Sales professionals will need to adjust how and where they approach customers and industry sectors to successfully navigate the unprecedented business upheavals wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, said a Naveen Jindal School of Management marketing faculty member.
Dr. Howard Dover, a clinical professor, director of the Jindal School’s Center for Professional Sales and experienced salesman himself, said some professionals will be able make the adjustment, while others will not.
“To understand success in this environment, it will be critical for sales professionals to take the market to the customer — whether that customer is the consumer or a business-to-business transaction,” said Dover, who runs the school’s sales courses and has leadership roles in industry organizations for sales professionals.
From a sales perspective, social-distancing efforts have had a negative impact on many businesses, while others have not been affected as much, according to Dover. This impact has been felt both in the consumer and business-to-business sectors.
“Some retail, like food and supplies, is booming, but other retail nonessentials are closing doors,” he said.
Even sales in the medical sector is variable, Dover said. “Non-acute and elective medical is dropping off, and the lack of face-to-face contact is causing contraction for sales organizations that rely on doctor-office visits to advocate for their products.”
In business-to-business sales, winners right now include companies that sell virtual communications tools. “Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WebEx, and RingCentral and other video-conferencing solutions that can help people adjust to social distancing are in huge demand,” Dover said.
Technology Opens New Sales Avenues
Social-distancing efforts to slow the spread of COVID-19 have opened new sales avenues. Most prominent among these, Dover said, is the use of technology to help overcome physical separation and to help managers track their teams’ efforts.
One area that shows promise for more sales, Dover said, is voice-to-text artificial intelligence tools that provide conversation intelligence.
“Roy Raanani, president and founder of Chorus.ai, said they’re seeing the needle move because of the work-at-home reality,” Dover said. “These tools help managers and executives hear the voice of the sales team and the customer.”
Semira Amirpour, a senior lecturer in marketing at the Jindal School, said other tools are also becoming indispensable. “Cloud-based customer relationship management tools such as Salesforce, are becoming an absolute necessity,” she said. “They integrate communication under one roof, and provide both visibility and accessibility while employees and managers work remotely.”
Demand to Increase for Sales Metrics Tools
Demand will increase for tools that track and set performance objectives, Dover said.
When managers cannot provide in-person coaching, “tools like conversation intelligence tools from companies like Gong and Chorus.ai are going to be in higher demand,” Dover said.
In a recent visit with Rob Jeppsen, CEO of Xvoyant, Dover said, Jeppsen “indicated that he is experiencing a lot of phone calls for their product that helps managers have more impactful one-on-one coaching interactions.”
Managers need new methods to encourage and fuel the development of each salesperson, Dover said. “The work-from-home movement has created a need to enable managers to effectively manage and lead…in new ways.”
Reallocations Likely
Logically, if a product is in demand, sales professionals are staying busy. Otherwise, Dover said, companies will be looking to assess future demand and determine the appropriate size of their sales organizations.
“We will see a reallocation of human capital in the sales profession in the coming year,” said Dover, whose close working relationships with Raanani, Jeppsen and other sales executives strengthen the Jindal School’s ties with industry and help students gain opportunities for mentoring, internships and employment.
The shift to technology that makes the sales field more efficient and effective, Dover said, “will decrease the headcount of sales roles but increase the need for highly trained and intelligent sales professionals in the business-to-business sales sector.”
Meanwhile, Amirpour sees benefits to downtime, since it gives sales professionals an opportunity to tweak their hard and soft skills and make them better at what they do.
“This quarantine period is a great opportunity for people to learn new technology and add marketable skills for when we go back to some normalcy,” she said. “The value and impact of building one’s personal and professional brand, along with developing more meaningful networks will play a major role when companies go through the right-sizing of their human capital.”
Pivoting Is Essential
Jerome Gafford, a Jindal School clinical assistant professor of marketing, said pivoting to the requirements of the new era is essential to success.
“This is a great time for sales pros to take inventory of themselves and their strengths and weaknesses,” he said. “While information and knowledge are great, the experience gained through application of that knowledge will truly set the professionals apart from the rest of the crowd.”
