The original, Pulitzer winning 1949 play by Arthur Miller focused on Willy Loman a 63 year old washed up salesperson who uses his forays into the past in order to deny the present. After yet another unsuccessful sales trip, Willy suggests to his wife that he can no longer travel and will request a role closer to their Brooklyn home as early as the following morning. The request is sadly denied and Willy’s untimely death follows shortly afterwards.
Fast forward to autumn 2020, as we enter the final months of the grimmest of years and the UK slides into another lockdown of sorts, there are screens and screens of virtual pages being written simultaneously about “new normal’s” and alternative ways of working.
For some, the faux background of zoom or the bookcase backdrop of Teams is here to stay. I read an article on LinkedIn, only last week suggesting that things would never revert to the way they were. Apparently nobody cares about the individual in front of them and “Brand” usurped “Personality” ultimately. The fact that the prophets of doom have rarely seen meaningful active service in this vocation is beside the point. Sales professionals have become commoditised apparently, best re-train to become a ballet dancer, or whatever the Government website recommends it appears.
“I’m a dime a dozen, and so are you” “Biff” – Death of a Salesman
There will be lots of “Willys” reading this right now, sat in their finest leisure wear, Adidas’ finest for some no doubt. After all, where is the fun in travel? Plastic sandwiches from homogenous service stations or the “joy” of the Airport check in, seemingly banished forever.
No more 0430 alarm calls before a quick dash in a mini cab to London Heathrow in the dark. The flickering eye and dry throat as you empty the contents of your bag into a tray that barely holds an iPad and that feeling of “exhilaration” as the tray is diverted for a more detailed, intrusive inspection for no apparent reason at all. Who will miss the endless queues, delays and travel stress? The overnight stays in a Hilton long past its best seeking solace in the House Burger and a large glass of cooking Shiraz no longer occupying that Tuesday evening in Kettering, Wokingham or Wakefield.
ʺI could see his grim hotel room behind him, the long trip up from New York in his little car, the hopeless hope of the day’s business. Arthur Miller on his inspiration for Death of a Salesman
The past 6 months have been a real boost for the travel weary. The “commute” is but a short hop down the stairs into the conservatory for some; for others it’s a very short shuffle into the spare room. No more M6. Travelodge is a thing of the past. Are you missing that Ginsters Scotch egg? Open up the laptop, join the video calls and away you go. Just another 8 hours to go. Let’s crack on. Finish at 6, or maybe half past. “Dinner’s at 7 you say?” Still got time to fit another quick video call in before then.
WFH – What’s not to like?
It’s difficult to know where to start. The commute can be an energiser or a decompression event bookending the day for many. We all have moments when travelling can be a joyous experience, even in sales. New cities, new cultures, new people. But perhaps, above all, performance is down. In many sales teams over the past 6 months. Very few of our sales tribe are doing better than last year. Some are running much faster just to stand still. Business, especially new name, is harder to generate. Sales Cycles are lengthening. Quotas are not being met.
If you are a farmer with an existing base account portfolio, working for a large technology conglomerate, then the past 6 months have probably been ok. For those in new business it will almost certainly have been tortuous. (Virtual) meetings have been easier to get, but progress is slow.
Any relationship is difficult to build on without Face to Face contact. If you can’t meet a prospect or potential customer, progression is really hard. The best sales people I have ever worked with were/are excellent at becoming the trusted advocate. They work hard at understanding business challenges and are exemplary at building an innate knowledge of their clients’ personal drivers and know precisely how to deliver benefit. The exemplars are permitted to sell because they are implicitly trusted by the key stakeholders in their target organisations. It really is about them.
“In a sense [all salesmen are] like actors whose product is first of all themselves, forever imagining triumphs in a world that either ignores them or denies their presence altogether…” Arthur Miller – Timebends
That personalisation transforms the relationship from an emotionless, commoditised one to a co-dependent arrangement that looks to build professional and personal quantified benefit. Strip it out and you are left with a transactional agreement, price driven and with difficulty to differentiate yourselves from anybody else in the same field. All perfectly suitable for a video or telephone based relationship it would seem.
It’s too early, way too early, to be giving the last rites to the travelling sales person just yet. It is a certainty that some sacred cows will be sacrificed in business when the world eventually re-calibrates. Unlike “Willy” the Arthur Miller character, we do have an ability to change within ourselves and society. Travel will be reduced in commercial negotiations because it is expedient to do so on some occasions, but it won’t be eradicated completely. Organisations fleeing offices, seemingly on a permanent basis will only realise that competitive advantage has been lost when it’s too late. There will be a designated safe time to return to the office for sales people. Maybe not as often, but it’s unthinkable that it won’t happen again.
The final theme of Death of a Salesman is situational irony – when the opposite occurs of what is expected. Those predicting the death of sales people and face to face meetings in the future might just be in for a little surprise!
DWSL provide Sales Transformation using a proven, structured methodology. We identify Growth Inhibitors in your organisation and focus on a plan to eradicate them to enable fast, aggressive revenue growth.
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