Some key extracts from this interview on LinkedIn with Frank Cespedes from Harvard Business School.

see below for the full LinkedIn interview and also the HBR site for the book from which the full insights and details come.

Because selling is changing it’s also a good time to clarify the cause and effect links between buying and selling because the pandemic has raised the stakes of getting this right or wrong. Daily, we read predictions about “new normals,” but most are simplistic straight-line extrapolations of contagion and semi-lockdown conditions. 

Frank Cespedes – HBR

But research indicates a different buying reality. Rather than moving sequentially through a funnel, buyers now engage in parallel activity streams to make a decision; they’re online and offline throughout buying journeys, getting and evaluating information from multiple sources beyond salespeople. In many B2B markets, for instance, sites like PowerReviews, Marketo’s Marketing Nation, the SAP Developer Network, and others provide customers’ unedited opinions and usage experiences with a product, and both product and price comparisons now typically take just a few clicks for buyers in most markets.

Effective selling is ultimately an organizational outcome where people and performance management practices fit the sales process, pricing approach, and choices about go-to-market partners. Andrew Carnegie was once asked, “Which element is most important for the success of a business: brains, capital, or labor?” His reply: “Which leg of a three-legged stool is most important?” The fit of People, Process, Pricing, and Partners drives sales Productivity.

Sales hiring presents some unique challenges that are important to recognize. Unlike many other business functions, there is no easily identified resource pool or educational priors for sales positions. If you’re looking for an engineer, you can go to an engineering school and find people who have studied electrical engineering, chemical engineering, and so on. 

Frank V Cespedes – HBR

For an accountant, finance person or software developer, you can find majors in those subjects. But few colleges and universities have sales programs or even a sales course. Meanwhile, more than 50% of U.S. college graduates, regardless of their majors, will work in sales at some point in their careers. 

Many sales jobs do have more data-analysis requirements. But too often, it is unnecessary and hurts both companies and society. Many employers have simply defaulted to using college degrees as a blunt proxy for a candidate’s skills. Especially in sales, where on-the-job learning is a big driver of development, you should embrace a more expansive view of talent, with less weighting given to degrees and more to the tasks involved. Every sales job has implicit required behaviors. Take the time to clarify and make that explicit in your job postings and hiring pool.

Frank V Cespedes – HBR

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/b2b-sales-management-new-reality-conversation-frank-harvard-frank

https://store.hbr.org/product/sales-management-that-works-how-to-sell-in-a-world-that-never-stops-changing/10347

One thought on “How to sell in a World that never stops changing…”

  1. In my new role as head of sales and marketing this is both interesting and informative. I’m learning every day!!!!

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