ESG Seminar – How to Upgrade Sales Leader’s Strategic Roles for Revenue Breakthrough

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