The Sales Learning Curve

The Sales Curve, Mark Leslie and Charles Halloway

-What do salespeople do? -Ask Mark and Charles

-They sell things to costumers, of course! -Everybody, Ever.

-Yes, but how?

-By... selling them to the target market?

Outside of the obvious reason being that he is a straw man, EE represents the uninformed members of a company that view sales as some amorphous blob capable of accruing money through selling of a product or service to the costumer, and if they good, great. It's when they under perform that everyone starts to panic.

To first understand how performance comes into the question, the role of sales has to be understood.

First and foremost, the sales team is the voice of the costumer when talking to the company as well as being the voice of the company when talking to the costumer. They are the boundary personnel of the company next to costumer support. If they are not heard on either side, or do not communicate with either side, serious issues can arise.

The Sales Force has the daunting task of having to sell a product, interpret costumer reception of the product, and report back. This is a closed loop feedback system and in Controls Engineering, its the best way to control a system. A lot of things happen during the different stages of the product life. First the product exists or is about to be made or is in a sell-able condition, and the company hires a sales force. The sales team then starts to learn about the product, see who wants it, and attempt to sell to them. If the product is good but lacking in the features costumers want, they'll be the first to hear about it. As soon as they do they can report the flaws in the product or the features most desired by the costumers. 

Examples of this were seen in the Scalix-Linux email client.

1. Client was made.
2. Sales force was hired.
1. Price was too high
2. Features were undesireable/missing
3. Target group was not ideal (CIOs)
3. Sales Force was trained to target smaller companies and early adopters to build a loyalty
4. Rebuilt the product to match costumer needs throughout the years.
5. PROFIT.

All that thanks to the sales force. GG.