“ APG Sees Clients Working on Business Growth Rather than Cost Cutting”
New Activity Signals Business Climate Change

After several years of focus on cost reductions, more businesses are turning their focus to growth. “In many companies, cost cutting initiatives have contributed all they can to the bottom line,” said Mickey Ford, President of APG. “In order to achieve significant growth, sales teams and sales management must refocus their traditional efforts to focus more on how customer make purchase decisions.”

Several factors have impacted the changing sales landscape.

The Marketplace
Product life cycles have been dramatically reduced, competitors are numerous and margins are under constant pressure. This has forced all organizations to take costs out of every part or their operation possible.

Sales Talent/Travel
Given the complexity of managing many sales cycles, compensation for top performers has increased substantially. In addition, the expense for maintaining a staff of “road warriors” is constantly on the rise.

The Customer
At one time, customers required “high touch” from their suppliers/partners. Many organizations depended on the salesperson’s expertise when making key decisions. Today, most customers are more educated than ever and have in-house expertise on many key business areas. The typical customer relationship is also no longer one to one (salesperson and single contact). Sales activity and transactions are completed at multiple levels within the buying and selling companies.

Due to the need to move quickly to respond to changing market conditions, companies require immediate access to critical information. This need has made customers more open to communicating with other touch points within the selling organization and by methods other than face-to-face meetings.

The Technology
At one time, overnight shipping was amazingly fast. Today, technology allows for immediate communication at anytime from any location on the globe simply and inexpensively. Not only are customers open to these new forms of communication, most require it.

In order for today’s sales teams to create value in their customer relationships, old paradigms must change to deal with these realities, “ said Mike Kicidis, Principal of APG. Highly effective and efficient sales team members must perform as strategic orchestraters, not only focused on selling, but helping customers make effective purchase decisions.

In conclusion, customer demand for immediate access, multiple contact points in both selling and buying organizations, and more educated, sophisticated, and agile customers, sales teams must move beyond product, technical, and traditional sales techniques to understand each customers business issues to bring real value to their purchase decision process.