhibit transparency in their operations,
fairness, a standardized and reliable system, and product
and service quality.
The sales manager will also have to help establish
systems that facilitate proper service to the dealer, say
the respondents. They’ll be called on to identify areas and
avenues for growth for the company’s products.
Top sales executives predict that good salespeople will
be in demand in most sectors of the economy in the
years ahead. Consequently, sales managers will have to
adjust themselves to the fact that they may be able to
hold on to their best reps for briefer and briefer periods
of time because competitors will sometimes make an
offer that’s just too good to be passed up. Tomorrow’s
sales managers will be challenged to get new reps up
to speed as fast as possible, and to make sure that the
transition from the old to the new rep is as smooth as
possible, so as not to disrupt the company’s relationship
with its customers.
www.chally.com
The Science of Selling
R
eps will be challenged to view their profession as
a science, not as an art. Instead of playing golf and
buying lunch, they will have to become students of
their clients and the industry they serve. Some sales leaders
believe that in order to truly understand their customers,
salespeople will have to spend several months actually
working in a customer’s organization. This way, the
salesperson is drawn away from focusing on his company’s
products, and drawn toward understanding what drives his
customer’s business.
“It involves really looking under the covers
hard enough to figure out not just how to serve
your client, but your client’s client, and not just
your client’s client, but also the industry that
they’re part of.”
Dan Garrett, VP & Managing Partner of
Global Health Solutions
Computer Sciences Corporation
Solid relationships breed customer loyalty, which helps
reps and customers weather such storms as price hikes or
logistics hang-ups.
Becoming consultative sellers, rather than peddlers of
products with identifiable features and benefits, will be
a challenge for salespeople in future years. Salespeople
will have to help their customers identify their needs, then
translate them into action.
“Even when we are talking about large
construction equipment or any other major
equipment industry, customers are going to
be in the service lane. They are not interested
in buying products, they are interested in
buying service. That’s the biggest mindset
challenge I’m facing.”
Glenville da Silva, Vice President & General
Manager Ingersoll-Rand (India) Limited
A further challenge for salespeople will be to handle a growing
number of customers. As they become more successful and
capture more of an account’s business, they also adopt more
of the account’s and the company’s inevitable problems. So,
instead of thinking and acting strategically, they may spend
more time fixing errors, resolving pricing discrepancies,
finding the status of orders, etc. In this environment, they
may have difficulty keeping their spirits up. They may think
the ship is sinking when, in reality, they may simply have
gained more of the account’s business.
www.chally.com
Manager’s Role
“Most sales managers also sell themselves.
Their strengths for building a team are generally
weak. They need to be trained to coach a larger
team and also to guide them on a day-to-day
basis. Most sales managers look only at sales
targets and achieving them. They also have to
take care of the team working for them – training
them, making them aware, going out with them,
correcting them on a daily basis, giving them
keys for improvement so that sales goals and the
corporate goals are achieved. The profile of the
sales manager has to be enhanced so that they
are accountable not only for sales but also for the
quality of salesmen.”
Ganesh Srinivasan, General Manager
Qatar, Gulf Incon
Managers will have to motivate their salespeople in the face
of such challenges. They’ll also have to help solve back-end
problems, so their reps are free to do what they do best – sell.
(The customers will appreciate the improvements as well!)
In addition, managers will have to help their people develop
and articulate the value proposition for the customer, instead
of worrying merely about who hit their quota.
Some top sales leaders believe that sales managers may
have to become “managing executives” over particular
industries. In other words, they will have to become experts
on the industry into which their people sell.
“Sales managers, now, are different animals.
They actually have to think and they need to be
more specialized. The sales managers now need
to focus on their discipline. Now their discipline
could be ERP systems, it could be integration of
Legacy systems, it could be specific intellectual
property in mining or in manufacturing, it might
be use of Microsoft application products and so
on. But, it’s very difficult to find a sales manager
that has a grasp across the board so what
you tend to do is now have overriding sales
managers looking after a bunch of specialist
sales managers who we can guide in the broad
sales principles, but the industry knowledge or
the focus on particular discipline comes lower
down in the organization. You’re having to have
quite skilled sales managers lower down the
organization. Two levels down from me we have
very skilled sales managers.”
J. Miller, Sales Director, AST
© The HR Chally Group – 25
They will have to understand the market situation, product
and service trends, and more. They will especially have to
know their competitors inside and out: how big they are,
how much in revenues they generate, how much they spend
on IT, what kinds of contracts they sign, etc.
Sales managers will be expected to work more closely with
their companies’ marketing departments to help identify areas of
growth for the company, be it new products, pricing structures,
or channels of distribution. In a sense, sales managers will be
challenged to act more like marketing managers.
At the same time, they may face another challenge: more
salespeople reporting to them. Without excellent in-house
support, terrific information systems, and first-class
marketing support, they simply won’t be able to give each
of those reps the attention they need and deserve. They risk
getting swallowed up in administrative duties.
“Managers should understand the capability
of their salespeople and how to transform
an individual into part of a great team. Two
years ago, even last year, one salesman could
provide anything because the product was very
simple. Now you have to select your people
based on the solution you need: a salesman
that knows the automotive industry and is
expert in CRM, for example. So we will sell this
salesman on becoming the CRM salesperson.
And the other guy would be very good in selling
boxes. I will divide into two or three types of
salesman. Totally different customers require
very different types of salesperson.”
Bapak Paulus Bambang
Managing Director, Astragraphia
Thinking Financially
A
s companies look to the future, they know that
they will enjoy less margin for error in servicing
their accounts. There’s less margin opportunity.
Companies will have to simply walk away from business
if, after careful analysis, they calculate they won’t receive
an adequate margin on it. Or, they will ask their sales reps
to deliver an invoice for the technical help he or someone
else in the company gave that customer, for example. That’s
difficult for a rep to do, especially if he or she doesn’t
understand finance and the cost of operations. Reps will
have to become educated on profit and loss, the value of
money, and even credit terms.
26 – © The HR Chally Group
“The challenge of “global” sales that faces
our reps has become infinitely more complex.
Managing the customer’s total “delivery” involves
a lot more than land and air delivery. They have
to know shipping, transfer, and local difference in
logistics, laws, and tariffs all over the world. And
be able to calculate that all in real time.”
Joel Rossman
Vice President of International Sales, UPS
Reps will have to fight the urge to fall into the price trap
with their customers. The more knowledge they have of the
industry and their customers’ financial health as well as that of
their own company, the less they’ll talk with their customers
about price, and the more they’ll talk about value.
The best salespeople in the future may often come from
non-sales backgrounds, and they will have some domain or
line expertise prior to getting into sales. They will be strong
communicators and aggregators of information who, with
some training, can learn how to put together solutions that
will meet their clients’ requirements.
“We’re looking for other salesperson profiles
today. They still need the basic sales skills and
a strategic approach. They have to speak the
language of partnership with customer. Meaning
discuss, advise, and coach from the point of
view of: How does the end user purchase?
What should be the sales price in their shops
and so forth? But the old merchandisers are a
dead breed. Some customers even have their
own merchandisers today. The consequence
is that there is a need for more “heavy hitter”
salespeople and that is driving salaries up.”
Lars Schmidt, Sales Director
Nestlé Denmark A/S
Moreover, reps will have to get used to being “on the line”
with their customers. No longer will they able to sell and
run. In the past, they could tell the customer, “You will see
improved results if you buy this product.” In the future they
will have to come back to the customer and prove that that
customer did indeed benefit from the product or service.
www.chally.com
 The Information Age Will Drive
the Global Economy
What impact will globalization have on sales?

Dealing with global competitors you don’t know

%
Requires a comprehensive global strategy and selling approach
Competing with offshore prices, margins, cost management
R No real difference from my vantage point
e Keeping expert different laws, regulations, tariffs, currency values, etc.
s Overcoming cultural challenges
p 24/7 support
o Opportunities
n Dealing locally with global approaches
d Developing supply chain expertise
i Drive need for common processes, systems, and metrics
n Internal conflict when you want to sell globally but buy locally
g Introducing disruptive technologies from global sources
Developing the right product mix

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Salespeople Will Be the Business Diplomats of the Future

“Developing and maintaining our global presence is key. Larger clients demand global solutions. We need
the capability to deliver wider ranges of products and services across a wider geography to a wider range of
industry sectors.”
Brian Roffee, Business Development Manager, Schlumberger/Sema

“The economy today dictates globalization. When that happens the lowest cost producer will move products to
the highest price markets. That flow will start to be constrained only by the logistics of movement. There will be more
competition so the role sales has to play is to hold the local advantage, and learn how to keep the advantage.”
Ram Sharma, Managing Director, Becton Dickinson India Pvt. Ltd

G lobalization remains as a dominating challenge for all growing companies, and will continue to be in the future.
Regardless of whether aggressive companies are pursuing new markets around the world, or are defending
themselves from the incursions of foreign competitors on their own turf, globalization is here today.
Globalization will also tend to level the competitive playing field.

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – 27

 “Globalization will dramatically increase
demand for quick change because good ideas,
best practices, benchmarks spread quickly, and
therefore will be quickly identified and adapted
by competition.”
Claus Oldenburg, Head of Nordic
Nordic Novartis Ophthalmics
Think Globally, Act Locally
C
ompanies that already sell in different markets
worldwide as well as those who are now seeking
new overseas markets must reconcile themselves to
the fact that they have to adopt processes that may differ
dramatically from those they’re accustomed to. No longer
do they have the luxury of focusing on just one culture, one
marketing and production plan, and one sales force. They
must, on the one hand, learn how to maintain their own
“home court” local advantage, in the face of new, or just
stronger, existing overseas competitors, while still reshaping
themselves to establish a global advantage, too. Marketing
their knowledge, products, and services throughout the
world requires a new “international” approach.
“Management will need global supporting
partners (one-stop shopping) to help them
make the existing management process more
simple and effective. They’ll have to work with
specialized consultants to smooth out their effort
to adopt a global approach to penetrate and
serve the market, i.e., use Deloitte & Touche or
internationally capable training companies and
so forth.”
Peter Ladishensky, Export Director
William Demant – Oticon Denmark A/S
Perhaps the biggest lesson that companies will have to
learn is that they won’t have as much control of their
destinies as they did when they sold locally.
As the successful companies become multinational, they
will diversify geographically to maximize the use of
talent, cost efficiencies, and distribution effectiveness.
Production may be based in one country, marketing in
another, and sales throughout the world. The winners will
learn how to continue to make their people feel important
in spite of great distances, language barriers, and cultural
idiosyncrasies. Otherwise, workers get lost in the shuffle.
28 – © The HR Chally Group
“There is a paradox of globalization vs. social
responsibility. Globalization drives economies of scale,
requiring increasingly higher volume supply chains which
have more significant impact at the local level, people’s
lives, the environment, etc. Social responsibility drives
ethical considerations, which require understanding
and managing the local issues.”
Ian Williams
Group Development Director, Kingfisher
Perhaps the biggest challenge for companies pursuing new
overseas markets is figuring out to what extent they need to
accommodate local interests, and to what extent they need
to project one global image throughout the world.
“As the number of alternatives goes up in a
global environment, our opportunity becomes a
little bit more difficult. As the number of business
situations or considerations that we’re promoting
goes up, the more complex it may be to manage
our company through to a sales success. (It) is also
a challenge to interface with some of our larger
global customers when they have a dispersed
buying center, and we need commonality of
approach but with the ability to customize locally.”
Rick Butler, Director
Global Sales Compensation & Recognition
Lucent Technologies
What kind of a sales force should the company deploy? Should
they be local citizens, or should they be people from the
company’s country of origin who circulate among the countries
in which their customers have outlets? Some top sales officers
steer their companies toward expatriates, who move from country
to country. They can learn the unique environments in which they
are stationed, but still have broad enough experience with the
company to project some uniformity throughout the world.
The tough news is that not all salespeople will be capable of
making the transition and learning the new skills – technical,
cultural, and business – that will be required to compete in the
global marketplace.
“I think globalization will bring about more
possibilities. More financial products will be needed.
And eventually all this will be just too much for a
lot of agents that cannot keep up and will leave the
business. They will leave a bigger path for those
that are willing and want to upgrade themselves.”
Tan Gim Cheong
Financial Services District Manager
Asia, AIA Insurance
www.chally.com

“Globalization means we must have a
stronger understanding of critical changes
needed to fit every market, etc. Technically,
we need to work all over Europe’s 17 different
languages.”
Bent Varby, European Service Director
Applied Biosystems
Salespeople have to learn the idioms their customers
can understand, literally and figuratively. They’ll not
only have to understand the culture, but also embrace
it. Some sales executives won’t send salespeople into a
new country without training on that country’s culture
and history.
Salespeople in new environments have to move beyond
cultural awareness to what might be called cultural
embodiment, and thoroughly absorb the new culture,
then learn how to operate within it while still maintaining
their own identity and heritage.
Salespeople will have to learn the subtle nuances of the
new markets. For example, those who are used to fairly
quick deal-making may be in for a shock when selling in
far eastern cultures, where as many as 40 meetings may
be conducted before any business is actually transacted.
Personal buyer/seller relationships in the global
market may be even more important than they are in
domestic selling.
“We do business on a worldwide basis,
have offices in 90 countries. It’s really about
understanding the cultures, the customs, the
people, and the nuances of doing business. In
each one of those parts of the world, whether
it be China, Japan, or South America, it isn’t
just taking an American product and say I’m
selling it. That just doesn’t work. It requires a
global sales force, hopefully more local folks
than ex-pats who have the local knowledge
base anyway.”
Gary McArthur, VP-Corporate Development
Harris Corporation
Companies trying to penetrate new overseas markets
may have only a short window of opportunity in which
to do so. While that window is open, salespeople
have to get up to speed quickly on the local market
and its buyers. That means that for that period, at
www.chally.com
least, what they know about their own companies’
products and services, how well they understand their
customers’ general business needs, and how well they
communicate that to their new customers counts for
more than who they know. That’s a real challenge for
companies that have built their success in their country
of origin through relationship selling.
The big “positioning” challenge for companies selling
to worldwide markets will often be coming across as
the “shop around the corner.” Can they present their
material in the vernacular of the country at hand? Can
they hire people from the country (or familiar with
the country), who are part of the local culture, but
also willing to become part of the global company’s
culture as well?
Another challenge will be convincing customers in
different countries that the products and services
provided by the multinational seller are just as good in
total quality, compatibility, and serviceability as those
made in their own country. Today, Americans tend to
assume that products made in America are of higher
quality than those made elsewhere, even though that
isn’t always the case. So, too, other nationalities will
identify with their own.
Similarly, local buyers across the globe will feel that
only local, home-grown sellers can truly understand
their needs – a challenge to salespeople called on to be
quick studies of their new customers.
Multinational sellers will have to reconcile themselves
to the fact that their ability to penetrate overseas
markets will be limited. If you’re in Italy, you’re going
to buy what’s made locally in Italy. Sellers that “force-
feed” themselves to their new prospective customers
will see their efforts backfire, and will most likely find
they have less control over pricing.
American companies may find it more difficult to accept
these limitations than sellers from other countries,
because of what might be called U.S. citizens’ innate
arrogance. Too many U.S. citizens expect the rest
of the world to conform to America’s way of doing
things. Europeans, who have traditionally been less
insulated than their American counterparts, may enjoy
an advantage in this regard.
“No longer is the foreign buyer expecting to
do business the American way.”
Carlos Gonzalez, VP Sales
Lennar Corporation
© The HR Chally Group – 29
Some companies want to offer identical products and
services that look and feel the same in every country they
enter. They want to make the world one big, homogenous
market. They’ll find themselves fighting a losing battle.
More successful will be those companies that tailor their
offerings to the local culture and business norms.
Market Entry
E O
ntry strategy has become critical in today’s worldwide
markets. Companies have to think through their strategy
carefully. “What markets will we pursue?” “Who are
the competitors?” “What are the returns?” “Will we employ
local dealers in geographies which lack a sales and marketing
infrastructure, or will we send in our own people?”
To be the first to enter a new global market requires
quick penetration because good ideas, best practices,
and benchmarks are quickly identified and adopted by
the competition.
“Business needs to benchmark themselves
globally. You have to spread your net far and
wide and look at companies and businesses
in the Far East and the farthest corners of the
world. Benchmark where the same products
and services could be done differently. Unless
that is done, you are always at risk of someone
coming at your business and eating away your
market share from some other corner of the
world without notice and without you really
being prepared for it.”
Vinay Rajadhaksha
Software Business Unit Head, Europe
L&T Infotech
On the other hand, perhaps many companies will have to
follow the leader after the market has been softened, and
try to grab some market share.
The sales force will still prove to be a crucial element.
It is they who must “read” the market and its customers
to find out exactly what they want and need. Customers
in a buyer’s Denmark office might buy more of product
“A” than those in the buyer’s Cairo office. Sales and
marketing strategies must be adjusted accordingly.
Selling in new markets will epitomize the concept
of “situational selling” and tailoring the company’s
offerings to specific geographic needs.
30 – © The HR Chally Group
Meanwhile, sellers will adjust organizationally for
this new foray. Those who believe they can attack
multinational targets using a cookie-cutter organizational
setup will struggle. Sellers have to take time to set
up chains of accountability and ownership. The task
becomes doubly complex when both the seller and the
buyer are multinational.
The New Buyers
ne challenge facing sellers in worldwide markets
is determining how coordinated their new buyers
really are. Can the central office in Johannesburg
tell London or New York what to buy?
Nationalism is frequently seen as a number-one priority,
particularly as world tensions mount.
“The one good thing that came out of
September 11th is the fact that a lot of places
that would have outsourced things overseas
are beginning to think that maybe we need to
keep them within the states.”
J. Christopher Brunjes
Director of Business Development
Mindbank Consulting Group
Some respondents believe the purchasing function of
multinational companies is indeed becoming more
centralized. They believe that the Internet and other
technological and communications tools are hastening
the trend.
They worry about their international customers’ ability
and desire to lump together all of their worldwide
purchases and seek a discount on all. To avoid the
discount dilemma, sellers have to understand how
their products and services affect the profit-and-loss
of their international customers, and then quantify the
value they bring to those customers. In many ways,
this is no different from the challenge facing one-
country-only companies.
Some sellers have set up global accounts teams to present
one company face to their multinational customers.
Others have turned to what they refer to as “enterprise
selling.” In other words, salespeople throughout the
world keep in touch with one another in order to develop
one face and one solution to the customer in all its far-
www.chally.com
flung locations. In those countries in which the seller
lacks its own sales force it may contract with local
companies to help in the effort.
The challenge for companies using the “enterprise
selling” approach is to make sure that the sales team
in Spain knows what the team in Brazil is doing, so
one doesn’t commit to something without the others’
knowledge. The other challenge is how to credit the
sale if teams are working on one multinational buyer in
several parts of the world simultaneously.
Some survey respondents believe the centralization of
some multinational buyers is “more sizzle than steak”.
They say that some so-called “global procurement
offices” exist primarily to drive down sellers’ prices,
not to coordinate worldwide purchases. Others say that
global contracts stand for little more than “Give me
the same product at the same price everywhere in the
world.” Sellers have two choices: they can fight that
trend, or they can work to provide what their customers
want (so long as margins don’t creep too low). Most top
sales executives believe that globalization will produce
many more positive effects for those companies that
address it well.
“One of the best results is because we use
people with different job expertise in different
countries. For sales, a new culture gets
ingrained. For example, in India personalized
sales calls are extremely important. When
you go into sales, the customer expects
to see you before he strikes the deals. In
America, a lot of key sales calls happen on
the telephone, well, it doesn’t happen in India.
We are now beginning to see that in India a
lot of customers are happy to have a lot of
discussions on the phone including technical
discussions. That’s one change coming from
the effects of globalization.”
Anand Shankaran
General Manager – Sales Wipro Infotech
Companies seeking new overseas markets will have to
build both a sales and service infrastructure that will
satisfy their new customers. Local incumbents will
hold the advantage since they already provide sales
and service from the country in which they operate.
Again, because competition in new markets will
increase rapidly, newcomers won’t have much time to
establish their sales and service capabilities.
www.chally.com
At the same time, sellers must be prepared to deal with
buyers that are truly integrated on a global scale. In such
a case, the seller has to establish a true global footprint
for products and services.
“The worst thing is that you have a sort of
a “theater” or local area approach to a global
solution, and the customer really does want
to be handled “globally.” Then you’re piecing
together reports all over the place.”
Scott Schafer, VP of Sales and Marketing
Reynolds & Reynolds
Financial Forces
C
ompanies of all types i.e., those seeking new
global markets as well as locals encountering
new competitors from overseas, will have to
accommodate themselves to some new realities. Lower
tariffs bring lower prices, making it necessary for the
hometown incumbents to improve their efficiencies.
Companies will now find themselves at the mercy of the
global market. If that market goes into a downturn, so
too does your company. What’s more, in an environment
of worldwide recession, sellers look to markets that are
growing, and they price accordingly. The result is that
the competition stiffens that much more in a recessionary
environment.
Many overseas opportunities – at least from the
perspective of American and many European companies
– are emerging Third World countries. Can companies
entering these markets help Third World economies
grow? That spells opportunity for global competitors
with superior selling and marketing techniques.
The Bright Side of Competition
C
ompanies who themselves are facing competition
on their home turf from overseas competitors
have to learn about a new set of adversaries.
Some new competitors will operate far more efficiently
than the local companies. Unless they can adapt quickly,
locals will be swallowed up.
© The HR Chally Group – 31
Companies based in countries in which labor is cheap,
for example, may be better relationship-builders than
those in countries where labor is high-priced. But as
the countries of those in the former category develop,
the cost of labor will rise, and they will be challenged
to operate leaner in order to compete with their new
offshore competitors.
On the darker side, new competition brings new
pressures to any company. Worse, if some of these new
competitors offer products of low quality, they can give
the industry a black eye. Everyone loses. But on the
positive side, global penetration can help smooth the
cycles that will occur in any one economy.

Local companies should also expect the newcomer to
raid their sales ranks. There’s no way to avoid it. That’s
why incumbents should be developing adequate strength
in the ranks to withstand the threat.
Globalization opens up new opportunities for
companies to leverage, i.e., “global best practices.”
Not only do new competitors bring new people to the
market, but they also bring new ideas. Companies that
are willing to learn from them will be more successful.
They’ll open their eyes to new ways of doing things
instead of naively assuming they’re safe. Competitors
that redesign their business processes quickest will be
able to capitalize on the opportunity.
“There’s an advantage for a company
that’s global, when we’re not doing real
well on our earnings locally our Asia group
is kicking butt. (With) globalization of a
company, you can ride the benefits of the
dollar or of seasonality, and be (protected)
by being geographically counter cyclical.”
James Velordi, Director of Solutions Selling
PolyOne Corporation

Similarly, customers in countries in which new

offshore sellers are setting up shop will also become
more educated and more demanding. Sellers’ costs
will become more transparent, as will their quality and
general reputation. Some respondents welcome new
overseas competitors because they can help build a
market for their products.

32 – © The HR Chally Group www.chally.com

 Internet Technology
Will Be the Sales “Kit” of the Future
What support functions or technologies will be most
critical to support successful sales forces?

% SFA

Communication tools, Web, chat, etc.

R
e Internet and wireless tools
s
Stratifying customer in importance through CRM
p
o Provide customers answers in real time
n
d Aggregating customer data in a user friendly way at the point of action

i
Security
n
g Used to install accountability

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80%

Information
Will Be the Most Critical Support Tool for the Successful Sales Force of the Future

I
n spite of “information overload,” salespeople who can integrate information about their customers, their own
companies, and the industry they serve will be the most successful in the years ahead. Companies that can pass data
to their salespeople quickly and help salespeople pass information back from the field, will be out front.

IT, MIS, and CRM all add up to instant, real-time information about customers. The key will be making that information
easy to access and use. Wireless technology will offer the most dramatic gains.

That said, many companies will be challenged to balance the benefits of data with the warmth and trust of personal contact
between customer and salesperson. Electronic tools are only adjuncts to the selling process, not substitutes for it.

“Yes, you can look at your client on this computer screen, but if you don’t have ... eyeball-to-
eyeball contact, you lose the feeling. Selling is basically a transfer of feelings. If people can feel what
you say, they’re buying. They will listen to your solutions.”
Tan Gim Cheong, Financial Services District Manager, Asia, AIA Insurance

www.chally.com © The HR Chally Group – 33

Learning About the Customer
T
echnology tools can help salespeople learn about
their customers, including their customers’ new
product development efforts and financial health,
and even about their customers’ customers. Without that
information, field sales won’t understand customers’ needs
and circumstances, and won’t develop the best solutions to
address those needs.
With information, the salesperson can walk into the
customer’s office as a consultant. Consultants research the
client’s business, find out the trends of the past few years,
the client’s profit-and-loss, etc. They also study the industry
in which the client operates to gain the right perspective
on the immediate issue or problem. With information,
salespeople can do the same for valued customers.
CRM systems can flag exceptions, too. If a major customer
or dealer has failed to buy anything, the company can act
quickly and contact the customer, avoiding unpleasant
surprises at the end of the month or quarter. The customer
may be unhappy. Perhaps something has happened in his
territory. Maybe the customer needs training in a product,
service, or process.
Learning the Customer’s Business
I
nformation can also help salespeople understand their
own companie’s financial situation, and their potential
role in improving it. Accessible accounting systems,
for example, will help salespeople understand revenue
and margin per client, and whether a particular client is
profitable or not.
When handled properly, customer information will help the
top sellers become much more sophisticated in how they
deploy their salespeople and service their clients.
“(Envision) an electronic war room, in
which a reviewer regularly examines key data
from the company’s top accounts, in order to
make sure that the company understands the
client “drivers” and makes the proper contacts
with the client.”
J. Miller, Sales Director, AST
34 – © The HR Chally Group
Up-to-the-minute information about inventory provides
accurate product-availability information, and will help
track significant trends and avoid significant losses in the
form of dead or slow-moving inventory.
In retailing, information will actually shift responsibilities
back to the supplier. This gives rise to the so-called
“category manager,” whose job it is to monitor inventory
movement and help the retailer make crucial pricing or
other business decisions.
Information about competition and new product
developments in different parts of the country or globally
will direct the sales force and focus efforts.
Information Anywhere
F
or data to be useful, it must be portable, or easily
accessed. Wireless technology is a sine qua non. IT
will provide sales reps with a three-pronged real-
time information tool, including communication:
1. With the customer
2. With the home office
3. With other salespeople
They’ll get updates about a client prior to getting out of their
cars, or retrieve e-mails while traveling to their next call.
They’ll know in real time if a new lead has materialized, or
a customer has called with a problem.
Conversely, salespeople will report the results of the sales
call, and let the office know immediately what product,
service, or other new opportunity may be available and to
what price the customer may respond.
The salesperson’s role as the “point person” between the
customer and the business will be reinforced.
“It’s about the salesperson bringing the
organization to the client, and having the
salesperson bring the client to the organization.”
Craig Wilson
Director of Corporate Marketing
International Paper
Productivity will improve, because the salesperson
doesn’t have to contact or, worse yet, return to the office
to get information.
www.chally.com
The third leg of the stool is a salesperson’s ability to
communicate with other salespeople in the field. This will
be critical for servicing national or global customers to
ensure that tactics are coordinated and consistent.
Enhancing the Sales Process
T
echnology will improve efficiency and reduce costs.
Video conferencing saves the time and expense
of flying four or five salespeople and experts to
a client’s site to talk about supply chain solutions, an
unexpected design problem, or nearly any other immediate
customer challenge.
By posting tools like sales presentations on their Web site,
companies will ensure that all of its sales force communicate
a consistent and professional message to customers.
In addition, technology will spread business and customer
intelligence throughout the entire organization, provided
salespeople are willing to allow that to happen. For example,
if one salesperson has prepared a customer presentation but
for some reason cannot make the call, they can transmit the
presentation to someone who can.
“It’s kind of like handing the baton off
and managing that knowledge and moving
it around. This way, the company makes the
next guy just as effective as you were going to
be when you go out there.”
Greg Sink, VP/GM, Federal Signal
This is the dream of customer relationship management.
Call it “profiling the customer,” where every contact
made with a customer, either in the field, over the phone,
or via the Internet, is noted, regardless of which division
in the company is involved. All information is stored in a
central data warehouse, which is accessible by authorized
personnel in the company. Salespeople will more easily
stand in for each other when necessary.
Some believe that today’s IT systems will lead to “lifetime
account management systems,” where information about a
customer will be stored in one centralized location, from
the beginning of the marketing cycle, through qualification,
sales, and even through the point where that customer stops
being a customer and becomes a prospect again.
Envision salespeople firing up their computers in the morning
and viewing the important events of the day, not only to
review whom to call on, but what is shipping today, etc.
www.chally.com
With a good tracking system in place, helping everyone in
the organization work from the same page, companies will
pull ahead of their competitors. Without the system and
a management team to encourage everyone to document
what they’re doing, companies will lose ground when a top
salesperson leaves. With the system, if a star salesperson
leaves, another will be able to quickly step into his or her
slot, provided the tracking system is in place and being
updated properly.
Technology will also support the pre-sales marketing
effort in ways never before imagined. As markets get more
complex, more diverse, and difficult to address through
face-to-face channels: Internet, email, and other new
technologies will emerge to fill the gap.
“The significant message that we have at
Interface Flooring Systems, is very difficult
to funnel through our sales force alone. We
need to expand our methods of targeting
opportunities, which are our customers. It’s
critical for us to find ways to communicate to
these prospects, particularly those who have
never heard from us before. We will be taking
advantage of electronic means to reach that
large audience and not just counting on our
sales force alone.”
Claude Ouiment, Sr. VP Sales & Marketing
Interface Flooring Systems, Inc.
What’s in it for the customer?
C
ompanies will provide added value to their customers
by sharing some of the information collected.
Transaction histories will be particularly valuable,
as will information on the amount of money the customer
spent on downtime or data to support consolidated billing or
maintenance histories, as only three examples. But sharing
this kind of data will be tricky: might customers use it the
next time they put their business out to bid?
Since tomorrow’s customers will expect salespeople to
be equipped to help them analyze their businesses, as
well as provide real-time information on their products or
services, salespeople will need full access to every kind of
information that IT can provide them.
With more information at their fingertips, more knowledge
about their customers, their buying trends and histories,
salespeople will provide their customers with customized
solutions. This will apply not only to the largest accounts
© The HR Chally Group – 35
but also many of the smaller ones. Customization will
extend beyond the salesperson in the field. As sellers
gather data about their customers across different
departments, e.g., billing, manufacturing, shipping,
etc., they will construct customized solutions that cut
across the departments. They’ll form a virtual team with
expertise on individual customers at multiple levels
within the customer’s organization and their own. And,
of course, they’ll transmit all that information to the field
sales rep’s PDA, as he or she serves as the spokesmen
of the larger organization. By doing so, they’ll create a
consistency that otherwise could not be achieved.
Customer Service Team
W
hile information in the hands of salespeople is
crucial to their success, so too is good customer
service backup. A good customer service
team will make the salesperson’s job in the field more
productive. Customer service will “soften the beaches”
for field reps. They can inform customers when their
rep will be available to call on them, and they can send
a catalog and promotional material to them prior to the
personal visit. By the time the rep meets the client, much
of the groundwork could have been laid, and sales can
begin the conversation at a more strategic level.
In addition, a well organized, well informed, and very
“professional” customer service team can help field reps
avoid pesky, time-consuming problems and service issues
that drain away valuable selling time. The information will
also help the salesperson become a more complete resource
to customers. This will make a salesperson’s “face time”
with customers more productive. Real-time order tracking,
order changes, pricing availability, and product tracking will
be available at the salesperson’s fingertips.
The Internet will help dramatically. Commodity oriented
questions will be naturals. “What’s the price?” “When
can we expect delivery?” “Is this item in stock?” will all
be answered via the Internet. As a result, the role of the
customer service department will change. As companies
educate their customers on how to use the Internet to get
their questions answered, fewer customer service people
will be needed to man the phones. These departments
will either be downsized, or the people working in
them will spend time proactively penetrating existing
customers and allow the field sales force to concentrate
on developing new accounts.
In some cases, these new technologies for information retrieval
and communications will allow customer service people
to become product specialists. As product complexity and
product offerings proliferate, salespeople won’t be expected
to be experts on all of them. Rather, they will continue to
36 – © The HR Chally Group
develop their expertise in managing the relationships with
their customers, while other specialists focus on supporting
specific products.
In addition to a stronger customer service team, tomorrow’s
sales force will rely more than ever on their peers in marketing.
With their help, the reps in the field will be able to target their
accounts and specialize their selling tactics accordingly.
Human Resources
W
inning companies who build knowledgeable,
proactive human resource departments will be
the most successful. Unfortunately, in many of
today’s companies, HR and sales have not been on the
best of terms, partly because HR has been perceived as
administrative paper-pushers instead of true resources, to
the detriment of both. In fact, a good HR department can
help attract, develop, and retain the very best people.
“If you don’t have people in place with the
proper skills, you may have a product or service,
but you might not have anyone to sell it.”
Sudipto Gangopadhyay, General Manager
HSBC Bank, Mumbai
Offering training in sales skills will always be an important role
for HR. But just as important is offering continuing training on
information technology – the tools that reps will depend on to
help find and provide important client information.
Some – maybe much – of that training will be presented
online. Companies can no longer afford to keep a new
rep at the office for a month or more to receive training.
Rather, reps can get some training up front, then go out
into the field and supplement it with on-line training.
“Because we’re in the retail sales business,
it’s critical for our employees to be in their seats
while the doors are open, which doesn’t leave
us a whole lot of time to take them out of their
seats and train them and do the things that are
necessary to really get them to the level that
they need to be to sell as well as they can. So
we’re instituting things like e-learning, where
they can actually be at home or at their desk
instead of taking them out of the branches and
bringing them into a classroom setting.”
Frankie Nesbit-Lofton, Senior Vice
President/Director of Sales and Service
Hibernia National Bank
www.chally.com
This isn’t to say that classroom training will go away.
There’s nothing better than the impromptu back-and-forth
that takes place in the classroom. Nevertheless, companies
will figure out how to supplement that face-to-face training
with good, Web-based training.
Don’t Get Carried Away
T
op sales executives caution against relying on data
to the exclusion of face-to-face customer contact
and other traditional selling methods.
“Selling is not mathematics. It’s all about
relations and about emotions and fears,
desires, hates. Many companies lose sight
of this fact in their desire to compile the best,
most comprehensive, most up-to-the-minute
data systems.”
Ram Sharma, Managing Director
Becton Dickinson India Pvt. Ltd.
CEOs of companies will make personal calls on their
top-level counterparts among their customer base, to
impress upon them how important they are to the company.
Important customers will expect that kind of attention.
Nor can IT replace the strength of a company’s brand
or products, or the trusting relationships between the
company and its salespeople, and between salespeople
and their customers.
In fact, top executives are expected to empower their
salespeople in the field to make more on-the-spot decisions.
Customers demand it. But companies will spell out the
parameters under which the reps can make decisions.
The trick will be to use information technology. Use it to
supplement face-to-face contact. Salespeople will need to
retain the people skills and all of the other selling skills.
In fact, IT will actually improve their relationships if
they use it to collect even personal information such as
the birthdays and anniversaries of their customers. The
more knowledgeable the salesperson is about his or her
customer, the better received he or she will be.
While CRM systems are good and even necessary for success
in the future, they have their limitations. Some are too generic.
They try to serve everyone in the company: salespeople,
buyers, R&D, etc. By doing so, they deny that all of these
people have unique needs. The result is that salespeople don’t
get the quick business intelligence they need.
www.chally.com
What’s more, CRM systems often end up being little more
than high-priced forecasting systems. Unless they are
used to help the salesperson develop the value proposition
for his or her customer, they’re of little value.
In past years, salesperson resistance was often cited as a
major barrier to introducing high-tech tools. While there
are always “old dogs” that won’t learn new tricks, it will
not be as big a problem as many feared.
“We’ve invested heavily in sales force
automation, and once (our salespeople) get
comfortable understanding the technology
that we have to offer, both to our customers
and to our sales force, they love it. They are
in heaven because we’ve taken an awful lot
of drudgery out of the job and we have given
them “Star Wars.”
Chris Milliken, President & CEO
Boise Cascade Office Solutions
Management
I
nformation is so important it demands a special,
separate place in the organization. Some speak about
a “sales operations group,” which would serve as the
right arm of the senior sales executive. This function will
make recommendations based on real data about how
many salespeople are needed and where. It will calculate
profitability by customer, by channel, by territory, and
by sales rep. In essence, it will help the senior sales
executive answer the question, “Are we running this
business properly?”
This underscores the final “sales support need,” but
very non-IT point: Behind every successful sales
force is strong, effective management, both sales and
marketing, that is constantly providing the sales force
with strategies and tactics to help them and the company
reach their goals.
© The HR Chally Group – 37
 The New and Still Emerging Sales Vocabulary

Terms & Definitions

Co-opetition Both cooperating with another external organization on one part of your
business strategy and competing on the others

Customer Currency Having such an intimate knowledge of the customer’s business market,
competition, and future potential within that industry, that the customer
considers you a primary business consultant and insider

Action Learning Groups Groups organized to learn by hands-on experience while working on real
problems in real time; thus, learning how to solve problems, network, and
understand various business elements in-depth

Globally Rehearsed Testing any business strategy, including product or service merits, as well as
marketing and sales approaches, against widely diverse global market segments
and cultures to test for local acceptability and viability

Passive Bystanders Marketplace and customer decision “influencers” who are exposed to either
positive or negative information about a vendor/product/service (often in detail)
through participation in various electronic forums, chat groups, and advocacy
portals even though they’re not presently a customer; often, they will participate
in passing this “information” or “disinformation” on to others when asked for
their opinions

Establishing Wide Peripheral Vision Expanding the focus of the sales effort wider than just the customer, beyond the
customer’s industry, to the overall micro- and macro-economic factors affecting
that customer in both the near and long term

Entrepreneur without Portfolio An individual, whose drive, creativity, sense of personal control, and even
“ownership” extends well beyond that of an employee to simulate a business
person who owns his or her own business

Cultural Embodiment Being yourself, who you are, in a culture so seamlessly that you can connect
with everybody in that culture without feigning or simulating behaviors or
personal communication styles that are not natural or sincere

Coverage Agility Sufficient flexibility across sales and service functions so that market or
geographic expansion, increased customer penetration, and growth do not result
in any visible deficiencies to the customer

Solutioning Searching for a combination of products/services (including components you

don’t provide yourself) that will deliver the total benefit the customer needs and
thus, solve the problem with a full and complete solution

Value Management Tracking results and adjusting products and services provided to a customer to
guarantee that the customer’s business is improved by increasing top-line sales,
decreasing middle-line costs, or most valuably, increasing bottom-line
profitability

38 – © The HR Chally Group www.chally.com

Blank Page
 Success CAN Be Predicted

The HR Chally Group

Corporate Headquarters
PO Box 20490 n Dayton, Oh 45420-0490 n Telephone (country code 001) (937) 259-1200
Email: chally@chally.com n www.chally.com

www.chally.com