Sales In Business Isn’t A Dirty Word, So What’s Happened To It?

Sales In Business Isn’t A Dirty Word, So What’s Happened To It?

Back before time, there used to be a thing that is today as mythically mysterious as a minotaur and as vital as breathing. And that was so important that its practitioners were grudgingly loved and openly derided. I am referring to the art of selling. In ancient times, everything depended on the process. No matter what the product or service, the geographic or technical challenges, everyone knew that they needed sales. This article is called Sales in business isn’t a dirty word, so what’s happened to it?

Everyone Needs Sales

Life was determined by a simple but brutal metric. You could either sell or you couldn’t. Most couldn’t. Plenty got by pretending they could. The need was so recognisably pervasive that an uncomfortable number became so adept at selling one thing. And one thing only in such a buoyant sales-aware environment that they were seldom concerned about anything as sordid as developing their actual skills. Why? Because they could ‘sell themselves’ so when the numbers didn’t appear they would simply move on.

As you can no doubt imagine, the cavalier approach of these Walter Mitty characters did nothing to instil confidence in the alchemy of success called sales. Especially in business leaders of the other persuasion, those who could not sell. This Haplogroup tended to evolve from a clinical environment where facts were facts. And things had to be measured and rationalised. So many a natural alchemist of the dark and mysterious ways of the seller were cut short by the righteousness of the pointing finger of a fact wielding clinician of the balance sheet. Remarkably few genuine sellers became CEO’s relatively speaking. Why? Because there were remarkably few genuine sellers demographically, and when good leadership recognised the true seller, everything else worked. It wasn’t unusual for the car park to boast two head-turning vehicles. One belonging to ‘the Boss’ and the other to the sales director.

The S Word

Now, somewhere along the road, there has been a change, an evolution, well perhaps, but to assume that progress has been made for the better may not be wholly correct. Indeed, the language of the process has changed, and yes, clearly, transactions are being made, but the whole process is different now. In fact, finding any mention of the ‘S’ word openly is quite rare. The technical description of sales as a noun, sure. But does anyone ‘do’ sales, and does their title reflect that? I would guess that now the title might be something like the ‘Head of Business Development” or even ‘Commercial Director’. Perhaps it’s the ‘Head of Client Relations’, but it is not likely to be a Sales Representative, Sales Manager or the holy of holy’s The Sales Director, the one who ‘directs’ sales.

It was not unusual back then for a company in trouble to rush to make cutbacks to the salesforce. Probably because the clinicians at the helm finally had their justification to axe the alchemists and make the numbers work. Usually just ahead of going out of business.

There Is No Sadder Sight Than An Accountancy-Qualified MD Trying To Recruit A Sales Team.

Sorry 🙂

So is it a good thing that things have evolved this way? Like most things, the answer is yes, and a no. It’s probably better not to have the weight of the entire enterprise resting on all too often badly selected, poorly supported, and usually resented sellers better than to have alternatives, right? Well, mostly no because in all of this, it is easy to forget about the other gnarly necessity often called…

The Customer

A Cartesian type of viewpoint might be applicable here in the sense that neither approach are uniquely favourable in any defining way. And both are enshrined within broader business cultures of their time. I doubt, though, that René Descartes would have been able to organise a preference either if he were around today. But the customer’s requirements still exist, and they are out there.

The customer is still there even though the focus on them has changed significantly, being seen now, more often than not, as a group, a critical mass, being redefined as a component of data sets. They are analysed (mostly by an algorithm) and operated by an analyst.

So let’s call an analyst an operator then and agree that the customer has been consigned to cohorts (plural) rather than an individual ‘a person’. We will see relationships disappear like turning off a light. The system of processing is now so advanced that much work, money and programming has been put into the care of the customer that it is now so challenging for one to actually speak to an organisation. Has this vital aspect even been noticed? Does it rate as an issue at all nowadays?

Speech Bots

One good example — have you noticed when that little box pings up in the corner of a website. With a smiling, happy persons picture in it whose title might be, say, ‘Client Services’ something or other. Even then the interaction will probably be an applet box to type in your valued enquiry? This is where real customer care used to live. The first contact that click type click is not customer care. It’s cost management.

You may also have noticed that many now refrain from putting their address or phone number on their website. This tends to dissuade communication and helps to keep customers away from turning up at the door to try and buy something. No doubt considered a sensible precaution as the system doesn’t exist to ‘process’ the customer in such an ineffective manner. Let them be handled in bulk by a call centre and be dealt with by those who could easily be imagined as light starved descendants of sellers from yesteryear.

Thought Leader

Banished to catacombs AKA the call centre, dwelling in the modern caves of a windowless cubicle hive. After all it usually helps to save costs to have these poor souls located as far from the actual business as possible of course. Where labour is cheaper, that way they won’t interrupt the Head of Solutions Architecture with annoyances like customer needs. My personal favourite is the Head of Thought Leadership who needs endless budget for the continuing permanency of product development of technology. There can be no end to the next version, good job all the money on customer contact and human resources was cut back to pay for it.

We now find ourselves down a rabbit hole derived by the absence of consciousness exchanged by an obsession with instrumentality and technocracy. Have we forgotten that we are still humans, our suppliers are humans, and our customers are humans? We have made organisations into Frankenstein-style effigies and disengaged and disempowered the people involved. The trouble is…

Now This Is Starting To Hurt

Almost nobody you know can sell, yet everyone you know buys. If this hasn’t occurred to you, then you might want to think about the implications of this. Chance favours the prepared mind, said Louis Pasteur, chance seems not to favour the underdeveloped beta testing of version 6.8.

By the way, if you are a business that still has sales managers and does allow customers to enter your biosphere, please do let us know. We last met one of your kind some years ago. You are rare, special, and probably doing something that, for some extraordinary evolutionary reason, has avoided the progress of today’s instantly gratifying but somehow soulless business world.

What Does It Mean To You?

It is clear all across society that values have changed, and human capital has become disconnected. The things we call progress might not be so progressive after all. Maybe you could start by at least thinking about the ‘S word’ and what does it mean to you. While you are there, look at your market and think about customers. Not the numbers, the actual people who are out there. When did you last look at things down on the person-to-person level? If you can recall doing so, that’s awesome. I would venture that somebody in your Haplogroup might well have been in sales.

A start-up about to launch could ensure its survival much more if it created a ‘sales-led’ culture. Empowered human talent (properly recruited) and put actual human needs and requirements at the centre of decision-making. This would create an affirmative and future-proofed value proposition, a unique USP and a dynamic and creative working environment.

Thrown Away With The Dish Water

This will happen because it is the natural solution to the soullessness of technology-led organisations. However, we are pragmatists here at Octopus Competitive Intelligence. So we don’t expect you, dear reader, to be able to act upon this revolutionary suggestion because the architecture that now soaks up all the resources cannot be simply thrown away.

You might be able to do two simple things at that. Firstly you could redefine functions and, amongst them, create a sales Director. And place that human in charge of selling to other humans. The second thing that you could do is identify ways that make it easier for humans who desire to buy your products to do so in any manner that suits them. Doing these things will revolutionise your business model.

Octopus Intelligence is a unique agency that engages human talent supported by proven tech. We deliver a competitive advantage to enable clients to grow and be sustainably successful.

Sales In Business Isn’t A Dirty Word, So What’s Happened To It?

We are Octopus, the competitive intelligence company providing bespoke competitive intelligence, competitive analysis, competitor analysis, marketing intelligence, competitive strategy advisory. Or put simply, we create insight you go and do something with it.

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