The discussion between the Global Vice President of Sales and his HR Business Partner was quick and to the point.  “Rich is a terrific person, a valuable asset to our organization, and a very strong communicator. However, he is not a Sales Professional and never will be, so why are we talking about him for this Sales Training program?”

When the HR partner probed for more information, the VP shared; “In my opinion, Sales Professionals today are pure ‘hunters’. They are able to understand the customer’s business, effectively prospect for new customers, develop relationships, close deals, make the hand-off to account management, and then move on to the next opportunity.  Rich is a great account manager, but he doesn’t have the skills to hunt. He can make sure the account is happy, and he can take new orders, but he doesn’t have the elite skills to prospect and close”

There are a few Business Acumen metrics that most leaders in most industries drive toward such as increases in organic revenue and increases in profitability from the existing business.  Unfortunately, those two metrics are sometimes diametrically opposed from a strategic perspective.

For example, increases in organic revenue is typically driven from the existing business acquiring new customers, and increasing profitability is typically driven by driving out costs from the existing business and gaining more revenue from existing customers.

The problem in all of this occurs when businesses upset their existing customers by aggressively going after new customers creating the perception that new customers are more important than existing ones.  The most obvious example of this can be seen in the Cable TV industry where all you hear about is the incredible deal being offered by bundling TV, Internet, and phone for a super-low price.  Well, that’s great, but what about the existing customers who are paying 5 times as much as the offer for the new customers.

As part of the design work we are doing for a client in the chemical industry that is focusing on enhancing their sales skills, we conducted a survey of their customers to seek answers to the question of what the customers truly value from Sales Professionals during the sales process.

The decision makers in the survey were asked to rank five core sales competencies from 5 being the most important to 1 being the least important.  Because the focus of the training is developing the skills of “hunters” (sales professionals who are identifying new customers as opposed to sales professionals “farming” existing accounts), we focused on only potential customers (prospects) and not existing customers as we felt their responses would give us better insights into the specific answers we were looking for. The data below presents a compelling argument that Business Acumen skills are the critical foundation to any sales process in 2019 and beyond.

One of the many interesting things that I’ve learned from delivering business simulation-centric leadership development programs for some of the largest companies around the world is to listen to and pick up on weak signals and trends that business leaders are thinking about and talking about.  Over the past few weeks some of these week signals have turned into strong requests for help in an emerging area of leadership I will call “Keeping-it-Simple-Leadership-Strategy” for now.

What does it take to lead through the current challenges and opportunities at the same time thinking about the future disruptions that are going to shape the future markets well beyond your leadership tenure?

It takes the ability to think beyond the incremental and a focus on the data that will uncover the weak signals that provide the insights and ideas to develop innovative solutions that will disrupt the existing market.  It also takes leadership courage to drive change and think in new ways that nobody wants to hear or talk about.