When salesman has no time to sell

If You look through the job ads for sales managers, will soon notice most of them include two activities for the future sales manager:

• search for new clients,
• maintain relations with existing clients.

It is like a rule, ‘the must’.

It is widely accepted the salesman is in charge of both finding new customers and keeping relations with them. Let’s say, he/she does selling and accounting.

How did this rule come into B2B environment?

• Someday someone said the customer is pretty happy to have one particular contact.  We love our customer so much and thus in order to meet this requirement anchored by someone someday, we dedicate a person (salesman in particular) who is now a single contact for the customer.
• Futhermore, a salesman did a great job to deal with the customer so it’s natural that salesman now deserves the award – ability to up-sell the customer in the future! In other words, you, salesman, have worked hard to make a deal so now it’s time to compensate your efforts with easy job – additional sales for the happy customer!
• Moreover, a salesman promised a lot while making a deal and it’s up to him to ensure all promises will be kept in the delivery stage or during all contract time. “This is my customer and I won’t allow anyone to put my reputation at risk!”

Now when historical reasons of inertia are clear, let’s agree on the problem that comes out of all this mentioned above. Oh, yes – no time for salesman to do sales!

Well, accounting is necessary part of money generation process and should be assured. But why is this job done by people who have specific skills – getting into contact with unfamiliar people, raising trust on the company and product?

When company enables its salesmen to sell & account, it’s only question of time when the salesman stops selling and keeps accounting only. If salesman sells well, he/she will fill up with customers very fast. What means, the better is salesman, the sooner company looses him.

And then what next? Oh, yeah, “we need new salesman!”. Someone who could go into dark wood for a very short period of time, just until he collects the necessary amount of customers to make his life bright. The hunter becomes a farmer despite there’re still many beasts in the wood.

What’s the solution?

It’s is obvious that sales and accounting are two completely different processes. Moreover, different skills are needed to lead them. When company merges those two activities into one piece, always new sales suffer. The symptom is noticeable when salesman says he has no time to sell. Just count how much this disability costs for your company.