THE practice of sales and selling is regarded with an element of cultural distaste in the UK, and evidence suggests this is even more prevalent in Scotland.
This is intriguing, since the opposite is true in the United States and other European countries, where sales teams are rightly valued as a key element of the business mix.
There is no doubt that sales are the driving force of every business, and
as such, our sales people need to be more valued.
I am not suggesting that businesses allocate vast, universal budgets to increase their sales teams. Instead, what is needed is a significant shift in the emphasis that business leaders give to sales and selling.
In the IT sector in particular, there have been several reports of software companies failing to attract new business, and therefore going out of business themselves, simply because they run poorly operated sales processes.
Add to this scenario a trend towards a shortage of highly qualified, trained sales staff, combined with worryingly high staff turnover, and it is not difficult to see why so many sales teams lack the capability to achieve a healthy sales performance.
Instead of generating lucrative new orders, these sales teams run the risk of becoming a drain on the business and being shown the door.
In response, a new breed of business adviser is emerging, geared towards helping businesses to turn their sales functions into more profitable operations.
These practitioners operate in the same way that a company doctor might, but their specialism lies in targeting the sales force. They offer a hands-on approach to restructuring or rebuilding a sales operation using, where necessary, their own team of specialists for support.
The period of assistance can last from three months to a year, depending on the level of help needed and the length of the company’s sales cycle. It is of particular use in cases where businesses have recently undergone one or more changes in leadership, a merger or an acquisition has taken place, or the business has been re-branded.
"Sales doctors" provide their expertise across a number of business sectors, which is relatively unorthodox, even in the sales industry.
But in the time-honoured fashion of identifying a customer’s requirements and filling those needs, the same sales principles apply and the approach is already finding favour with a number of businesses in Scotland, from small to medium-sized enterprises to large organisations.
Corporate funders and venture capitalists are also becoming increasingly aware of the role that sales doctors can play within a new company. When funds are used to provide a much needed boost for a business, very often the fund provider will specify that a team of specialists be brought in to help give the business a sales boost.
In the first instance, this is seen as preferable to taking on a full-time sales force, a fleet of company cars and expense accounts.
It is also a useful technique for a successful company whose business is growing too rapidly, because accelerated growth can actually be as dangerous as underperformance to a young business, and many have gone into liquidation because they have been overstretched, or simply because the management team’s leadership qualities have not had time to develop during the rapid growth phase.
A sales doctor can provide short or medium-term assistance to maintain control over the growth of a young business and provide some insurance for the future.
All markets suffer peaks and troughs, but when a business falls on hard times, too many directors rely on "quick fix" cost-saving tactics, and under these circumstances this could mean scaling down their sales teams rather than investing in them.
However, if there is no sales team, there is arguably no business.
Caroline Marshall is managing director of Corporate Solutions Management
