Sustaining Competitive Advantage: The Salesperson’s critical value

This is an excerpt of the original article. It was written for the January-February 2024 edition of Supply Chain Management Review. The full article is available to current subscribers.

January-February 2024

Back in 2019, we seemed on a consistent path to the future. Then COVID-19 arrived on the global scene, and all predictions went out the window. As 2024 begins, everyone wants to know what the year will look like. I predict continued interest in circular supply chains, cybersecurity, visibility, and digital supply chains, to name a few. But I am not alone. So, I’d like to share five things that I am particularly interested in this year.

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As the global landscape of competition changes, it is not only the focal firm competing—it is the entire supply chain. The growing omni-channel environment coincides with abundant channel information that must be evaluated within and across supply chains. Supply chain management becomes critical to improving the bottom line as companies face more competition and increasing pressure to reduce lead times. Accordingly, closer relationships are required to ensure the efficient flow of products and information. The value of information sharing within a supply chain is evidenced by the benefits outweighing the costs. Supply chain members must recognize the importance of communication with internal stakeholders and external suppliers. In their 2013 corporate communications article, “Re-visiting the Supply Chain: A Communication Perspective,” Rossella Chiara Gambetti and Mattia Giovanardi noted that communication acts as a “cultural glue” and a “knowledge creation and dissemination” activity within the supply chain.

A company’s integration of its network of business relationships with information sharing is a crucial driver to success. Salespeople aid in bridging inter-organizational boundaries and increasing the connectivity of human resources across the supply chain. Today’s firms focus not only on maintaining a salesforce, but also on strategically using their sales organization and emphasizing the selling mission, wrote Thomas Leigh and Greg W. Marshall in their 2001 Journal of Personal Selling & Sales Management article, “Research Priorities in Sales Strategy and Performance.”

The last 50 years have seen movement from the salesperson and firm controlling most of the information about products to customers having unprecedented access to product information. Sales as a process has transitioned into being more of a solutions-based selling process to continue providing value to the customer. For years, firms relied more on relational selling to get their products into the hands of their buyers. Even in this stage, salespeople were an important piece in helping to build and solidify that relationship.

With the more recent transition to more of a solution-based sales approach for most firms, salespeople become even more important. Solution-based selling revolves around the focal point of selling your customer a solution to a problem and not just a particular product. Solution-based selling also focuses on the ROI of the product for the purchasing firm. For the buyer, this process enhances the buying experience as it offers support throughout the buying process.

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