In Search of Supersalesman
Posted: 11/1998
In Search of Supersalesman
By Jonathan B. Haller
Let’s admit it, folks–no matter how unique the technology, how delightful the
marketing, how supreme the financial backing or how efficient the operations, the
lifeblood of a company’s ultimate success or failure in the marketplace is its sales
force. At the end of the day, it basically comes down to how well the sales force executes
(or pounds the pavement) on its sales and marketing plans.
Unfortunately for competitive local exchange carriers (CLECs) and interexchange
carriers (IXCs), there currently are a number of serious challenges plaguing the
communications industry. First, there is a dearth of qualified, trained sales
representatives; and second, once sales reps are on board and trained, it’s difficult for
service providers to maintain sales-force readiness.
Why is the current market plight and service providers’ response important? Because how
well companies address the situation now translates directly into revenue growth
and long-term competitive advantage.
Why Is It So Hard to Find Sales Reps?
If the lifeblood of an organization is its sales force, then CLECs and IXCs must be on
national donor alert. There just aren’t enough qualified communications sales reps to go
around. Why has it gotten so difficult to find and keep experienced sales reps? Well, the
pressure has been building for at least 10 years, and you didn’t have to be Nostradamus to
predict what the end of the century would hold for the demand of communications sales
reps.
Many More Competitors
First, the competitive landscape has changed dramatically over the past decade. Recall
when AT&T Corp. was still AT&T, and the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs)
were, well, AT&T. With the exception of MCI Communica-tions Corp. and Sprint
Commun-ications Co., AT&T was the telecom industry. After the Modified Final
Judgment, competitors started to blossom, initially as competitive access providers (CAPs)
in large metropolitan service areas (MSAs) such as New York, Chicago and San Francisco,
and then as CLECs and Internet service providers (ISPs) and now as integrated
communications providers (ICPs) in practically every metropolitan area.
Consider Atlanta as a case in point. Until about four years ago, BellSouth Corp. was
the only game in town for local services. Although competitors had penetrated large metro
areas across the country by the mid-1990s, CLEC competition came late to the genteel
Southern city. But when facilities-based competition hit Atlanta, the floodgates opened.
First Oakbrook, Ill.-based Metropolitan Fiber Systems Communications Inc. (now MFS
WorldCom Inc.), then Englewood, Colo.-based MediaOne Group, then a slew of other
competitors … and more to come. Over the past three or four years, at least nine
competitors have entered the Atlanta MSA.
That’s just one city, and the list of competitors only includes facilities-based CLECs.
(I lost track of the hundreds of local resellers long ago.) This scenario has played out
in every other metro area; each becoming infested with CLECs, ISPs, IXCs and ICPs. When
CLECs attack business customers in metros such as Salem, Mass., you know that competitive
activity has transcended the absurd. (Sorry, Salem.)
It boils down to this: More competitors mean more demand for more sales reps.
Vancouver, Wash.-based Electric Lightwave Inc.’s (ELI’s) full-time sales application
engineer group has ballooned from about 40 reps a year ago to about 150 today.
Denver-based Qwest Communica-tions International Inc. plans to triple its sales force from
100 to 300 in the next six months.
One big implication that increased competitor activity has on a CLEC’s or an IXC’s
ability to find and maintain sales forces is this: The candidate pool is getting diluted.
Companies are spiking down to candidates that might have sales backgrounds, but not
necessarily technology sales experience. I’ve heard rumors that some CLECs are hiring
former real estate agents and "wet behind-the-ears" undergraduates to sell
complicated integrated communications services. This means "straining on the
training." There now are hundreds of communications providers that contend for a
finite population of sales reps, and the strain on sales force education and readiness is
immense.
Many More Products and Services
To further confound the situation, there are many more communications products and
applications, and all of them seem to have gotten a lot more complicated over the past 10
years. Even after the AT&T breakup in 1984, there really were just two telecom
services markets–long distance and local. And "local" basically was just plain
old voice services. Until the late 1980s, it wasn’t very complicated to find and train
communications sales reps.
But then emerged a host of additional products, many of which were enabled by various
economic, technological and industry forces: global capitalism, energetic capital markets,
regulatory empowerment, bandwidth availability, desktop personal computer (PC)
introduction and swift penetration, Internet invasion, introduction of packet-switched
technology and growing e-commerce.
Ten years ago, few people had a clue that the following technologies and services would
be introduced over the next decade: frame relay, asynchronous transfer mode (ATM), virtual
private networks (VPNs), digital subscriber lines (DSLs), local area networks (LANs), wide
area networks (WANs), Internet, voice over Internet protocol (VoIP), integrated services
digital network (ISDN), personal communications services (PCS), cable modems … and the
list goes on and on.
And you can bet that services innovation will accelerate as technology advances. Mike
Daniel, vice president of retail sales for ELI, puts it this way: "In the old days,
you worked for a [local exchange carrier] or in [long distance], and it was pretty easy.
Now, we have 38 different products in our portfolio."
All of the innovative products have contributed to the blurring of the competitive
landscape. It’s not easy to classify competitors anymore because most of them have evolved
into ICPs, and most of them sell just about every communications service known to mankind.
Almost every vendor believes that providing all services on one bill is telecom’s Holy
Grail.
What implications do the "one-stop shopping" philosophy and myriad products
have on a CLEC’s or an IXC’s ability to find sales reps? With many more products with
which to contend, it’s hard to find qualified sales reps that can be expected to sell and
stay "sales-force ready" across the board. As Rick Buyens, vice president of
marketing for AT&T’s Business Services Mid-Markets, says, "There is no
Superman."
Many More Demanding Customers
Imagine what occurs when more competitors begin offering more services. Customers
become more educated, and as they evolve, customers become more demanding. In some primary
customer satisfaction research that I’ve analyzed over time, I’ve concluded that although
competitors improved their services, they still end up falling short of customer
requirements because: one, customers are a lot smarter about the services; and two,
they’re a lot more demanding. So, although a competitor’s performance may have improved,
its customers have raised the bar commensurately higher.
Don’t think I’m referring only to large business customers. With so many competitors in
the marketplace chasing precious monthly communications budgets, not every competitor can,
or plans to, compete for the lucrative large business segment. Accordingly, technology
services have migrated downward to medium-sized and small business customers, and even to
consumers. Small business customers today are sales targets for even the most advanced
communications products, such as frame relay and ISDN.
"Even a small 15-person mortgage provider is more like 80 percent data, [having]
Internet access to financial services, Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and other
federal agencies and web access [to their services] by their customers," says Thomas
Cross, chairman of Cross Market Management, LaJolla, Calif. "In some cases, even
these companies are installing desktop video to realtor offices so the realtor can bring
the customer to the mortgage company via video."
How Can CLECs and IXCs Respond?
The preceding presents a pretty glum panorama–more competitors selling more services
to more customers, all of which have created an immeasurable need for more sales reps,
who, by the way, undoubtedly are the biggest winners in this current environment.
The answer to it all? Stay tuned! In next month’s column, we’ll reveal how some of the
industry’s leading sales vice presidents are using innovative ways, including teamwork and
computer-based training, to educate and maintain their sales forces.
Haller is principal analyst, network services, for Current Analysis Inc., an online
competitive intelligence and analysis firm based in Sterling, Va. He can be reached at [email protected].
Editor’s note: This is the first of two articles on building and maintaining a
sales force. The first installment discusses the difficulty in finding qualified sales
representatives. In December’s issue, Part 2 will cover maintaining sales-force readiness.
