[CELEBRIX x UPWARD Part 2] Leading to a repeatable sales organisation and drawing out the creativity of each and every sales person.

Kaneki: In the first part, we talked about our mutual efforts and our shared worldview of raising the attractiveness level of sales representatives.
Do you have any advice for companies that are aware of how " dark cloud " sales had been at Corona Disaster and are now trying to change?

‍

Imai: Well... We usually claim to " make sales science" without relying on intuition or sense, but it is difficult to say that everything can be made into a science; each company has different problems and there are many variables, so trying to unravel them from " selling" does not work.
However, we can make a science of "I don't want to buy from this person. If you can create a sales pattern that people do not want to buy from, you can imitate it. If we can figure out the reasons why a customer does not want to buy at each stage of the sales process, including the first contact and the interview stage, we can avoid this problem. I think we can pursue reproducibility in this aspect. Incidentally, if this area is left to individual managers, it will be based on their personal experience and knowledge.
Understanding the causes of such failures is the first step in creating a sales model, but when I talk about this, I am sometimes asked, " If we create a sales model, won't we lose our creativity? I am sometimes asked, "If we create a sales model, won't we lose our creativity? I believe the opposite is true.

When you cook, you usually have a recipe. If you can make a delicious dish with just your thoughts, you can't. You need a written procedure. And if you make a lot of dishes according to those instructions, you will become familiar with the method andtechniques. After you get to that point, you will be able to make the best dishes according to the tastes and physical condition of the people who eat them.
Because you know the mold, you can make arrangements at the end. We believe that it is in this arranging part that the creativity of the sales representative comes into play.
Mr. Kaneki, in what areas do you advocate the importance of creativity in sales engagement?  

Kaneki: Our vision is " Go smarter, anywhere " and we provide field sales people with a style that allows them to work comfortably anywhere. Our clients are either new clients or route sales to existing clients. Some work outside the office, some work inside the office, and some work in cafes or in their cars.
We believe that automation is the answer to the question of how we can help these people exercise their creativity. We believe that the answer to this question is "automation." We believe that we can automate and digitize all the tasks that inhibit creativity, such asinformation sharing andactivity reporting on customer touchpoint, and convert them intoquantifiable data that can be analyzed.
This is just like baseball scores: if you can see your batting average and thetypes of pitches you are good at, you can naturally see how you fight. First of all, you must take a batting position and accumulate your own personal scores. As data accumulates, trends become apparent, and if there is a company nearby that is similar to a client with whom you have previously visited and had a successful business meeting, you can inform the client based on location information and make recommendations on where to approach with a high probability of winning.
Ideally, the field sales person would be greeted with the next repeatability without being overwhelmed with any work.

In times of shortage
How should sales organizations respond?

PDF (18 pages)

Download Now

Imai: As a salesperson, spaciousness and margin are important for creative thinking and idea generation. When you are working minute by minute, creativity for proposals from left to right, one company to another, is lost rapidly.
As Mr. Kaneki said, if we automate the parts that really don't need to be done by a person, I think we will be able to generate a wealth of ideas.
In particular, I believe that most new business development sales are basically headed for lost orders. Especially when you are making push type sales, if you cannot show creative and critical new ideas, you will naturally be told that you don't need the product because you didn't need it before. We need to overturn the customer's assumptions.
In order to give customers ideas that they did not have before, and to show them a new world, we need to be relaxed and creative. In order to spend time on that, we don't let them get caught up in unnecessary details. In that sense, I felt that bothsales enablement andsales engagement are important.  

Kaneki: Yes, that's right. We have talked a lot about sales engagement and sales enablement, and I think that both solutions are in demand today.

Imai: I feel that the days when people came in everywhere are ending, and that the generation that had the sales force has left and everyone is scrambling to get things done. Inquiries and responses are increasing.
In any case, I think it is important that both be seen as a means to an end. I would like you to think of it this way: "As a company, we have to have an objective of what we want to become, and in order to achieve that objective, we have to introduce a system and structure that can produce results no matter who is doing the work.

Kaneki: The reason why there are not many companies that have a reproducible sales organization is probably because it is difficult to create one unless you start by reconstructing thegoals anddefinition of how to achieve results as a sales person, and by extension, the company's vision and mission.
If you don't start with the story, even the selection of means will eventually become inappropriate. Without a deeper understanding and empathy for the "individual, " I feel that reproducibility will be difficult to achieve.
Sales enablement and sales engagement, sales reproducibility and creativity, which were the keywords this time, should not be discussed first or second, but should be mutually linked with an awareness of each other.

Imai: I think it is difficult, but in the end, what should be at the center is the " customer. Customers need to " feel good about buying. That is why salespeople need to be able to reproduce this. If the creativity of salespeople improves, the quality of proposals will also improve, and the customer's buying experience will be better.
To this end, where is the bottleneck in the customer experience? Is it sales person engagement, or is the priority to create a mechanism in the form of enablement, or is it an effective scalpel if we explore it from the customer axis? Putting in technology and education are only means to an end. I think it is important to set an objective centered on improving the customer's buying experience and consider where to start.  

Kaneki: We have to face the customer and fill them in. In other words, in order to improve the reproducibility of our sales organization and the creativity of our salespeople, the first and most important thing we need to do is to " raise the resolution of the customer.
Mr. Imai, thank you very much for your valuable talk today.