sales roundtable 53


For a lot of businesses today the way forward is about creating the basis for repeat business through a sophisticated non-product focused sales-service approach, he suggested. “Are you listening to your client’s needs or just there to tell them what you want to sell them?”


Ricky Lane said Grant Thornton’s people operate as both ‘hunters’ and ‘farmers’ – “servicing a client portfolio base while also going out looking to build relationships with new contacts.”


Alex Tatham


new and different customers too, so you have to tailor your sales team, with the right skillsets, technical levels for particular customers and how they want to be sold to. It’s about matching your salesforce to the customer need and then meeting that need with all your might.”


Richard Perriman said that as a global logistics services provider selling predominantly B2B services there had been a fundamental change in how these solutions were both packaged and sold in the past 20 years. Customers were ultimately looking for broader more complex solutions and on a global scale. Therefore, the marketing aspect had changed dramatically as had the salesmanship.


Nick Hicks noted the banking world’s privileged ‘helicopter view’ through its involvement in most business sectors. “Arguably, your growth is our growth.” Yet, the banking market had shifted from selling products to a consultancy role, understanding client requirements, and suggesting tailored solutions.


“Our (HSBC) objective is to be totally relevant to our client base and prospects. Our approach is far more targeted, with much more of a personal touch getting to know the business intimately.”


Hunters, farmers and ferocious gatekeepers


Bloxham: “Our best sales people are both ‘hunters’ and ‘farmers’. They are people that can make a good impression, and continue to make a good impression, in order to build interaction on a long-term basis. That’s what clients want – someone they can call, who understand their needs, and can provide what they want.”


Stamatis: “A lot of sales people in our industry are hunters, and having killed the sale want to move on to the buzz of the next kill. They are not necessarily the best at relationship farming, which they see as dull.


“That’s our sales struggle. We are having to learn not to kill things, but to foster them and let them grow through account management, relationship creation and constantly adding value, rather than just reacting to a client’s next supply request. Staying relevant and connected to a client long-term produces a very different mentality, and requires a different sales animal to one using the traditional transactional approach.”


THE BUSINESS MAGAZINE – THAMES VALLEY – NOVEMBER 2015


Diana Richards mentioned the difficulty in arranging customer meetings. “People have cold-call gatekeepers, or they have done their online research and simply want to know what deal you have to offer.”


Perriman: “With the introduction of voicemail filtering and gatekeepers, reaching the decision maker has become increasingly difficult.


“The challenge is to build value very, very quickly in a phone-call and to get an appointment.“


Is the sales process becoming more remote, less personal?


Internet-led commerce, price comparison sites and social media were double-edged swords for the sales world, the Roundtable agreed, but not ones that businesses could afford to avoid – or not exploit.


Perriman: “Social media and online data sources have created many new opportunities, but have conversely changed the landscape of the traditional methods used historically. The personal approach remains ultimately essential.”


Bloxham noted that while technology greatly assisted the sales process, “… understanding a client’s needs can only be done through personal conversation, not social media or email.”


Perriman: “We do experience more and more use of the tender process which does remove the people equation from the sales process in many cases and does make it harder to determine the real needs of the customer”.


Stamatis queried the role of professional buyers in the sales process, and pondered the levels of logic and emotional choice that should be involved within transactions. “Removing


Nick Hicks


Hicks explained that although HSBC’s global reach was a key differentiator, all banks had similar product suites and pricing today was totally transparent, so sales differentiation was difficult and largely came down to the people involved and tailoring solutions.


Perriman: “Price is the headline in many business sectors. Yet in our own lives we don’t make many decisions based solely on price. We buy what we want and justify the price to ourselves afterwards.”


Stuart Rolfe: “It’s not all about price. People like dealing with people, particularly when buying a valued asset like a car.”


Could it be curtains for car sales?


Hicks: “If I want to buy a new car, by the time I walk into the showroom I am ready to buy, because I have been on the Internet and will probably know as much about the car as the


people out of the sales process and creating an automated buying system drives price, but does it drive value? Is that intelligent buying?”


Stamatis and Tatham suggested good buyers and sellers had an empathy with the overall transaction process and the motivations of those involved.


Is salesmanship being priced out?


Perriman: “Ultimately our fundamental belief is that people still buy people despite an increasing emphasis on using price comparison technology within the process which can remove the personal element. However, going back to my earlier comment regarding the key skills of experience, listening and empathy, exceptional salesmanship has to be the prevailing factor.“


Ricky Lane


www.businessmag.co.uk Continued overleaf ...


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