Beth Rogers tries to dispel the myths surrounding sales management to provide a new way for the B2B sector. Her new book ‘re-thinks’ the discipline.

It should be self-evident that sales management is a sophisticated activity, light years away from the old “cheatin’, lyin’ and stealin’ ” stereotype of selling.  Unfortunately, the evidence is that old stereotypes persist, even in the most unlikely places.“
Neil Rackham in his foreword to “Re-thinking Sales Management.”

I’ve worked in the IT industry and I’ve come across the comfortable product salespeople who haven’t wanted to learn “solution selling”.  But that was many years ago.  These days I work with ambitious and intelligent sales managers who want to grab strategy with both hands and be the competitive edge of the business. The trouble is, perceptions of salespeople are not changing to accommodate new business realities.  So now I find myself challenging marketing to stop grumbling about how wilful salespeople neglect all the lovely leads we generate and take a look at the new potential of professional sales and sales management.

So, what happens when these two opposing forces come together?  Sometimes, agreement is easy.  If our businesses can work together for mutual gain, we can start working on a strategic account plan.  If there is no mutual gain, let’s work at arm’s length (perhaps over the Internet), deal by deal.  This may sound like plain common sense, but when Dow set up an Internet channel to serve price-driven customers while they concentrated key account management support on customers interested in joint product development, Wall Street was very uneasy. In fact it worked very well. 

Of course, there may be conflicting views about “mutual gain”.  Some customers are worth keeping, even though they will not or cannot offer development opportunities.  Other customers refuse to be convinced by worthy suppliers, until some change in the way either of them does things turns a prospective relationship into something special.  And sometimes, apparently good business relationships just fall apart. 

Suppliers so sadly neglect exit strategy, although it is always a risk.  “Re-thinking sales management” celebrates the great things that a strategically managed sales team can do, but it also explores the “dark side”, where motivational sales books fear to tread – difficult business relationships, conflict with marketing and ethical dilemmas.

This is not revolutionary. Thoughtful books and articles that explored the role of sales in the new world of professionally qualified buyers, global sourcing and high-tech processes started to appear in the 1990s.  That knowledge and best practice deserved some consolidation and a new recipe. 

So many things are happening in companies who have seen the potential to compete of the basis of the way they conduct business relationships. It is a world in which marketing can play a positive role.

The question is in some B2B companies – what sort of role?  If marketing claims to be the only authority on customer strategy, it could be a marginal role.  Working with sales managers and account managers is the way forward to grow the top line.

“Re-thinking sales management” by Beth Rogers was published by Wiley on June 22nd.