Sales Transformation
Innovation Alphabet
Sales Transformation
In a nutshell
Sales transformation is a pervasive process of updating a company’s sales operations. It may be due to, or inspired by, a general desire to grow and achieve new goals. Adapting to change ensures survival. Those who fall behind may disappear. It is the law of nature, but also the law of business.
Application Fields
Sales Industry: Consumers have changing needs, are unfaithful and difficult to interpret. Sales managers must be able to adapt to changing market environments and, therefore, lead the transformation. It is a pervasive change that revolutionizes processes, affects employee skills, alters the way customer relationships are managed, changes the sales organization, and requires the adoption of new technologies that must be applied to support sales activities. Hence, companies need to develop new core capabilities.
Industries
• Sales Transformation in the software industry
Microsoft announced a change in strategic direction from “Windows first” to an “AI/cloud first” strategy to capture the growing demand for software available on the cloud. As a result, Microsoft had to come up with a viable go-to-market plan that would align its new business strategy with sales, partners, products, services, and customers in order to initiate long-term growth without the risk of hurting current revenue or profits.
• Sales Transformation in the consulting industry
Accenture is a multinational strategy and management consulting firm that began its sales transformation in 2020, just before the pandemic. Previously, teams operated with little coordination, and clients still did not believe in digital transformation. The company thus reshaped its community to build innovation through strong leadership, harnessing data and talent, embracing the human experience, and building the right teams to meet new challenges.
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Business Functions
• Sales Transformation in support of digital strategy
Mayflex, a leading distributor of converged IP solutions – including infrastructure, networking, and electronic security – had set the goal of achieving 20 percent of revenue through digital by 2020. Palladium, a digital transaction consulting service, worked alongside the company, accompanying it in the sales transformation process. The result was a digital strategy that highlighted appropriate solutions supported by concrete and practical evidence, drawing a roadmap to achieve the set goal.
• Sales Transformation in support of social selling
InContact is a company that makes software for call centers. It trained half of its sales team in social selling using LinkedIn and Eloqua (an automated marketing solution). Within a year, the half of the team that had been trained on the subject experienced a “slight” increase in revenue: 122% for employees who used LinkedIn alone and 157% for employees who also used Eloqua.
• Sales Transformation in support of social media
U.S. telephone company AT&T decided to take a completely new approach to sales that encouraged building customer relationships through social media. Relationships with their users had been quite poor in previous years, and had resulted in a decrease in sales. Thus, the company funded a content marketing strategy based on the “3 Cs” to better serve consumers:
– Create content, to inform before selling, so as to create engagement.
– Curate the process of selecting, collecting, and organizing compelling digital content.
– Connect, to create trust and build relationships.
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Check out more of the Innovation Alphabet:
Gamification
Gamification
Gamification is actually adding a game-like element to make more fun and engaging something that’s not necessarily a game. It’s all about turning a task that might be boring or difficult into a more enjoyable and motivating activity. You can also earn points, badges, and rewards for completing certain actions or challenges. Are you ready to play?
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Business Intelligence
Business Intelligence
A smart business means efficiency: Business Intelligence represents the ability to collect up-to-date data, present it in easy-to-understand formats, and deliver it in a timely manner to employees. Making data-driven decision-making and management processes leads to competitive advantage, reduces inefficiencies, and improves productivity and service at all levels.
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Artificial Scarcity
Artificial Scarcity
We often tend to desire what we cannot have. Or what we are in danger of losing: Artificial Scarcity is a strategy that flaunts a limited number of items that do not correspond to actual availability. The goal is to stimulate the perception in consumers that the stock of items is about to run out and thus create a need based on the “fear of being cut off” or the intention to buy the item in order to resell it at a higher price.
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Subscription Model
Subscription Model
A subscription model is a business tool that generates revenue by charging customers a fee at regular intervals. The company provides products or services to subscribers on a subscription basis, usually monthly or annually. In this way, loyalty has become more important than acquiring new users.
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Holacracy & Flat Organization
Holacracy & Flat Organization
A “flat organization” breaks down the traditional hierarchy and removes its negative connotation, while “holacracy” is the business tool that facilitates its formation. Flat organizations place more emphasis on communication and collaboration, aspiring to a distributed decision-making process that gives each employee a voice. But this is a model that is difficult to implement.
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Mass Customization
Mass Customization
Mass customization is an initiative adopted by companies to embrace the increasingly diversified needs of customers. By offering customizable products and services, consumers feel engaged and can bring their creativity into play. Brands gain from this a boost in perceived value and the opportunity to fuel a positive word-of-mouth marketing.
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Coopetition
Coopetition
If you can’t beat them, join them. Coopetition is a business strategy that defines cooperative and competitive relationships between competing companies in the same young or high-growth market. The goal is to travel a stretch of road together to lower initial research and development costs. Once the desired results are achieved, the companies will return to being enemies as before.
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MVP
MVP
To the disappointment of all sports fans, this is not an article about Michael Jordan. In the language of business, MVP stands for Minimum Viable Product and indicates the version of a new product that has enough features to attract customers. In this way, a team can gather the most feedback with the least effort, improve the prototype, and validate its sale.
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Agile
Agile
Agile is an approach to software development designed to respond to change. Teams quickly analyze the context in which they operate, identify uncertainties faced, and figure out how to adapt to always move forward. Interaction between individuals comes before processes and tools; collaboration with the customer is more important than negotiating contracts.
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Bounded Rationality
Bounded Rationality
The best solutions always come to mind when it is too late. This is because human beings tend to make decisions on the basis of satisfaction rather than optimization. Bounded Rationality means that we are unable to think clearly and linearly, we proceed by trial and error and forget all the possible variables that affect the process. But we are also flawed.
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