salesperson Capabilities

· Salespeople are not market researchers. Their presence in the market does not magically transform them into people able to conduct market research with customers. As mentioned in Chapter 1, marketing and sales information systems comprise a market research subsystem and a market intelligence system; salespeople participate only in the latter. The market research subsystem instead provides specific, precise information to man- agers to help them answer particular questions and reduce decision-making uncertainty. This information needs to be as objective and complete as possible. Executives should not expect or require from sales forces this sort of information gathering responsibility and capability. Rather, they should help salespeople contribute effectively to the market intelligence system and accept that their information will be subjective, informal, incomplete, and not always high in quality or relevant. That being said, the develop- ment of salespeople’s intelligence gathering capabilities still relies on ade- quate training and a competitive intelligence ethical culture.

· Developing Salespeople’s Intelligence Gathering Capabilities

· “There are three kinds of salespeople: Those who speak and never transmit anything because they did not hear, those who listen and then only get information their customers are willing to share, and those who know how to ask good questions. Salespeople who transmit the most interesting information are those who know how to ask questions and who are not afraid to ask them, because a question is always indiscreet!”

· —Director of Marketing, pharmaceutical company

· The development of a salesperson’s competitive intelligence acquisition capability mainly relies on effective training, coaching, and experience. Any personal development and coaching techniques should help them enhance their motivation and CIA.

· Regarding motivation, the emphasis should be put on a salesperson’s expectation to find interesting information if he or she looks for it. One of the most important restraints on a salesperson’s field investigation effort stems from personal expectations. This perception certainly depends on the type of customers, but a sense of being able to be efficient in intelli- gence seeking also relates to personal self-efficacy. Training and coaching can greatly enhance salespeople’s self-efficacy with regard to finding inter- esting information in the field.

The first step is to tell a salesperson to build and maintain a small stable of very trustworthy customers, whose good relationships mean that he or she can ask for competitive information on a regular basis. As we saw pre- viously, the quality of customer-based information depends on the quality of the buyer–seller relationship. The second step requires training the sales- person in ways to develop and use appropriate intelligence gathering ques- tions and timing. The customer should not feel as if he or she is divulging sensitive information. Instead, competitive questions should come up nat- urally, during a review of the account, to lead to better understanding of customers’ expectations. They also need to be related to competitors’ actions and plans. In general, a three-stage approach marks good intelli- gence discovery: investigation opening, investigation discovery, and inves- tigation closing:

Investigation opening

· ü Please tell me if we are meeting your goals and how, or how are we not meeting them?

· ü What else should we be doing to help you reach your objectives and be happy?

· Investigation discovery

· ü What do you expect from our competitors to help you meet your goals?

· ü How do they help you reach your objectives and be happy?

· ü Please tell me more about what they do well or their upcoming

· projects for you?

· Investigation closing

· ü Why would you say their upcoming projects are better than ours for your goals?

· ü How do you think we could match what they do, or want to do for you?

· For new salespeople, managers should coach them on the intelligence investigation approach by modeling a good approach while assisting them in the field. Such “ride-alongs” also give managers a chance to relate the questions asked to recent important information acquired and how it had been used by the marketing and sales departments.

· In addition, salespeople should seek out and leverage the techniques with which they are more comfortable, such as asking for or smartly inves- tigating competitive information (see salespeople’s strategies to collect competitive information in this Chapter). Ultimately, the objective of any competitive intelligence-related training and coaching is to help the sales- person realize the value of this activity for himself or herself, the company, and, eventually, customers.

· It is important to enhance salespeople’s CIA too, by reemphasizing the intelligence feedback loop (Figure 4.4) whenever possible. Feedback from management (feedback 3) and to customers (feedback 4) both reinforce learning resources and help reestablish the impact of competitive intelli- gence on a salesperson’s recognition, management decisions, the customer, and the market. This type of feedback should be reviewed and readdressed during joint sales and marketing meetings. In this sense, a market orien- tation strategy also can benefit from and be reinforced by this type of man- agerial and interdepartmental collaboration.

salesperson Capabilities

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