The Executive
Study Group (ESG) seminar 2017 – Strategy Management and Innovation Series named
“How to Upgrade Sales Leader’s Strategic Roles for Revenue Breakthrough” was held by
the ESG, Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (APIFS) and
the Support and Consultation Centre for SMEs (SUCCESS, ITD) on 21 July 2017. In the beginning, SUCCESS representative
briefed their SME Mentorship Programme. I would like to summarize the seminar
for sharing below. During the break, I
took a photo with Dr. Mark Lee for memory.
Firstly,
Dr. Mark Lee briefed the history and aims of ESG establishment and then briefed
their research on Hong Kong competitiveness, as well as, different program they
provided such as CEO Club. Then he
briefed the content included “Incomplete Understanding of Sales Leader’s Job”, “New
Environments and Challenges for Sales Leaders”, “5 Hats (Roles) for Sustainable
Growth” and “A Week in the Life of Sales Leader with 5 Hats”.
Dr. Mark
Lee explained that several external factors push for more roles of sales leader
that they were not only on sell product but involved the service. Those factors included “higher customer
expectations”, “Peer executives in other functions” and “Sales force increase”.
He said
there were five factors in the new environments and challenges for sales
leaders that raised a new role of them.
1.
Customers have gained power. (Information Power because of internet)
2.
Customers have gone global or enlarged by M&A. (Decision maker
changed)
3.
Channel has proliferated. (multiple channels such as field, telesales
& online)
4.
More product companies sell services. (Sales plus operation team)
5.
Suppliers have adopted a “One Company” organizational structure. (Hard
to measure individual sales performance)
Then Dr.
Lee introduced the 5 Hats of Sales Leader below.
1.
Company Leader for Culture Change with Innovations
2.
Ambassador for Connecting Client C-Levels to Internal C-Levels
3.
Process Engineer for Integrating Products and Services Systematically
4.
Organization Architect for Optimal Team Structure
5.
Flight Captain for Detecting Deviations and Getting on Track
1. Company Leader for Culture Change with
Innovations
Dr. Lee
quoted Prof. John P. Kotter (Harvard Business School) statement that “Management
is about coping with complexity.
Leadership, by contrast, is about coping with change.” The he suggested reserving 15% of the sales
leader’s time on communication with other team members for accomplishing the
current year’s business plan. They were
also responsible for revenue generation and relationship management. They were able to get insights for growth and
know future customer need. One of
important roles was to build up “Customer-Oriented Culture”.
2. Ambassador for Connecting Client C-Levels to
Internal C-Levels
The
Sales Leader can serve as a role model for his peers in interacting with
customers. They got the first-hand
information wanted by customer and provided emergency support as well. Sales leader worked as a Translator for
C-levels. Ambassador used “Business Insights” to keep relationship and used “Marketing
Intelligence” for sharing.
3. Process Engineer for Integrating Products
and Services Systematically
The
Sales Leaders worked as process engineer to improve salesforce productivity such
as using 10% to 20% of time to define, create, manage and improve
processes. Therefore, it could free up
more time from Sales Leader. One trend
was digitalization that changed the sales and marketing process.
4. Organization Architect for Optimal Team
Structure
Shifts
in the sales force’s structures were essential and increased the degree of
specialization. There were many
challenges of sales structure change except business trend to change their
structures, failure to meet targets or mergers, etc.
Then Dr. Lee discussed different focuses of
sale forces in different phases included Start-ups Phase, Growing Businesses
Phase, Matured Businesses Phase and Declining Businesses Phase. The summary of salesforce structure lifecycle
was showed in the following table.
5. Flight Captain for Detecting Deviations and
Getting on Track
Role as
flight captain because the change was too fast.
We needed quick response to signs that a quick adjustment in sales
priorities was needed. So that predictable
performance was a must.
During Q&A Session, Eddie shared that “Sales”
should be renamed as “Partner” otherwise people’s mind was no change. I shared that we used “Cluster Manager” or “Account
Manager”.
Reference:
SUCCESS SME Mentorship Programme - https://www.success.tid.gov.hk/english/con_ser/sme_men_pro/sme_men_pro.html
Asia Pacific Institute for Strategy Limited (亞太策略研究所有限公司) – www.apifs.org
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