Overview of how technology has affected the importance of the sales professional, increasing or decreasing her/his bargaining power.

1. Technology and
bargaining power
A SALES PERSPECTIVE
Mariana Hansen
Mauricio Berlim
Natalia Soares

2. Selling: an Art or a Skill?
In the 1800’s , Robert Louis
Stevenson stated that
“everyone lives by
selling something”
(Hopkins, 2015).
According to the Young
Entrepreneur Council (2013),
selling is a skill that anyone can
master as everyone has been
selling all their lives in some shape
or form.
Encyclopedia of World Biography (2018)

3. Selling: an Art or a Skill?
There are many formulas and checklists …
Put yourself in the customers shoes.
Anticipate their pain points and provide solutions.
Everybody is looking for a good deal, which does not mean
cheap our without value.
And understand your market.

5. The Evolution of Sales
Professional selling exists for
thousand of years and can be
simply described as commercial
influence (Hughes, 2014).
The professional selling has come a
long way since the “snake oil
selling” in the 1800’s, passing
through Grant Nablo’ science of
selling adopted by Ford Motor in
the 1900’s, and the manipulative
barrier selling from the 1940’s
(Ye, 2017).
What your forehead says about you?

6. The Evolution of Sales
The modern corporate selling
started to take shape after WWII
(Hughes, 2014 and Dudovskiy,
2013) .
The 1950’s saw the origins of the
five step AIDCA that is used until
today. A few decades later, AIDCA
was usurped with a focus on
features, advantages and
benefits, known as FAB (Hughes,
2014).
AIDCA model (Hughes, 2014)

7. The Evolution of Sales
Between the 1960’s and
1970’s, psychological
techniques became more
sophisticated but still
manipulative (Hughes, 2014).
The Needs Satisfaction
Selling had Xerox as its
pioneer, which developed its
own learning system, the
Professional Selling
Skills (PSS). (Ye, 2017).

8. The Evolution of Sales
During the 1980’s, the Neuro-
Linguistic Programming
(NPL) principles were adapted
to sales (Hughes, 2014).
Alongside, the SPIN Selling,
where the salesperson is more of
a consultor than just someone
that sells something (Ye, 2017).

9. The Evolution of Sales
The 1990’s focused on building
influence and trust as
salespeople start to see
themselves as problem
solvers (Hughes, 2014). Now,
the costumer was at the
centre (Ye, 2017).
The value-based approach
gained space in the 2000’s
(Hughes, 2014) as Solution
Selling coined the Win-Win
concept, where sellers and
buyers work together (Ye, 2017).

10. Supplier power refers to the
pressure suppliers can exert
on businesses by raising prices,
lowering quality, or reducing
availability of their products
(Porter, 1998). This analysis is made
from the industry firms’
perspective or the buyers.
According to Porter (1998), the
bargaining power of suppliers, is
one of the forces that shape the
competitive structure of an
industry, affecting the competitive
environment for the buyer and
influencing the buyer’s ability to
achieve profitability.
Supplier’s Bargaining Power
Porter’s Five Forces model (CGMA, 2013)

11. Buyer’s Bargaining Power
According to Porter’s Five
Forces, the bargaining
power of buyers refers
to the pressure consumers can
exert on businesses to get
them to provide higher
quality products, better
customer service, and
lower prices (Porter, 1998).
When analyzing the bargaining
power of buyers, conduct the
industry analysis from the
seller’s perspective.
Porter’s Five Forces model (CGMA, 2013)

12. Technology as a tool
The Information Era had an immense effect on the
selling process and the skills required from salespeople.
Technology works as change agent, reinventing the sales
role (Hunter and Perreault, 2006).
It simplifies and help to deliver value in a more precise
and useful way. (Goldstein and Guembel, 2008).
According to LinkedIn (2016), salespeople are relying on a
variety of sales technology to increase revenue,
close deals and build stronger relationships.

13. Technology as a tool
There are a broad range of technologies used for sales such as sales
bases customer relationship management (CRM), sales force
automation (SFA), mobile technologies and also online social
networks (Ferrell et al., 2010 and Davis, 2015) .
Top salespeople are frequent users of sales intelligence and
social selling tools, and are more likely to attribute their success to
sales technology, which are considered critical to close deals
(LinkedIn, 2016).
Millennials are 33% more likely to use sales intelligence tools, which
generates contact and background information on leads (LinkedIn,
2016).

14. Technology as a tool
According to LinkedIn (2016), CRM still is the main tool
used by sale professionals.

15. CRM: Customer Relationship Management
Practices, strategies and technologies that companies use to manage and
analyse customer interactions and data throughout the customer
lifecycle (Rouse, Ehrens and Kiwak, 2018).
CRM technologies allow businesses to organize, automate, and
synchronize every facet of customer interaction, analyzing and
improving the customer relationship (Salesforce, 2018).

16. SFA: Sales Force Automation
Software applications designed for salespeople to help with the
sales process. It includes either contact management or opportunity
management, together with email and diary sharing (Really Simple
Systems, 2018).
SFA is usually a part of a company’s CRM system that
automatically records all the stages in a sales process. The idea
is to track all contact made with a customer and any follow up that may
be needed (Really Simple System, 2018).
SFA vs CRM
One of the most fundamental difference is that while SFA looks at
the entire sales process and tracks the efforts of salespeople
internally, CRM is all about the customer (Select Hub, 2016).

17. Social Selling Tools
It is the use of social media to research (Sexton, 2017) and interact
directly with prospects, providing value by offering meaningful
information until the prospect is ready to buy (Kusinitz, 2017) using
relationship building strategies (Sexton, 2017). It allows sellers to
get back into the buying process, regaining control and
influence the buying decisions (Hughes and Reynolds, 2016).
90% of top salespersons use social selling tools such as LinkedIn,
Twitter and Facebook as they are considered to have the highest
impact on revenue (LinkedIn, 2016).
Salespeople who excel in social selling tend to create more
opportunities and are 51% more likely to hit targets (LinkedIn, 2016).

18. Is the end of the Salesperson?
For a long time it is believed
that the Internet will cause
the death of the sale
professional (Ahearne and
Rapp, 2010), with predictions
that 50% of sales jobs would
be reduced (Rackham and
DeVincentis, 1999) .

19. Is the end of the Salesperson?
Internet gives customers more interacting means with
companies (Sheth and Sisodia, 1999) as it moves the
exchange relationship from face-to-face to face-to-
technology, providing a greater reach than personal
selling (Ahearne and Rapp, 2010).
In B2B environments, technology is normally only viewed
and used by the salespeople, whereas in a B2C scenarios,
technology is developed for both, giving consumers more
autonomy (Ahearne and Rapp, 2010).

20. Prescriptive Sales Concept
Suppliers believe that customers are higher empowered and
need sellers only at the end of the purchase process. Yet, customers are
overwhelmed by information and choice, and struggle to make
good decision (CEB, 2017 and Toman et al., 2017).

21. Be One Step Ahead
Uncover the struggles with
any supplier and look for
patterns.
Deeply understand the
customers’ purchase journey.
Be unbiased and credible.
Reduce indecision and compel
action
Facilitate the purchase journey
Prescriptive organisations
are perceived as being one step
ahead. They anticipate and
eliminate obstacles, which is
translated in business results. They
are 62% likelier to win a high-
quality sale (Toman et al.,
2017).

22. Based on the Evidence…
The customer-centric approach gave more bargaining power to
consumers.
Technology is helping salespeople to regain part of their bargaining
power and to get closer to their consumers.
The need for salespeople’s ability to close deals, find relevant solutions
and add value remain constant (Dudovskiy, 2013).
The adoption of sales intelligence and social tools will keep increasing
as it helps to build and manage relationships.
Technology will lead companies to restructuration and the customer
linking technologies will become complementary parts to a multiple
channel strategy (Piercy and Lane, 2003).

23. References
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24. References
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25. References
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