Empowering the Sales Force - What do Large Organizations, Time Travel, and Bacon have in Common?

Most organizations have all the resources in the world but fail to use them to aid their sales force. They treat their organization as if it is a small business and everyone knows what is going on. However, this is a fallacy as the following analogy elaborates on the situation.

The Nomad Story:

Imagine this scenario. A few thousand years ago, a nomad is stranded in the desert without food or water. An intelligent human from the future has created a vitamin that can provide the nomad with enough energy to stay alive for one week in the desert without food or water. This intelligent human has transported the vitamin back in time along with another individual from the future, deemed the adviser.

The adviser’s job is to convince the nomad to eat the vitamin so that the nomad can stay alive. Because the vitamin does not look or smell appetizing, the nomad will not eat it without outside influence. First, the vitamin creator has to convince the adviser why the nomad should eat the vitamin. Does the vitamin creator say “this piece of matter contains the proper amino acids to decompose within an indigestion system to sustain proper nucleus nourishment?” No, the vitamin creator tells the adviser, “This pill will keep that man alive for the next week.”

The problem arises from the fact that the adviser and the nomad do not speak the same language. What does the adviser do to ensure that the nomad consumes the vitamin?

The Analogy:

In this story, the nomad is the client, the adviser is the sales team, the vitamin is a company product, and the vitamin creator is a large organization with vast resources. 

How Large Organizations Fall Short of Empowering their Sales Force:

The first step in the process is for large company (vitamin creator) to convince the sales team (adviser) to sell their product (the vitamin). Most large organizations take the first approach in this story by telling their sales team abstract and vague descriptions, such as 

"our product is smart, brilliant, and sophisticated, which will allow it to increase revenue and market share while decreasing costs." 

When in reality, the large corporation should really be telling the sales team a more concrete story, such as

"our product helps clients with large amounts of activity during peak occasions, such as an increase in online traffic for a retailer during Christmas.” 

Its real, its direct, and it includes an example.

Large organizations dress up their products when speaking internally as if their employees are clients. Their message needs to be short, sweet, and directly to the point. The sales team is responsible for dressing up the products when speaking with clients. Going back to the story, the answer to the solution is that the adviser wraps the vitamin in bacon and hands it to the nomad.

Once the sales team understands the true nature of the products they sell, then they can wrap them up in bacon and sell them. However, they can’t do this unless they truly understand the product itself.