By Larry Janis, Managing Partner, Integrated Search Solutions Group
In Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, Willy Loman struggled to sell in a market which suddenly demanded more than charisma to close a deal. Like Willy, today’s BPO salespeople are experiencing a changing environment which requires a more substantive skill set is in order to be successful.
The pressure for a deeper skill set comes from both the salesperson’s employer and his clients. The employer (provider) has expanded the salesperson’s scope of responsibilities well beyond meeting monetary quotas, and now holds them accountable for decisions that will have a major impact on key results. Salespeople must be able to interpret strategic direction and vision, and set policies and goals, requiring significant long-term business planning and forecasting. On a deal pursuit, they are typically managing large, complex projects as well as managing a very large pyramid of people. Additionally, they are accountable for the daily delivery of high quality services to ensure contractual obligations are met in an outsourced environment. They are required to maintain excellent working relationships with their clients as well as team members in order to motivate a workforce to deliver high-quality client service. Finally, they maintain programs of continuous process improvements to ensure ongoing client satisfaction and to improve value for their clients.
On top of that, the buyers of outsourcing services are demanding that salespeople possess a depth of knowledge of the outsourcing business model so that they can initially define and then deliver both operational efficiencies and economic leverage. Without such depth, perspective buyers are unlikely to perceive BPO salespeople as credible.
The specific skill set varies from provider to provider, and client to client, each having different perspectives on the criteria and their relative importance. While these factors may make it virtually impossible to define a single profile for success, some insights for industry leaders can give you a sense of the variety of skills employers and clients seek. I spoke with Kevin Campbell, Group Chief Executive—Technology, Accenture and Mike Salvino, Group Chief Executive—Business Process Outsourcing, Accenture
Kevin Campbell’s thoughts:
They have a strong business background and an understanding of how Outsourcing helps overall business results. Good executive presence, complex deal structuring experience, and results focused. No one personality is dominant but people skills along with ability to handle complexity are critical.
Attributes:
– Results, sold profitable deals…they can be proud of the deals they did
– Executive presence, good communicator
– Team player, need to coordinate across different groups to pull together
– Inquisitive – want to learn and always wants to do better
– Tough but fair – required to get good deals across the goal-line.
Mike Salvino’s thoughts:
1. Relationship Sales – These deals are done on chemistry…Making sure the client has faith in the person, the provider, and the solution is key…That is why it is critical that the client knows that the person doing the sale needs to also deliver the deal….
2. Operations Experience – The best salespeople are the folks that have operated large contracts before and “sat in the seat”…They know how to make these contracts work and therefore when they are framing a deal it will come from a data point of experience vs. philosophy….
3. Client References – It is great to have good sales and account people but if you do not have good client references then you will not be successful because clients really help close deals. Sales professionals need to know when and how to use references. You do not want to over use your references and your references need to be balanced by having the ability to explain the good and the bad concerning a deal to have good credibility in the market….
In sum, providers and clients are demanding a wide variety of skills the Outsourcing marketplace. While the requisite skill sets vary from situation to situation, one characteristic is constant: today’s best outsourcing salespeople have to have the depth to make the big deals happen.