KEY POINTS:
Who'd be a sales person?
Mention it as a job option and the clichéd image is of a cut-throat culture full of commission-hungry fast-talkers with few other career options.
"It's not usually the sort of job you say you want to do when you leave school," says Richard Liew, the director of Rev Limited, which aims to raise the profile and professionalism of sales people here.
Latest Census figures from 2006 show sales is one of the largest employment sectors in New Zealand, with more than 168,000 people in such jobs - in areas such as retail, including fast food, business to business and business to government.
But while companies rely on their employees' sales skills for commercial success, too often sales people are treated as second-class employees seen as a necessary evil - the tolerated middle-men and women who connect customers with products, says Liew.
Many companies that devote time and energy to developing new products and services don't put anywhere near the same effort into developing good strategies for selling those products and services.
"The sales industry has a long way to go. Top managements need to recognise that sales training is not an optional extra," he says.
"Getting sales people to work smarter will produce much greater benefits than simply expecting them to work harder and longer, which is, unfortunately, part of the Kiwi work culture."
In the past, when New Zealand had a small population and limited competition for its products and services, sales people could get away with using price as their primary selling tool - meaning the person selling the cheapest version of a product or service would clinch the deal.
But, increasingly, globalised markets for goods and services, the rise of internet sales and the wealth of product and service information available to customers over the internet mean Kiwi companies face greater sales competition at home and overseas.
So they need to lift their game, says Liew, who this month launched the country's first sales magazine - NZ Sales Manager - and says a fundamental shift is needed in the way local businesses view sales people.
Learning to value customers more and find out their exact circumstances and needs before prescribing a solution is a key skill sales people need to employ.
"The customer is going to respond best to the sales person who helps them make the best choice," says Liew
"If you are selling someone a TV, you'll want to find out how big their lounge is, where the TV will go, whether glare from a ranch slider is an issue. If it's a car, how many people are going to travel in it, how much gear you carry around and so on."
Because many sales people operate in high stress, competitive environments where they rely heavily on commission and where 20 per cent of sales staff make 80 per cent of sales, it is easy to put money ahead of the customer.
"But top performers who survive the longest are not in it for the money. They are motivated by wanting to be the best and they put the customer ahead of their sales cheque."
Liew says sales should be seen as a legitimate, professional career that champions the same skills needed to do well in life: having drive, self-belief, resilience, optimism, the ability to communicate, to adapt and to problem solve. Applied to sales, they are skills which cannot be taught in a one-day course, even though a number of private training companies try to do so.
Yellow Pages Group, one of the country's biggest sales forces with 200 sales people, has always run in-house training programmes to ensure new sales employees learn how to deal with customers' needs almost from day one.
"A one-day course is fine as a starting point, but there is no training that caters to individual companies' needs," says Yellow's group sales manager Wendy Michelsen.
Yellow's three-week induction courses, spread over three months, are so highly regarded that former employees have sometimes advised sales novices to join Yellow for the training they get even if they plan to move to a different area.
"People who use our product are looking for a service, not just for information," says Michelsen.
Yellow sales trainees learn good questioning techniques to find out customers' exact needs - something not always apparent to customers themselves.
"The name of their company may mean absolutely nothing to potential customers. To make sure an ad works and targets existing and potential customers, our sales people need to find out a lot about their customers' businesses," Michelsen says.
Training also includes teaching sales staff about small business management including the costs of running a business so they can be realistic about customers' budgets.
"We teach our people to ask questions intelligently and to tailor a solution.
"Our sales people know that if they don't ask the right question they will lose business for their customers."
It's also a myth that having the "gift of the gab" is all you need to make a good sales person, says Michelsen. "It's much more important to have the right attitude and aptitude, and usually some previous life experience so you understand how businesses work."
School leavers and recent graduates are rarely equipped to move into sales roles because they lack the necessary life experience.
However, Michelsen says promoting sales as a career option in schools and teaching it as an NCEA subject will help to raise its profile and professionalism.
"Too many people fall into sales as a last ditch option when it can be a really good career choice."
Sales managers also need to be given professional development and taught leadership skills as they are the frontline coaches for sales reps and the key to a company's success.
Too often employers make the mistake of promoting their best sales reps to become sales managers when their personalities are best suited to selling.
"Someone who has been excelling out on the road will find themselves back in the office where their personalities - which can be high need and controlling - are not suited to their new job."
The Auckland University of Technology has also stepped up to fill the training gap for sales people.
Since last year, its business school has offered the only Bachelor of Business degree in the country where students can major in sales management.
Dr Paul Pickering, an AUT senior lecturer who teaches on the new corporate-sponsored major, said it was developed after business sector requests for graduates with core sales competencies who could build key business relationships.
"These will be graduates capable of working as business-to-business sales people, often on high-value, low-volume accounts," he says.
A NZ Post account manager, for instance, might be looking after an account worth anything from $50,000 up to $7 million.
"So if they don't get good, individual attention, they are going to [go] elsewhere."
AUT students studying personal selling strategies learn about topics, including different corporate cultures, how to develop and retain good sales people and different reward structures.
"Many sales people operate in a negative environment where the sales managers think the best way to manage their sales teams is with a whip," says Pickering, who adds that sales managers are too often former, unsuccessful sales reps.
Like Liew, he wants a sea change where sales people are given tools to succeed and stay in their jobs rather than be "promoted" out of them or switch jobs altogether.
The sales papers, which are open to the business community, teach students to "look beyond the lights and the money", says Dr Pickering.
"Teaching ethics is important because sales people will inevitably face ethical dilemmas, including how far they should go to make a sale."
Identifying the company culture that suits your values and [lifestyle] is also important.
"Some sales jobs are highly social and won't suit someone with a young family. Other people may have a fundamental problem with the product they have to sell."
