Sales leaders seek opportunities for growth - Economist Intelligence Unit
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An article from The Economist Intelligence Unit
Sales leaders seek opportunities for growth
Sales executives may need to look beyond their current
roles to develop the skills that digital disruption demands.
Where customers go, sales executives must surely follow. Today, of course, that means
online, and digital techniques to identify sales leads, engage with them, understand
their needs and close deals are an essential component of any salesperson’s toolkit.
The impact of this digitisation is not lost on today’s sales executives. They see the impact
of digital transformation all around them, from the way in which their teams are organised
to the career paths available to them.
In a recent survey of 800 business executives in France, Germany, the UK and the
Netherlands, conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit and sponsored by Salesforce,
sales executives say more often than their counterparts in marketing, IT and customer
service that digital disruption requires their department to interact more directly with
customers (24% v a 19% average across the survey base). They also most often say that
digital disruption requires them to communicate more effectively with customers and
prospects (21% v 17%).
“I can remember a time not so long ago in sales when the desktop phone was your
primary work tool and you were pretty much expected to be on that phone all day,
Sponsored by every day,” says Stuart Middleton, chief commercial officer at online travel site
SkyScanner. Today, the average salesperson will bounce between emails, social media
and messaging tools—as well as phone calls—to get conversations started and keep
them ticking along.
1 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2018
Sales leaders seek opportunities for growth
The digitisation of sales
SkyScanner, which provides flight comparison and booking services, is familiar
with digital disruption. The travel industry has been utterly transformed by digital
technology over the past two decades. Today, Skyscanner’s customers are
digitally savvy, as are the travel agents, car hire providers and hoteliers it
partners with.
“As a result, our sales teams have to be online, because that’s where the
important conversations take place,” says Mr Middleton. “We’ve always needed
good communicators in sales. Now we need people who are good at
communicating over a wide range of media.”
Beyond digital communication, SkyScanner’s sales team must also be
comfortable with data analysis. The company’s 60m-plus unique monthly visitors
leave a rich trail of data relating to travel preferences and trends, and this can
be a big help in luring new travel providers to the site.
“Data creates a strong bond between our sales team and our commercial
partners. Airlines and online travel agencies, for example, want to know what
routes and destinations travellers are searching for and our ability to show them
exactly the information that they ask for is hugely important.”
Internally, data visualisation tools are used to prepare at-a-glance charts and
maps to present to travel companies. And web analytics help sales understand
how deals perform with specific customer groups and convey that information
to sales targets.
Surprisingly, however, many sales executives remain unconvinced about the
importance of analytics: compared with other departments, they are less likely
to agree that data analysis will become significantly more important to their role
in the next three years (29% v a survey average of 33%, see chart). This may
reflect a lack of confidence, however. Less than two-thirds (63%) of sales
executives surveyed say they are ‘confident’ or ‘very confident’ about their
data analysis skills.
Chart one:
How will data analysis change in importance in
the next 3 years as a result of digital disruption?
% respondents
It will become somewhat more important
It will become significantly more important
IT 36% 37%
Customer Services 32% 35%
Marketing 33% 33%
Sales 35% 29%
Source: The Economist Intelligence Unit
2 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2018Sales leaders seek opportunities for growth
At SkyScanner University, the company’s internal skills development programme,
sales people are regularly trained in new analytics tools. Mr Middleton insists that
willingness to adapt is one of the key things he looks for in potential recruits to his
team. He also says a commitment to continuous skill development is a big factor
in any employee’s success in the company.
Leadership needs
SkyScanner’s sales team also take basic programming courses so they better
understand challenges faced by their colleagues in engineering. This reflects the
growing need for cross-functional understanding that arises from digital business.
Organisational division between, for example, sales, marketing, customer service
and IT is not useful when the development of customer-facing systems requires the
expertise of each function to be combined in close collaboration. As a result, many
departments find their responsibilities expanding to overlap with other functions.
In the survey, the majority of sales executives say their department’s role has
expanded to overlap with marketing (74%), customer service (74%) and even IT
(73%), to some degree at least, as a result of digital disruption. And this merging
of responsibilities is felt by senior management: 68% of respondents say their own
role is merging with those of leaders in other functions.
The job of a sales leader is therefore evolving: 45% of those surveyed agree that
their role is adapting due to digital disruption, second only to respondents in the
IT function. In particular, 37% of sales executives say they have become “more
focused on innovation and experimentation than process and organisation” as
a result of disruption, the most common form of change.
In turn, the skills that sales executives need in order to lead their teams effectively
are evolving too. The qualities that most sales leaders in the survey believe will
grow in importance in the near future are transparency (71%) and empathy
(71%). This, arguably, reflects the fact that sales leaders will need to understand
and collaborate with other functions in order to deliver digital success.
“Collaborating with others in the business is all part of understanding where we
are going and what makes us different from other businesses,” says Mr Middleton.
At Skyscanner, sales and marketing teams are working closely together to drive
new business. In the past two years, the company has created “growth” teams,
in which sales and marketing colleagues work side-by-side to develop new
strategies “for product-market fit”. In other words, they collaborate on products
for specific “types” of traveller—budget, luxury, backpacker and so on. Mr
Middleton elaborates: “This level of collaboration was less prevalent a few years
ago, but has undoubtedly contributed to the accelerated growth of the business
in recent years.”
Despite the need for future capabilities, including this kind of collaboration, sales
leaders are the least likely of any function to say their current role offers them the
opportunity to develop the leadership skills they will need in future, and the least
3 © The Economist Intelligence Unit Limited 2018Sales leaders seek opportunities for growth
likely to say their employers encourage them to progress in their role. This may be
because organisations expect a single, simple outcome from their sales teams—
revenue growth—and so may be less focused on personal development.
In order to be eligible for the leadership positions of tomorrow, current and
aspiring sales executives may, therefore, need to look beyond sales to expand
their experience. Indeed, a quarter of those surveyed (25%) say it is “very likely”
that they will take on a leadership position in another function in the next three
years. And 58% agree that “business leaders can no longer expect to have a
successful career with experience in just one department.”
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