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once he or she is in front of the customer. Therefore, it can be counterproductive to primarily manage sales activity levels for larger, complex sales.5

Ted Rubley, former Xerox sales manager and now president of INYFX, says:

I recognized something early in my sales management career. There seemed to be a difference between how I managed my salespeople who were involved in transac-tional selling (small sales) compared to my people involved in consultative selling (major accounts). In small sales, I could almost predict that if a rep were making lots of sales calls, he would have lots of orders, too. This didnt seem to hold true with my major account reps, though. They had only so many accounts they could call on. In one sense they couldnt work harder, they could only work smarter. I discovered I was spending more time with them to help develop effective sales strategies and tactics and more time with the transac-tional reps inspecting activity standard levels.

SALES ACTIVITY DEFINED

Sales activity traditionally has been viewed as particular activities that the salesperson needs to perform in order to be successful.

transactional sales. In smaller sales, the following transaction-generating activities will improve sales:

A Scheduling a sufficient number of appointments

A Making the required number of sales calls

A Presenting as many proposals as possible

A Conducting as many demonstrations as possible

A Determining a percentage mix between new business calls and customer care visits and then managing to that mix

Sales activity can also include seeking referrals, sending direct mail to solicit business, following up, and conducting postsale activities. The point is that these activities all work, but they are most effective in the smaller, transactional type of sale. For example, sales of small insurance policies, inexpensive office products, personal pagers, and cellular phones would probably be considered transac-tional sales. Measuring the number of sales calls, proposals, and demonstrations works well for selling these products.

consultative sales. In consultative sales, the salesperson needs to probe thoroughly and explore the customer issues, the consequences caused by these issues, and so forth. This takes time. There is much more for the salesperson to know and understand when she or he is working with larger accounts. There are more people to visit. Multiple decision makers are often involved, and working with each one is time-consuming. In the consultative sale, its about working smarter, not harder.6 Its about learning at a deeper level. When a salesperson invests much of his or her time with larger accounts (which he or she should do because the performance reward is usually greater), that salesperson doesnt have as much time left to make lots of sales calls. In the consultative sale, success is about how the salesperson behaves in front of the customer, not the number of customers he or she is able to visit. Put another way, in the consultative sale, performance is about depth, i.e., drilling down into an account. In transactional selling, it is about breadth, i.e., calling on a lot of people. Since the solutions in a transactional sale are usually not as complex or are more of a commodity, and since they are also low-risk to the customer, only one or maybe two sales calls are necessary to get an order.

What might happen if a transactional approach were to be used in the consultative sale? Imagine a salesperson who was used to closing business on the first or second visit trying to close an order for a $1.5 million local area network (LAN) order on the same timetable. No one would ever expect a Fortune 500 company to move its life, health, and property coverages to the company of a sales rep who tried to close on the second visit. In such cases, the prospect would be thinking, How could someone who has learned so little about our business be able to make an intelligent recommendation to us? Do we want to do business with someone who doesnt care enough about us to take the time to learn our business?

Shelby Solomon, vice president and general manager for the MEDSTAT Group in Ann Arbor, Michigan, says, Of course, we want our major account people making sales calls, but we want them to be effective sales calls. They need to take the time to thoroughly understand the customers needs and identify how they can create value for our customers.

ACTION POINTS

4 Consultative sales require quality. Remember that consultative selling (or major account selling) is about sales effectiveness-in other words, how skilled you are when you are in front of the customer.

4 Transactional sales require quantity. In transactional selling, performance is primarily driven by getting in front of a lot of customers, since a high skill level is not necessary for sales success.

SALES TRUTH 20: Increased sales activity is effective only in transactional sales.