In today’s world where startups have changed definitions and models of traditional businesses and are a very important part of learning/integration for the industry at large, how has the role of sales folks at startups changed? Will these people be relevant still doing the same job or is it time to accept that traditional “sales” job is dead and the new crop of sales and marketing specialists are designed very differently?
It’s a fact that we still get to see traditional sales roles in well defined work structures like – insurance, finance corporations, banks, white goods, etc. These are places wherein disruptive innovation is almost adsent and no high end skillset is required by the sales teams – but to practice the regular “pitch-negotiate-close” or “always-be-closing” techniques would be sufficient.
But where is the major money and potential future for all of us? It isn’t in well defined and “administrative” companies. It is definitely in this entrepreneurial industrial age that we are currently living in. Things have actually never been better than this.
With so many startups vying to be the next “Facebook”, there is a healthy competition to also be able to figure out revenue generation so that stability and innovation go hand in hand. Throughout the world, most startups set out to get a strong sales person and then help him figure out ways of generating revenue through different models of product offering – SaaS, Freemium, Advertising space selling, etc.
Sales reps that are products of traditional companies from the last decade would have no problems in the first 1-2 years in selling a product/service and make money. However, once the challenges of consumer behavior towards the product start bothering the topline, the same sales reps would then have trouble practicing the same sales models and get results.
Startups are by default a place where some of the most innovative and disruptive thoughts are worked upon by people who can be classified as “outliers” or “non conformists”.
A lot of these founding members lack sales background or salesmanship and believe that a traditional sales team practicing the traditional model will keep them afloat and get money while they work on larger and more appealing problems.This wont change. Primarily because startups don’t have the bandwindth wherein the founders (mostly young grads or tech guys) will always be busy in getting the product right and improve it in way that helps them become a successful entity. They don’t mostly figure out the sales models and strategies, and therefore the startup sales guy becomes a critical success factor, one which isn’t given much thought.
The sales heads of startups will need to have the knowledge and the mindset to look beyond traditional monetizing (advertising) options and models.
In a world that has Facebook-marketing and Google-Adsense, selling ad inventory isn’t going to get one anywhere and neither going to help one achieve sales quotas or revenue growth.
So what’s the way ahead and what are the integral factors of the new roles for sales reps in startups?Sales heads would need to look into building business generation products that will compliment the core products of a company. If a startup1 has a consumer internet product, then rather than looking at monetizing inventory or charging users for some premium feature, the sales team should look at the amount and type of “data” these consumers generate by using their product. Such data or trends or actionable-intelligence is much sort after, and sales teams should know how to deliver this data through a well designed B2B product fit to be consumed by the businesses/clients.
Alternately, if a startup2 has a B2B product, then its the duty of the sales team to figure out a consumer internet product that would connect its B2B with steady stream of access-to-market and data-trends. B2B products that have linkages with consumer internet products are stronger and have the chance to survive changing dynamics of any market.
Why should sales teams think of such things? That’s because without these kind of interventions and experiments from the sales teams, the revenue opportunities will directly be linked to the core product and all future developments on that core product.
Priorities of developing core products are different at most times, and they are not supposed to be built thinking about the money they will make or the advertisement options/inventory they are going to create. Also, explosive growth for every startup takes them into the mid-level firms (not too big and not too small) segment, wherein prioritization is important, and steady stream of revenues will keep the engine running properly.
It is the responsibility of sales teams to think of products and designs rather than just rely on honing their sales skills to sell available inventory. This practice of designing products gives them a superior control over the changes or diversions in their respective markets.
Sales challenges are changing, and to still be relevant, sales teams will need to break from traditional roles and models.