At AICC’s Spring Meeting, to be held on April 13-16 in Ft. Myers, Florida, Neil Rackham, co-author ofRethinking the Sales Force* will address members on the key elements of value-driven selling and lead a discussion on how multiple sales approaches can create value for both their company and its customers.
Rackham say thanks to the Internet and other technological advances, the world of selling became much more dynamic in th e Nineties. So much information became available at the touch of a keyboard. Another thing that happened is that there is so much competition these days therefore you’ve got to provide value beyond the product.
Some of Fortune 500 companies, have reorganized themselves around the concepts in the book. What they had found was that many of their salespersons were selling both the commodity business and the customized specialty business .They then split the business up so that the problem-solving part was handled directly by its sales force, and the commodity part was handled on the Internet and by call centers.
Rackham mention that the system also applied for the small to mid-sized companies a s long as they have more than one salesperson. As their marketplace became more competitive, they need more experienced. Sales people to give them the accounts that would create more customer value, not necessarily the biggest accounts. In average about 25 percent of the business could be done on the Internet or over the phone. This business doesn’t require face-to-face selling.