There are many huge companies out there. Most of the huge companies have plenty of divisions of sales due to the different product portfolio that they carry.
With these multiple divisions and different range of products for a certain customer base, it most likely means that if the procurement division of the customer were to be involved then you might have many sales persons of different divisions meeting up the same procurement division official due to the different types of product each sales person wee to carry.
With these multiple divisions and the efforts to increase efficiency some smart fellows thought that would it be better if only one or two sales person cover all the product portfolios in the company so that when it comes to meet people like the procurement officials there will only be two persons who will have the responsibity to see that officials.
Many huge companies are driving towards this concept. Basically in short the ‘one shoe fits all’ kind of concept.
In their mind, expenses can be reduced and efficiency increased and customers are less confused as they need not meet too many people of the same company.
So now the challenge is for the sales person who generally are focused only in selling very few products within their product portfolio to learn on how to sell other products within the expected product portfolio.
What most administrators do not understand is that if a salesperson carry to many products they will never be able to focus fully on all products and it is actually a nightmare to try to sell everything under the sun.
Not to mention about the need to train themselves to learn how to sell the new product portfolio.
If a salesperson is doing very well in a certain products what s the motivation for them to try to learn and sell more products.
Why not take the additional time to spend more time with their family or hang out with their friends?
Unless there are being told that if they do well with a portfolio of products it will mean a promotion for them?
If a salesman is already very successful in selling a certain products why must they learn more to sell new products perhaps to a different customer base?
Why not take the time that is allocated to learn new products for self development like taking a course or something like that?
Why need to learn again especially when it comes to the experienced sales person?
A young and inexperienced one might welcome the challenge however the experienced and successful one knows very well that is it an uphill challenge to learn on a expanded portfolio of products and be good in all of it?
In short, jack of all trades.
Master of none.
When it comes to the customers, whose expectation increases almost every day they want and sometimes demand to talk to a salesperson who are technically trained to share with them an immediate solution if a problem is given to them.
They don’t want to talk to a salesperson who needs to apologize most of the time and mention that will need to get back to the customers.
They don’t have time for such situation.
They will most likely tell the sales person to get lost as their time is wasted and will suggest that a specialist is brought in the next time.
The customers will shy rely be exasperated by the whole situation.
They want to talk to someone who can offer them solutions to their problems.
Not somebody who is there for a long chat about everything under the sky unless it’s done during dinner or free time.
Unless of course, the customer is already using the product and the salesperson is there only to do follow up and make sure everything is in order.
Customers want to be respected.
That’s why they want to talk to a specialist especially if that person can help solve their problem,
They might be nice enough to chat for the first time however unless there s anything concrete coming up then they will usually make excuses the next time the sales person tried to meet the customers again.
So with all these issues which I m sure the guys sitting in the big corporations know about, why so they still want to do it?
When it’s probably a recipe for failure.
I suppose some people believe they could make the change.
And to change it for the better.
Even though history has proven that this type of approach is a guarantee of failure.
Some people just never seemed to learn from history.
Many think that they are too smart for the rest to understand them.
You wonder what were they really thinking of.