Death of a Relationship SalesNAM...?
By Brian Moore, Global Retail Consultant and CEO of EMR-NAMNEWS

Whilst we have all moved on from Arthur Miller’s creation of the ultimate little sales-guy who ended up worth more dead than alive, it has to be asked whether the obsession with results in the current unprecedented climate has replaced the value of relationship selling in dealing with savvy buyers?

When brands came in undifferentiated offerings in terms of product, price, presentation and place, and were made available to a non-savvy public in clearly defined and standardised retail environments, with Resale Price Maintenance ensuring the absence of unseemly price competition, then relationship selling made the only difference…

In other words, getting to know and understand the buyer, usually in terms of sports preferences and ‘out-of-hours’ joint leisure pursuits virtually guaranteed the initial order and steady repeat business.

However, with buyers now constantly distracted by meetings, emails, texts and 24/7 fire-fighting, a NAM trying to establish and maintain a personal trading relationship could appear to be attempting to introduce an unnecessary indulgence to the buying-selling process.

Even getting buyers’ attention is impossible nowadays unless they can quickly see that the NAM’s offering can be a means of helping them do the job faster, more effectively, or at less cost in terms of money and effort.  Moreover, with many customers introducing rapid buyer-churn in order to reduce supplier-retailer interaction to a series of cost-price haggles in a search for the best deal, NAMs might be forgiven for thinking that relationship selling no longer has a part to play in state-of-art account management.

Whilst all aspects of the trading relationship have become more complex, are numbers-based, and usually come in a terms & conditions offer-package that is required to be defensible, if not transparent, the NAM’s primary role is now focused on highly specific tailor-making to customer needs.

This involves a detailed analysis of the customer’s financials, if only to determine how the global financial crisis impacted their relative profitability, with results for 2010 now reaching the public domain...  In other words, whilst the NAM needs to monitor a specific customer’s results, someone in the organisation should be downloading most customers’ annual reports in order to cross-reference relative performance via the key ratios.  It is hopefully obvious that any company attempting to trade with major customers without such insight, is now operating in unprecedented darkness.  For those still in doubt, a quick drive down any high street will soon indicate some of the dangers of leaving finance to the finance department.

Reshaping the product offering to emphasise its potential impact on the customer’s profitability then provides a way of catching and holding the attention of even the most distracted buyer, whose constant unspoken question is ‘what’s in it for me?’

Obviously ‘in the old pre-crisis days’ the buyer had little or no interest in finance other than margin and incremental sales, but fortunately those that survived, the savvy-buyers, are now much more aware of the link between their companies ROCE and the value of their share-options, and are thereby more responsive, and critical, of a finance-based pitch.

They are materially interested in meeting their own KPIs within the organisation, and will more readily connect with those NAMs that can be trusted to help via an integrated service package that optimises their retail resources.  Indeed if there is one benefit of rapid buyer-churn, it is probably lies in the fact that today’s buyer is no longer immersed in, and distracted by the category.  The buyer simply has to rely upon the NAM to integrate the details and deliver the optimum profit-package. 

In fact relationship selling has now moved onto a new level, and can only work on a firm, fact-based foundation.  Meeting the buyer’s job or functional needs is no longer sufficient in a highly competitive environment.  The NAM has to be able to explore and satisfy the buyer’s deeper motivations and emotional needs in addition to delivering a comprehensively tailored commercial package, better than the competition.  Trustworthiness and the integrity of the NAM then become more important than checking for technical competence in a dynamic buyer-seller relationship, nowadays. 

Moreover, a NAM that can work from the big picture of a market in turmoil, and translate the insights into clear easy-to-follow and relevant pointers for the buyer will get attention.

With this approach, the NAM thus becomes one of the select circle of buyer’s valued trade partners that have to be rewarded with fair-share dealings, leaving all others to scramble for crumbs at transaction level….

In other words, it could be said that the Relationship SalesNAM is no way dead, but has been merely sleeping….

For KamTips on 'Real Relationship-Selling in Demanding Times', see NamNews - July 2011

Date article published: July 2011