Just-In-Time Sales & Marketing Resources

Most of us will relate to the term “Just In Time” to Supply Chain Management of resources and goods for manufacturing. The concept is designed to eliminate companies ordering and storing all of the items they need in inventory in order to reduce the cost of warehouse space and reduce overhead. So they work with their suppliers to provide the items they need just when they need them, and this helps organizations cut down on stocking and overhead.

So, let’s apply the same principal to sales people. I couldn’t resist the caption to the left because I like humor and I thought that it addressed my case. You see, we bring sales people in for training and 90% of what they have learned is lost in a very short period of time as is pointed out in the Just in Case caption scenario.

One of the biggest problems sales people face is that they are inundated with too much information causing them to go into “information overload” and they wind up shutting down. Sales people just want what they want, when they want it. In other words, they want to be able to find and access what they want just in time to use it. They don’t want to try and store all of that information in their heads, because they simply can’t, it’s just too much. What they do want is the ability to get what they need when they need it, to help them close a deal or sell more effectively. They want to “pull” the information when they want it, rather than have it “pushed” to them and then they have to decide what to do with it. Sales people don’t like systems to choose for them and think they know what they need and when they need it. Sometimes the system is right, but mostly it isn’t and it just winds up  agitating the sales person. They would rather get what they want on their own.

There is a strong need for tools that can provide combined content, knowledge, information and resource management functions that will deliver whatever resource those sales people need in a just-in-time fashion. Statistics tell us that the average sales person spends as much as 8 hours per week searching for the resources they need, within their own organization, not on the internet! That is a huge waste of time! Just think of it, it only takes 5 people to waste an entire work week, each week! Talk about wasted time and wasted money, which results in the loss of a man week for every 5 employees you have each week.

But more importantly, your sales people are struggling to juggle the mountain of information they need to have in order to sell more effectively and they simply don’t have the bandwidth to keep up with it. That is why they need a just-in-time resource management and delivery system to help them keep up with what they need. Those organizations that recognize this and provide their sales people with the resources they need in a timely manner have a more effective sales organization and are more profitable. At least that’s the way I see it, what say you?