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Why You Must Listen to Sales!

By Shlomo Maital  

As a management educator, I recall doing Workshops for senior management, and asking participants what their job function was. More often than not, one key position was missing – Sales. The sales personnel had no time for Workshops. They were out in the field, selling, because much of their income was based on commission…and you get no commissions sitting and listening to a professor.  

     Far from sight, far from mind. When sales does not sit in headquarters, it is often underused or even forgotten. Yet it is sales, not marketing, that has the key market insights.

     Now comes Sony, comes an object lesson in why you must listen to sales. Sony has been struggling for years. Finally, it has a winner – Sony Interactive Entertainment (its video game division) has a winner, PlayStation VR, a virtual reality headset. Since it went on sale in October, it has been scarce in stores, especially in Japan.

     Why?

       Andrew House, global CEO of the division, among those inside the company advising that Sony make fewer of the headsets, explains, “it’s the classic case in any organization – the guys who are on the front end in sales are getting very excited, very hyped up….you have to temper that with other voices inside the company, myself among them, saying let’s just be a little bit careful.”

       Let’s think about that. Those who make the sales, and who earn their income from them, are hyped up. They know the market. They know what they can sell and how many. But the headquarters gang, up in the corner office, on the 42^nd floor, who haven’t talked to a real customer for a decade – they are cautious.

       So whom to you listen to?

       For innovators, and startup entrepreneurs:   At the outset, forget about marketing. Focus on sales.   Find a great salesperson. Get them out into the market. And consult with him or her frequently, often, and really listen, and take their advice seriously.

       Lost sales due to undersupply will usually not be recovered. Sony’s VR has competitors. Four months after it went on sale, Sony’s VR headsets sold 915,0000! This is not that far from iPhone’s 1.4 million unit sales in three months, after launch in 2007. So, did Andrew House learn a lesson?   I wonder.

Source: Global NYT, Int. edition, March 1/ 2017, p. 9.