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But the relationship between the Business and its Customers is the fundamental link in a system in which the Business and its Customers are the only components. Businesses that network more successfully with their customers win those customers from businesses that do not network as successfully.

Misconceptions About Sales Channels

Here are three very common misconceptions we have observed in business-to-business sales channels over the past 35 years.

Misconception 1. Sales "Owns" The Customers

This belief is often consciously espoused, and backed by virtually every manager up to and including the CEO. It is a direct consequence of functionally differentiated hierarchical organizations. It is the command and control approach to selling.

The Reality

But it doesn't stand up to the most rudimentary critical analysis. The business owns the customer. That ownership cannot be handed off to any department in the business, or to any independent sales channels serving the business and its customers.

Misconception 2. Sales People are Portable

Many people throughout the hierarchy often believe selling can be done by any well-trained sales person. This belief is another direct consequence of functionally differentiated hierarchical organizations. Sales is a functional department, separate and distinct from all other functional departments in the hierarchy.

The Reality

But that doesn't stand up to critical analysis, either. In the business-to-business world, customers buy from people they like. Personal relationships between the sales person and the customers create that sense of liking. Every business with a superior product or service has lost some sales to competitors with inferior products. A large share of those lost sales were won by people those customers liked better than the people selling the superior products.

It takes time to develop the relationships needed to sell most effectively. Reassigning territories or product lines or replacing sales people means beginning from scratch to build new relationships. The most effective sales people we have worked with have 15 or more years in the same territory. They are members of a community of customers. They are not portable without a significant integration period in the new community.

Misconception 3. My Job is to Get Promoted

Far too many sales people we meet believe they have a responsibility to themselves, and to their employers, to get promoted. These sales people are not likely to stress relationship-building because they expect to be in a better job soon. Many companies actually foster this kind of behavior, believing someone with one eye on a better job will put in more effort than someone who believes his or her career is to continue selling.

The Reality

You know the drill by now. That can't stand up to the most simple scrutiny. Business-to-business selling is a profession, conducted by people in the customers' facilities, not in the company's offices. True sales professionals expect to be selling decades from now, just like other professionals. Hopefully, your heart surgeon will not have one eye on a higher ranking job with an HMO, and the captain of your next airline flight will not have one eye on a management job with the airline company.

Replacing Those Misconceptions

Some wise person once said that every problem is an opportunity in disguise. This is no exception. Your competitors also harbor these misconceptions about their sales organizations. If you can begin to replace the misconceptions with more realistic beliefs, you will create a competitive advantage you can take to the bank.

Replace the FUNCTION of Selling with a SYSTEM of Selling

We train and coach clients to replace the belief that the sales department owns the customers with the belief that the business owns the customers. The business is far more complex than the sales department, so we help clients develop and operate systems that link all the stakeholders to work together constructively.

A system or network of people representing all the stakeholders is not normal in a hierarchical organization. It is highly unlikely to develop in hierarchies where individual responsibility is the norm. Outside intervention and a focused internal effort are needed to develop such a system and to make it work.

Developing a SYSTEM of Selling, and Making It Work

That's where we come in. We have developed a program to do just that. In fact the system we help clients develop has 7 smaller systems nested inside.

Follow this link to download a presentation on this topic. Seeing Businesses as Systems Here is a brief introduction to the 7 systems in our SYSTEM of Selling.

The Supply Chain Networks

• Supplier Network: A complex network within the business, crossing functional boundaries and linking everyone who will affect or be affected by the success of the business.
• Rep Network: A less complex network including everyone involved in trading the Supplier's products and services for the Customer's money.
• Customer Network: A highly complex network including everyone in the customer companies who affects or will be affected by decisions to purchase products and services similar to those produced by the Supplier's business.

The Interconnect Networks

• Sales Administration Network: This network connects members of the Supplier Network with members of the Rep Network. Something similar to this network is typically in place, but operating more like a command and control hierarchy than as an interdependent network of people with an enabling, overarching purpose. We help clients to create and deploy Task Forces assigned to specific administrative projects to continually improve the operation of the Sales Administration Network.
• Sales Network: This is complex of local networks in which sales people and customers form small communities, usually geographically defined. This network is normally in place in some form, but not well recognized or understood by the people in the Supplier's business. The local Reps and the Customers live and work in kind of local Community. Interpersonal relationships create success for all parties, just like in residential communities.
• Business Development Network: This network connects the myriad of people in the Supplier Network with the myriad of people in the Customer Network. It is normally the missing link. Even Suppliers who do a lot of customer research place too much emphasis on the data, and not enough on linking the Supplier and Customer Networks interactively and constructively. Only real cross-functional teams, detached from the hierarchies, and with members representing all the stakeholder groups in the Supplier Network and in the Customer network can consistently deliver the innovations required for robust business development. Helping clients create and develop those cross-functional teams is one of our core strengths.

Overall Coordination Network

This is a relatively small network linking members of all three of the Supply Chain Networks; Suppliers, Reps, and Customers. It's purpose is to coordinate the operation and continuing development of the other six networks for best overall performance.

Our Role

This network of seven networks often seems too complex for hierarchically trained minds to comprehend, let alone attempt to set up and operate. But it's what we do for a living. We help clients get disparate people to work together interdependently. It's the core value in our team-building programs.

We help clients design these networks, select the people to get them started, train and coach the various teams, workgroups and management to develop and operate these networks. People learn to do their own situation assessments, set their own goals, develop their own plans to achieve those goals, and execute those plans with a passion not possible in strictly hierarchical organizations.

Our role is to provide training and coaching services to help your business to create customers by enabling and empowering these 7 networks better than your best competitors do. Customers will want to buy your products and services from your business, rather than from your competitors. Our role is to help your business replace the outdated concepts of "selling" with the far more productive concepts of "buying".

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