Up with sales

Whether companies, large corporations or SMEs, enterprises are always highly focused on the problems of business strategy in the broad sense of the term ...

By this is meant projects aimed at developing knowledge of the potential market, at improving customer relations, marketing metrics, the logic behind the creation of value and so on.
One though tends to forget the "final act" of this complex process, the synthesis of all strategies, the good old, simple act of sales: it has become the "Cinderella" of management disciplines, and tends to be treated as something that "occurs anyway" if things upstream are done properly.
Of course this is not so. Anyone who has worked in sales management knows perfectly well that unmotivated salespersons, incompetent area heads, listless or poorly trained front line staff can derail the best operative marketing plans.

Yet attention to what was once referred to as the sales area continues to decline, publications and literature on the subject are waning and less innovative, investments in training are made with some reluctance and are increasingly rare. What has happened?
It is not easy to give a convincing answer. Some argue that, after the investments of the '70s and '80s, the subject has now been practically exhausted and that we now know almost everything about sales techniques. Others argue that information technology has created the illusion that sales can be rationalised to the point of turning the subject into simple and exact science, and that all-in-all advertising, communication, databases, Internet sites suffice.
Beyond the subtle disquisitions there is general agreement that the exponential increase of the communication flows between the elements of the value chain has enabled the redistribution of the act of sales over many levels, making the traditional sales force less important than before.
 
Sales, important and difficult. We want to go against the tide and proclaim loud and clear that a well-constructed, well-motivated sales force, well guided by competent and vigorous sales professionals, regularly renewed and valued throughout the organization, constitutes an invaluable tool for the competitive success of an enterprise.
We intend reflecting on the subject of sales, trying to indicate the key points in a debate that is still important and pertinent among researchers and company experts. The first issue we will face, starting from the coming Crystal Ball, will be the singling out and description of models of effectiveness for the act of sales. Therefore, we will focus on so-called complex sales that will be followed by so-called small sales (Italian publishing has rightly refused to use the literal translation "small sales" since we're often talking about colossal businesses) to conclude with the so-called dynamic sales, a model that lies between the former two which many companies will be able to identify with.