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Get Buy-In From Sales Force To Ensure E-Biz Success
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 25 1999 0:20 AM EST
Sep. 24, 1999 (InternetWeek - CMP via COMTEX) -- Now that the Internet is a legitimate venue for selling
airplane parts, salespeople at parts supplier Aviall Corp. have been transformed from product brokers to
ambassadors of e-commerce and customer care.
With the help of consultants C-bridge Internet Solutions, Aviall developed a Web-based self-service order
and distribution center that lets customers handle routine questions themselves.
But that doesn't take business away from the remote sales force; it frees them from having to handle
some of the mundane tasks.
"If they can get the small brokers and customers to use the Internet, they will still get their commissions
and then focus on what they do best-customer service,' says Margaret Bouline, Aviall's vice president of
IS.
Aviall recently launched its revamped Web site, www.aviall.com. The site did so much business the first
two weeks after its official relaunch, Bouline forecasts that the company's online sales will top $10
million for the year.
In addition to an impressive sales volume, Aviall expects to save $250,000 yearly by having customers
obtain quotes online, says Bouline. She adds that the site has been well-received, in part, because "we
made it very self-evident. It didn't require a lot of training from the customer perspective.'
Getting the outside salespeople up to speed was another story. "Initially, they saw it as a threat,' says
Bouline. But the benefits of selling over the Web are too great-and the company couldn't be successful
without buy-in from the sales force. So Bouline and other managers at Aviall began educating the sales
force in the ways Web marketing could boost the company's revenue stream, help it expand into new
markets, solidify existing customer relationships and expand ties with business partners.
Of course, selling salespeople on a new idea is easier said than done. Salespeople may be far-flung and
rarely seen at the home office-or even in the remote offices-since many are mobile as well. Still, they are
often the enterprise's closest link to customers, presenting the first and often the only face a customer
knows.
Like other companies, Aviall found that IT had to be more involved in the development and support of the
sales force if the company was to truly get a solid ROI from its foray into the Internet business.
Bouline says her experience has taught her that CIOs and upper IT management should take on a
significant role to ensure that technology supports and encourages the changing sales force. "It's our
responsibility to sell the technology; it's not the job of the director of sales. We had to work together to
show [sales] the benefit of technology to the customer,' says Bouline.
Often that means tech pros like Bouline have to change their perspective. "One of the things that I've
seen and I've had to change my mind-set on is [ordinarily] when we put in a new technology, I think how
it benefits Aviall,' says Bouline.
"I've come to find out that to a sales force, it doesn't matter,' she says. "They look at it as: 'How does
this benefit the customer?' I say I'm going to give them this great stuff, and they're saying: 'Corporate is
messing with our customers.' '
IT also might find it difficult to deal with such a remote group of users, particularly if IT has been isolated
behind the walls of the data center's glass house. But Bouline and her team have found ways to work
with the sales force and create a strong team of e-commerce pros.
"The sales force has been trained on the site itself,' says Bouline. And they all have kits to take them
through the basics. The kits include a five-step primer to the Web site, FAQs and a CD-ROM for use if a
salesperson is uncomfortable running a live Internet demo at a customer site.
Aviall helped enlighten the sales force by talking up e-commerce. "We had a global sales meeting with
about 400 salespeople and just really talked all about e-commerce and gave them e-commerce tips,'
Bouline says.
"We talked about Aviall.com and e-commerce in general,' adds Bouline. "They get cynical because they
think of books and CDs being sold over the Internet.'
Bouline and her team walked the sales staff through the basics of business-to-business e-commerce and
the projections on sales from such transactions. Aviall also schooled the sales force in spotting new
opportunities for the company.
"We gave specific examples of opportunities they could look for that would be e-commerce-related,' says
Bouline. The company showed them that e-commerce is more than just selling parts over the Internet.
Aviall challenged its sales reps to look for ways to leverage the company's huge IT investment. Two
possibilities came out of the meetings: Aviall could help customers trace airline parts or add bar codes to
products.
Ultimately, sales reps should be looking for ways that Aviall can help customers with their problems.
Bouline admits it wasn't easy to change their mind-set away from just selling aircraft parts.
But once they started going through examples, Bouline says, "we had salespeople throwing their hands
up saying, 'What about this? What about that?' '
A Rare Bird This kind of interaction is excellent, but all too rare. Today, as technology reshapes
business, it takes more than just a top-notch sales pitch and good people skills to make salespeople
successful. Sales reps have to be business- and technology-savvy. They also must understand how
e-commerce can benefit the business and, although they are mostly offsite employees, be able to grasp
this new corporate culture without being fully immersed in it.
Since members of the sales force are out on their own, they, like other remote employees, "can't learn
the same culture [as employees] working together,' says Rick Ralston, president of WebCentric Corp.,
the parent of Internet shopping search engine, Bottomdollar.com.
The American Management Association says sales reps, more than any other remote faction, would
benefit from honing their technology skills. It's important for sales reps to master handheld devices like
Palm organizers-products that can help them tap into the latest product, pricing and company data; take
orders directly from customers; and transmit data back to the corporate information coffers.
The best salespeople should be able to grasp e-commerce concepts, use the technology remotely and
properly lure customers. If they balk at using the technology that's handed to them, then efforts to
automate the sales force will fail and, worse yet, a window of opportunity will open for the competition.
Aviall found that even among technically adept remote sales reps, many were hesitant to depend on the
Web during a critical sales pitch. What if the Internet turned in a spotty performance, or the salesperson
wasn't able to make a connection for one reason or another? "No one wants to look like a fool.
Salespeople can be intimidated about selling the Web site,' says Bouline.
And IT had to be sensitive to those concerns. Now, Aviall's sales force uses CD-ROMs to run through its
sales pitches and give customers a tour of the aviall.com site without risking the possibility of a
salesperson not being able to make a reliable Internet connection.
Learning The Lingo Aviall isn't alone in its need to educate remote workers. "There's a real challenge
when remote people don't know the lingo and IT has to figure out what's wrong,' says Paul Marshall,
senior director of customer support at transportation giant Yellow Freight Systems.
Yellow Freight found a way around that problem by sinking a lot of time and effort into training its sales
reps and other remote employees so they could understand the terminology and develop the technical
skills they need to iron out problems on their own.
Companies like Aviall and Yellow Freight System might do well to base future hires in part on how
comfortable the sales candidate is with technology. Companies really need salespeople with a
"do-it-yourself' mentality when it comes to technical problems because corporate IT can't always send a
person out to to fix a technical problem. A sales rep with a working knowledge of technology can resolve
some of the minor problems without help, but they should at least be able to articulate technical
problems to IT.
Companies should place value on people who can solve problems on their own, says WebCentric's
Ralston. "They become more productive,' he says. Which is always the goal.
Teri Robinson is a freelance computer journalist based in New York City. She can be reached at
teri8994@aol.com.
By: Teri Robinson
Copyright 1999 CMP Media Inc. |
