What happened to sales?
Overdone. Saturated. Exhausting. Annoying. Ineffective.
Some words that come to mind when describing sales, the modern salesperson and modern sales organization. Sales, i.e. the act of acquiring new revenue, has changed a lot. For sales people, what was once a heavy effort requiring confidence and empathy has been relegated to PowerPoint making, CRM maintenance, and calendar coordination. For marketers, what was once a brand building mission based in storytelling is now a digitally invasive and deceptive series of practices to increase conversion.
And with these changes comes frustrations. Frustrations from sellers and marketers as their jobs become less fulfilling. Frustrations from leadership as quality revenue growth becomes harder to attain and maintain. And most importantly, frustrations from customers as vendors become more and more obnoxious in the pursuit of a new sale and as the products and services those obnoxious companies sell become more and more ineffective.
The ineffectiveness of new sales, both from sales and marketing, has cascading effects on the business as budget is inappropriately allocated to propagate bad business, taking budget away from customer success, product, and new strategy. To solve this, we need to fix the gaps in existing sales functions across brand development, lead creation, lead qualification, sales process, deal negotiation and ultimately the fulfillment of the product and service.
What happens if we do nothing? For low-to-mid level contributors, their jobs will continue to be augmented with technology ultimately rendering them useless, dispensable, and unable to prove value. For companies, short-term gains will continue to get priority over long term sustainable strategies that support the vision of the organization. But for consumers and customers, we will all see quality breakdowns across the board. As consolidation of vendors increases, so does the priority to shareholders over customers as companies will continue to be pressured to pass value to shareholders over the customers. The value we get from any company’s product or services, real or perceived value, will be diminished.
This page aims to share perspectives on these gaps in hopes said perspectives help, but perhaps it’s more personally therapeutic than helpful at large scale. Regardless, I hope that someone reading finds value in them.
Essays