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■ SO DO YOU STILL NEED A SALESPERSON AT ALL? If it’s all about education in a business like Gold-i, the obvious question is whether you still need a traditional salesperson at all. Chris firmly believes the answer to that is ‘yes’. “The role of a modern salesperson is certainly more educational, but you still have to close. Solutions are now complex and a salesperson needs to be able to talk to the clients about their requirements. But if they do a good job, the client will close themselves. By the time you’ve finished they’ve hopefully worked out that your product is the right one for their company.” Chris also feels that sales is about more than following a process, it’s about the personality and aptitude of the individual. “We’ve had some people coming in and trying to de-mystify sales, saying you don’t need any real skills, it’s just about following a process. I don’t believe that.”
■ HIRE THE RIGHT PEOPLE Chris also believes that not all salespeople are suited to all businesses. For example, Gold-i is a very technical, engineering-led company and the wrong salesperson, even if they had a good track record, could be very disruptive. “There’s a risk that they’ll start pushing products you don’t yet have. The have to be prepared to say ‘we can’t do that but how about this’? The salesman’s role is to manage the conversation to sell what you do have.” He recognises that, of course, salesmen are money driven and their remuneration depends on what they bring in, so they want to sell. But in their business: ”We need people who don’t kick off when something’s not ready. Software isn’t an exact science.” Quite simply, he says: “You have to have the right salespeople for the organisation they’re working in.”
■ KPIs AND MONITORING Chris’ task here is complicated by the fact that of the four active salespeople, two are overseas (in Turkey and China). With that in mind, he recognises the importance of regular reviews and of clear KPIs. The latter are still in the early stages of development and Chris is working towards a process that captures what he wants to see completed every week. Chris’ views on performance targets and associated technology are coloured by his experiences in other companies. “A CRM system should be there to enable people to sell, but in some big organisations it can just become a tool to monitor everything.” It’s a similar story with KPIs. “It’s important not to become a slave to KPIs. We have to be able to monitor what we need to without it taking over. At the moment I’m trying to improve what we do without it becoming onerous.”
■ VISION AND STRATEGY ARE THE MARK OF A GOOD SALES DIRECTOR And finally, Chris strongly believes that a good Sales Director must have a vision of how they move the business forward, where they want to go and how they’re going to get there. This is something they have worked on with a number of Vistage speakers and the chairs of the Vistage groups they belong to.
Previously you would tell customers what you wanted them to hear, then spend quite a lot of time trying to close that business. Now it’s more about education and information provision based on the same questioning skills salespeople have always used.
For him, salespeople are ‘brand ambassadors’, for the business and the CEO, and every salesperson they recruit has to represent what Gold-i stands for. “Recruitment is the most difficult thing we do and we keep our eyes open all the time for potential recruits. New recruits need a moral compass and have to embody the ethics and values of the business.”
■ OUTSOURCE THE MARKETING Chris also has an interesting take on the Sales/ Marketing relationship. Gold-i definitely sees the two disciplines as being very different. As a relatively small company – 35 employees in total – they realised that they didn’t have all the necessary skills in-house. So they took the decision to outsource the marketing side to experts rather than try to do it themselves. They found a local marketing company that knew the sector well and could take the initiative with print and other collateral.
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09/02/2017 15:54