Sales Performance published in The Times 24 March 2010
This supplement is an independent publication from Raconteur Media
March 24 2010
SALES PERFORMANCE
T
here is nothing like a good recession
for focusing minds on
the essential lifeblood of business:
revenue and sales. With-
out any sales, no matter how efficiently
the rest of the company is run, we might
as well all pack up and go home.
It is little wonder, then, that the au-
tomotive industry – a sector of manufacturing
particularly hard hit by a perfect
storm of high oil prices, the credit
squeeze and fiscal measures designed to
promote environmental responsibility
– has, almost exclusively, been appointing
bosses who have come up through
the sales and marketing side of business.
Over the last 18 months, a steady stream
of sales leaders have been taking over the
top job at companies like BMW (Tim
Abbott), Kia (Paul Philpott), Mitsubishi
(Lance Bradley) and Mazda (Jeremy
Thomson). At the European level, too,
Brits with a track-record in vehicle sales
are taking top posts. And the same is true
for other sectors of the economy.
NUMEROUS
People employed in sales or sales-related
activity are by far the most numerous
grouping in British business. The
latest figures suggest that some 7 per
cent of the UK population is employed
in something to do with sales. But these
figures include the likes of sales assistants
in shops, direct sales agents such
as “Avon ladies”, bank employees with
a sales component to their pay packet
and office-based sales support staff, as
well as the traditional sales representative
driving around in a company car
or the business development manager
hammering the telephone.
“That’s over two million salespeo-
ple,” says the Chartered Institute of
Marketing’s Chris Moriarty, who has
been working with the United Kingdom
Commission for Employment
and Skills on a new strategy for sales
qualifications.
And yet, despite its sheer size and
vital importance to the British economy,
the world of sales and selling
has consistently punched below its
weight in terms of kudos and status in
the workplace. Perhaps it is our British
reserve, our aversion to the pushy,
“won’t-take-no-for-an-answer” stere-
otype, or a degree of neglect of the
subject at business schools and other
academic institutions.
Partly, it is confusion in the minds of
the general public. Selling, like the proverbial
football match, is a game of two
halves: B2C (business- to-consumer)
and B2B (business-to-business). People
who do not operate in the commercial
world tend only to see the B2C side
of sales, experienced on the doorstep,
via intrusive telephone calls during
the evening or through poor service at
electrical retailers; everybody has their
favourite sales horror story. At the same
time, the much more professional world
of B2B sales tends to remain hidden.
Whatever the reason, we have never
really taken the concept of selling
to our hearts in the same way as the
Americans. This is all the more surprising
when we consider that successful
business people acknowledge that
making a big sale is one of the most
euphoria–inducing “drugs” known to
man. Former CBI boss and one-time
government minister Lord Digby Jones
famously described winning a big deal
as “up there with sex and skiing”.
Time for sales to
move up a gear...
OVERVIEW In an economic downturn, revenue is the number-one concern for any
company, but sales can no longer be taken for granted. So sales teams and their
leaders have never been more important or under such scrutiny, writes Nick de Cent
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SINK OR SWIM
In an ideal world, salespeople would be
recognised as key professionals, vital
to the UK economy; sales should be a
business career young people aspire to.
Yet, we hear the same story time and
again: salespeople almost invariably
fall into their career by accident, few
by choice. For many, their first – and
only – taste of sales is in a low-quality,
commission-only job where they are
left to sink or swim by observing how
their colleagues survive.
For a business community that dwarfs
every other commercial grouping, salespeople
are also relatively poorly served by
professional bodies. There are currently
only two organisations which focus on
the sales profession: the Luton-based
Institute of Sales & Marketing Management
(ISMM) and the Chartered Institute
of Marketing, which began life in
1911 as the Sales Managers’ Association
and then went through various name
changes involving the words “sales” and
continued on page three
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