The growth of E-commerce is driving a fundamental change in selling mentality.E-commerce changes selling. Driven by E-commerce, a fundamental and far-reaching change is taking place in professional selling. The salesperson who’s emerging might well be known as a “customer evangelist.”
Apple Computer and other companies employ evangelists as enthusiastic representatives of their best interests. Taking that imagery a step further, customers will enjoy the benefits of doing business with a new type of sales rep.
While the rhetoric of sales meetings has long attempted to foster the belief that “We’re working for the customer,” few customers and even fewer salespeople have become true believers. At worst, some salespeople believe that their best strategy is convincing customers that they’re on their side. Although customers are put off by such transparent and self-serving tactics, such ploys persist.
The advent of E-commerce has changed sales fundamentally. Until quite recently, access to a product or service was through salespeople. They were the gatekeepers. If you wanted to purchase a copier, you visited a trade show or made half-dozen calls. In came the sales reps, each one painting a picture of the perfect product. Whoever was in charge making a buying decision weighed the claims of the sellers and signed the order.
Some salespeople continue to see this as a description of the sales process, but reality-oriented sellers know different. In some ways, the salesperson is quickly becoming an order taker, since buyers do their research and make their decisions before the salesperson enters the picture. At that point, the discussion is more about specifications, delivery, and final price, although most customers have determined what they will pay. Salespeople are the only ones haggling anymore.
What’s more, this role is quickly fading in the face of customer-approved E-commerce. Buying on the Internet is easy and quick. Even the price issue is disappearing, since E-commerce levels the playing field. Not so incidentally, E-commerce also eliminates customers’ time-wasting interaction with salespeople who lack buyer credibility and who, up to now, have been tolerating them as either a necessary nuisance or the source of, say, tickets to a sporting event. Nevertheless, some people in sales continue to see themselves as indispensable to their customers.
While this article might seem to be condemning the selling profession, it’s simply describing what’s taking place in business-to-business and retail sales. It’s happening everywhere at once:
- Every major insurance company is either going direct to the customer or figuring out the best way to bypass costly, inefficient agent structures. Warren Buffet’s GEICO Direct is the model. The Hartford’s Select Business Service Centers are an efficient way to sell and service small business insurance programs and to cross-sell other products — an area where independent insurance agents have been less than successful.
- Retailing has become a primary target for direct selling. First it was cataloging; now it’s the Web. More than 420,000 upscale customers buy online from garden.com. The site reportedly has 1.3 million visitors a month. At babycenter.com, reports USA Today, there are “3,000 products from diapers to dolls.”
- Indicators suggest that one in eight vehicles is now being bought over the Internet, a number that’s expected to climb steadily. General Motors has seen the future, embraced it, and opened the first Internet-based dealership. The vehicles are delivered through local dealerships, many of which are disappearing daily, along with the sales reps.
The list grows by the minute. We can buy complicated, customized computer and telephone systems over the Internet and even arrange to have them installed without seeing a salesperson. And it’s only just begun.
Does this scenario spell doom for the selling profession? The answer is yes — and no.
Responding to an article which states that the sales profession is changing and the customer is now in charge of the buying process, one reader wrote, “I believe that my customers are more comfortable dealing with a person than with a catalog or Web site. I believe that we will not become moles staying in our holes ordering everything from food to companionship via a computer and phone line. I believe that the personal sales call will not become obsolete and that the ‘hunter/gatherer’ model is alive-and will remain so well into the 22 nd century (yes, I mean the 22 nd). As far as the customer being in charge-well, I believe that any salesman worth his salt will acknowledge that the customer has always been in charge or at least had the illusion he is in charge.”
As much as we might like to believe that a personal relationship and companionship are necessary ingredients in making a sale, more customers are looking for value, simplicity, and reliability — all of which they are finding through E-commerce. In many ways, they’re finding a new sense of freedom so they can use their free time for meaningful social interaction and personal relationships.
ENTER THE CUSTOMER EVANGELIST
Like it or not, the type of selling so vigorously defended by this salesperson and others is quickly disappearing. At the same time, there’s new opportunity for a different type of selling derived from E-commerce. We call this salesperson a “customer evangelist”-an enthusiastic, supportive advocate representing the customer’s interests. Here are a few of the characteristics of this new salesperson:
The customer evangelist is 100% committed to satisfying the customer’s needs. Selling has traditionally been about balancing three agendas: the company’s, the salesperson’s, and the customer’s. But making the sale was the single most important objective. Unfortunately, the pressure to close the deal cost the customer the most. After comparing brands and models of copiers, the president of a small business selected a product from the prestige manufacturer in the field. Assured that the equipment would perform as part of the firm’s computer network, the equipment was installed. After nearly six months of constant inquiries, a representative of the manufacturer indicated that a proper initial assessment had not been completed. The copier did not perform as promised.
The goal of making the sale superseded meeting the customer’s needs. The new salesperson never falls into this trap. Some will see this as nothing more than wishful thinking or pious idealism, but it’s the new reality. Unless the customer believes in the salesperson, there will be no order.
The customer evangelist serves as an intermediary. Customer evangelists have a distinct — and necessary — role: intermediary. They’re the ones who bring the right players to the customer’s table. Most buying mistakes result from mismatched solutions: It looks right, but isn’t. Either the salesperson doesn’t care which vehicle the customer purchases (more than likely the case) or has failed to understand the customer’s requirements. Far too often, so-called fact finding by salespeople is nothing more than an attempt to uncover a hot button.
The real estate industry continues to gloss over the fact that the sales agent represents the seller, not the buyer. In the past, real estate firms representing buyers have generally been less than successful in getting a foothold, even though the concept makes sense. However, during the past several years, this has begun to change, and the number of buyer firms is increasing, as both residential and commercial real estate customers recognize the value of the intermediary. The trend is also appearing in insurance and other industries.
The customer evangelist is a resource. A large regional insurance agency believed that it could gain a selling advantage by differentiating its Commercial insurance producers from those of the competition. One of the ways it chose to accomplish this was to publish a professional-looking newsletter with articles written by the sales staff. Rather than the usual vanilla, one-size-fits-all newsletter so common in the insurance (and just about every other) industry, the readers of “Executive Update” from Mazonson, Inc. (Peabody, MA )enjoy information-filled articles, including some dealing with cutting-edge issues. Topics are discussed at editorial planning meetings, and members of the sales staff prepare the articles.
The concept conveyed to customers and prospects is that the organization is populated with knowledgeable, thoughtful sales professionals who bring their clients resources that add value to the relationship. This is the customer evangelist at work.
The customer evangelist is independent. When it comes to allegiance, companies should be thinking in terms of loyalty to the customer and expect their salespeople to operate with true independence.
Twenty years ago, Life insurance brokerage firms handled a scant 5% of U.S. Life insurance sales, most of which was “substandard” cases involving specialized risks. The figure has changed dramatically: Brokerages now account for more than 50% of Life sales. Why? Because individual agents recognize that no single insurance company can offer all the products necessary to solve the precise and often complex problems confronting their clients. Although the so-called career companies (with their own sales staffs) continue to define customer needs in terms of their products, this approach is dying.
Customers today are suspicious of the feigned objectivity that can come from salespeople beholden to a particular company. IBM recognizes this problem and has positioned itself in terms of “solutions.”
While efforts to achieve objectivity by solving customer problems deserve applause, perhaps the most effective way to demonstrate it to the customer is to move away from the commission system — that is, to abandon it — as the primary method of determining compensation.
In advertising, for example, how can a client have faith in media recommendations when the agency receives a commission on every media placement? For that matter, how can the client be certain that paid advertising is actually the best tactic for a particular project? Perhaps direct mail or public relations could achieve the same goal or even more at a lower cost.
Whether salespeople recognize it or not, E-commerce is abolishing commissions. By going direct, customers are voting for independence.
SALES ROLE FOR THE FUTURE
The salesperson as customer evangelist makes a strong statement that nothing will interfere with serving the customer. This requires salespeople to be more aggressive, more determined, and more committed. Any reward they reap is the direct result of remaining 100% focused on the customer and not letting anything or anyone interfere with meeting that objective.
Many in sales will find the idea of the customer evangelist as strange, off-the-mark, unworkable, and even bizarre. Others will see new possibilities for meeting customer needs. At a recent sales meeting, the men (the largest group) were seated on one side, while three women were together at a table by themselves. As the sales manager talked, the men were half dozing, looking around, not appearing to pay attention. Not one took notes. It was as if they were saying, “Let’s get on with it. We know what we’re doing.” On the other hand, all three women were busy taking notes and listening intently. Salespeople who think they know the answers aren’t listening when it comes to selling.