The digital distribution

Mr. Hilbert, what do you see as your main task as sales manager of a medium-sized IT company?

Karl-Heinrich Hilbert: Clearly in the generation and increase of sales. This task has not changed significantly compared to the past: Innovation and productivity are generated in product development, while my sales team has to launch the products and services on the market and with customers in order to generate sales and make profits.

What does this mean for the customer relationship?

Hilbert: Long-term customer loyalty remains extremely important for sales and business success, but the approach to B2B sales is currently undergoing a major transformation.

How do you see this upheaval?

Hilbert: When I started at the IT system house in the 1980s, customers and products were manageable. We only had a few products and services that the customers really needed in the company.

That has changed. On the one hand, our offering is more complex today, and on the other hand, customers and potential customers are more informed. The Internet has made products and services more comparable, worldwide. In addition, the new customer business of the early years has become a replacement business, which has an impact on sales.

What does this mean for customer relationships?

Hilbert: In the digital age, the 1:1 customer relationship is increasingly being broken down into a 1:n relationship, whereby the n is often still an intangible unknown. But digital sales opportunities allow us to break new ground, to address customers in social selling, for example, and to respond more quickly and directly to feedback. Social media and collaboration platforms play an extremely important role here.

What will be the role of the sales staff in your team in the future?

Hilbert: Today, the role of the sales representative and customer consultant has changed - while our sales force was initially focused on product sales, it later became a consultant and problem solver for customers. Now a salesperson has to be a kind of eierlegende Wollmilchsau - salesperson, problem solver and strategic advisor. We have to meet this challenge.

How has your job changed?

Hilbert: My task as sales manager is to steer the team in this direction. An important aspect of this is the permanent training on the changing, more complex products and services, on changing sales strategies.

In a digital world, communication at eye level with customers is extremely important in order to continue to maintain long-term and trustworthy customer relationships and to build new ones. This makes it all the more important to listen to customers, to take their individual requirements seriously, and to be a good companion to them.

What does that look like in concrete terms?

Hilbert: To give you an example: In the past, I mainly gave my sales force product training, but now I'm adding technology training and continuing education on digitization, including online marketing and social media selling.

Isn't that difficult with a heterogeneously grown sales team?
Hilbert: Certainly, because we have many experienced sales consultants and Generation Y is moving up the ranks. Young employees in sales want to be actively involved right from the start and are used to different ways of working and communicating.

That's what I have to adjust to as a sales manager 4.0. It's a matter of leaving behind deadlocked paths and giving Generation Y enough leeway.

And how do you deal with permanent change?

Hilbert: This is one of the biggest challenges in modern sales: what changes today may be obsolete tomorrow, multi-channel will be followed by omni-channel, and we don't yet know what will happen then. Nevertheless, I have to prepare my sales force to be ready for this continuous change and to keep opening up to new opportunities.

What is the challenge in particular?

Hilbert: Mastering the control tools makes sales successful. Pipeline and funnel management based on data is far from an easy task. Internal sales figures, forecasts and market data have to be determined and sales representatives disciplined to consistently record their data. In the end, this is the only way I can build a professional sales team that is up to the digital challenge.