Summary
At this point in the evolution of the human being, everything has been investigated, is in the process of study or is beginning to be studied. Everything is possible to study, especially when the focus is no longer macro, but micro. A clear example is the medicine that stopped being a generalist to focus on specialties. Macroeconomic laws seem to have no validity in micro behavior, which forces to work with management models that stabilize the true sales scenario: face to face with the client, with the product and with the projects.
This article deals with the subject from the prism of an expert in sales human resources and customer service whose field of action is the modeling of the management and control of sales and customer service human resources, based on the experience of more than 30 years in the sales activity and more than 12 years as an expert consultant on the subject.
This is a very new subject, of which there is no systematic research or sustainable scientific heritage, therefore it is within the field of exploratory research, and above all based on empirical experiments carried out as an independent researcher with the approval of many companies which have trusted the author of the article.
What are management models?
Management models are actually an architecture of management and control systems applied to a specific paradigm of a given company. Its real value is that no modeling is the same as another, simply because companies and businesses are within the field of social sciences, and the mere fact of working with people makes them alike in some respects, they are the same in others and in many very different.
There is no one company equal to another, although it is possible to speak of similes. It is enough for one person to be different from another for the company to be different in structure, culture, strategy and results.
The human factor makes the difference and it is the human factor that is woven into an interweaving difficult to visualize, both in production factors, as well as in markets and services, in a role play that only human beings are capable of. play skillfully.
That same human factor that, from its origin to the present day, has evolved from slave to human potential, in an incredible and fortunate leap, transforming new workers, both in their way of reacting and technically connecting to current demands, with a dynamism that a decade ago was unthinkable.
Unbelievably, the domain of computers is now domestic; handling of multimedia and connectivity technologies is fully understandable and perfectible for new generations; the speed of reaction has managed to colonize time, transforming a second into a much larger source of resources than what was perceived ten years ago.
The instantaneity of communications makes the markets increasingly transparent, which generates astonishing reactions that have even generated extraordinary political, economic, legal, environmental and virtual coexistence adaptations.
All this order responds to modeling, and although universities and technical institutes have only been concerned with modeling finance, marketing for large organizations, accounting, production engineering and logistics, the most important motor activity of economies has been brutally neglected being an almost holistic field with little scientific weight and great psychological speculation that, in short, has contributed to leaving it in the hands of those who out of necessity want to carry it out, which contributes to the business community mistrusting it despite reluctantly accepting it.
Truth be told, most professionals in any area are not capable of iterating success in business, or of making results sustainable over time, or of explaining why they are doing well or why they are doing poorly. In general, when the sale goes bad, they tend to affect human capital by getting rid of those they consider contributed to the failure and replacing them with other newbies who delay development thanks to the loss of organizational memory that turnover generates.
Sales are truly a world for rude people, until a model is applied that allows to make the most of the sales human resource, at which point everything becomes predictable and can finally be managed for success. When all goes well, anyone can claim success in a personal way and everything is tolerated as if it were true: a classic example is Lee Iaccoca who at one point did very well and at the other received his kick that "threw him out of paradise."
Ignoring that we are social beings, gregarious and extremely dependent on each other, leads to totally disregard the existence of laws that ensure stability and growth in all order of things. As Emerson said: "things happen by law, not by chance."
Why model management?
Peter Drucker defined management as: “making things happen”; This means in practice a continuous adaptation to changes, not only in the market, in the environment, or in the organization, but also in the manager himself, who day by day changes imperceptibly in relation to his experiential heritage, his ethereal component, his health, their family and social environment, etc.
The truth is that the passage of time relativizes everything in a continuous interaction of action, control and reaction. This is a definition, where everything is logically ordered around systemic elements that guarantee continuous adaptation to change based simply on what Americans call “feedback” and what this author calls: “rationalized reaction to change”.
In the sales activity, human resources are affected daily by climatic changes, competitor reactions, customer pressures, logistical problems, economic changes, etc. Nothing is stable and only change is guaranteed, therefore positive sales results are a dynamic objective that is always further away from what we plan and closer to what human effort and performance believe it to be.
This continuous back and forth makes one think that the sales activity is an art, and that the seller is born, and that the customers belong to the seller, etc., and thus a series of fallacies that a suitable modeling puts in their right place.
Businesses are not all the same.
The factors that make it possible to stabilize a system and make it useful and effective in the medium and long term, vary according to the type of market faced. At that time the macro approach is very useful, such as the strategic plan, the commercial strategy, etc., however, from then on everything seems to be diluted, neglecting the micro actions and leaving them to the talent and competence of the seller who sincerely does what that he can maneuver almost exclusively with price, becoming an expert in generating price wars, shrinking margins and accelerating diminishing returns to the business, and in many cases, negotiating more with his own company than with his clients.
In fact, many managers come to feel that the practical direction of sales consists of holding motivational meetings, threatening, firing and going out with salespeople to “see how they work” without using diagnostic tools that allow them to conclude to change.
All these reasons make it urgent to model the management and control of sales human resources, making the company evolve from a qualitative, subjective, to a quantitative and objective approach that provides a safe, timely and reliable basis for micro decision making., ostensibly improving the day-to-day and managing sales growth.
Are the management and control models effective?
The answer to this question is clear: with a good diagnosis, management and control systems of the “English cut” type can be modeled that work for each company. All companies must have a "healthy growth proportional to their size", otherwise they run the risk of dying from acromegaly, which can inevitably lead to a financial shock.
A good diagnosis is based on the certainty that the markets determine the type of model to adopt. This is because the stable factors that allow to build solidly on correctly identified factors and paradigms.
It is clear, for example, that in a retail sales model it is almost impossible to manage clients because we cannot control them, in this case we have to manage the products that are the most stable factor. However, the type of product, the breadth and depth of its mix, the degree of aggressiveness of the market, the virulence of the competitors, etc., will determine which model to use. It is like designing a glove.
There are markets that move by projects, others by clients, others by products, others by fashion, etc., this gives rise to a diversity of models that only a specialist is able to adjust successfully. When we speak of a specialist we are talking about someone who has experience not only in the field of sales, but also in the field of management, control and the design of management tools; the ability to interact with multidisciplinary teams and the ability to strongly implement and develop these models in organizations that require them. It is not easy to find a true specialist in management and control, who is committed to results and is synonymous with guaranteed results.We are talking about moving from the hobbyist sales operation to the professional operation of a sales department.
Last conclusions
The management and control models of sales human resources are socio-technical models that mix human resources with the rest of the resources in an intelligent and appropriate way for each company, to achieve sustainable results over time leading to moving from an administration of the variations in sales to an administration of the variations in the sales growth of the companies that adopt them.
They are recommended to the extent that they are well designed, and because they constitute a new area in business and business development, they require a proven specialist whose success is verifiable both by his professional career, as well as by his academic development and effective experience in the relevant research field. It is not a matter for general consultants or consultant trainees.
The application of sales human resources management and control models is shortening the insertion of companies in the market and leading them to interesting growth in less time than normal. Like any system, it requires discipline and support in its development and implementation, above all, by the senior management of the interested company; Without this, it is not possible to get ahead successfully nor could it be sustainable over time.
1. Carlos Ñanco Muñoz. Author of this article. International Consultant Expert in Sales Human Resources and Customer Service since 1995.
2. Lee Iaccoca was an executive who in the 80's managed to move Chrysler forward and came to believe that he alone was the author of such success until the cycle of luck changed and he lost his position.
