Channel needs to embrace sales flexibility

Resellers and channel partners risk long-term revenues because of a lack of flexibility to reinvent their sales models in the short to medium term, a new report from Gartner has found.

"As technology [advances], the sales models used by providers to bring technology products to market have failed to keep up," said Tiffani Bova, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner, in a statement.

"The greatest innovation challenge for providers today may be in finding the means to reinvent the sales organization and go-to-market model to meet new market demands, while at the same time continuing to protect and defend existing customers and deliver net new revenue."

The Gartner report tallies with the findings of Carpe Diem Consulting, which based its recent report on the work of US-based Corporate Executive Board.

According to the Carpe Diem report, fewer than 10 percent of Australian salespeople were using best practice when it came to finding and closing sales.

The successful salespeople in the Carpe Diem report were dubbed “challengers.” This meant that instead of relying on old-fashioned relationship building, they used the resources of the marketing department and their own research to “challenge” the client organisation with new insights.

Because of the rapid advance of technology, service providers tend to fall into one of three models. The first clings to the old way of doing things to protect installed bases. The second evolves their go-to-market offering to better compete, while the third type of service provider attempts to completely reinvent itself with new products and business models, the report said.

The core sales model is also changing, with customers seizing control of the sales process. According to Gartner, this overthrow of the sales model by customers should be of real concern to service providers, who have long been in control of both the product, and the way the product is sold. The sales organisation, therefore, needs to reinvent itself, and take back control of the sales process by meeting the customer where they are, and by providing new insights for the customer to capitalise upon.

This trend was also identified by the Carpe Diem report. According to report author Bruce Rasmussen, over 70 percent of clients are now self-service: they get the information they need from the internet and social media.

This differs from old-style sales techniques, where customers were seen as not knowing what they wanted until they were told by the salesperson. 

“If you think about the buyers' journey, clients are now getting 70 percent of the information they need themselves, whether it’s from the internet, or from social media,” observed Rasmussen. “The role of the challenger is to teach the client something new about their business by providing new insights.”

It’s about dragging the client back to the beginning of the sales journey with a new insight, and shattering their perception of the status-quo, he said.

In order to maintain sales growth, Gartner has identified three key areas that must be met. First, service providers need to reevaluate the products and services they offer, and the needs they are meeting. Second, service providers have to move beyond traditional customer segmentations and bases in order to capture new customers. Finally, the core sales model needs to combine a selection of both direct and indirect approaches.

Rasmussen also identified areas where salespeople can reassert themselves. “They need to take control of the sales process, and show the client new ways of doing things,” he said.

"A connected sales model can't be created overnight, nor will it be a one-off task," added Bova. "Making such, sometimes significant changes takes time and will continue to evolve with each new product introduction and new market considered. But, increasingly, providers that fail to make changes now could find themselves in a worse situation in two to three years, when technology and its buyers have advanced even further."