Interview: Ken Le Meunier-FitzHugh
The Oxford Handbook of Strategic Sales and Sales Management
Steve Macaulay
Hello, I am Steve Macaulay and I am interviewing Ken Le MeunierFitz-Hugh about his book that he has co-edited called The Oxford
Handbook of Strategic Sales and Sales Management. Now, Ken, I
always thought sales weren’t at all strategic, that they were the
front line troops that implemented a marketing policy. Am I
wrong?
Ken Le MeunierFitzHugh
I am afraid you are in today’s modern industry. I think if we went
back about fifteen, twenty, twenty five years ago, sales were very
much the tactical tool of an organisation – they basically did as they
were told and their whole aim in life was to maximise sales. With
our modern environment that we are in, the complexity of
customers requiring more and more, sales have had to move away
from just being an order taker to somebody – or a part of the
organisation – which is involved in all levels of strategic decisions
because it affects most organisations and actually, in reality, it is
where the organisations get their revenue from; the sales force
play that role, they are very keenly a part of that.
Steve Macaulay
Now it is a big book, but there are four discreet sections which
interlink; now the first one is Sales Strategy and the Environment.
Can you tell me a bit more about the content of that?
Ken Le MeunierFitzHugh
Well, that really leads on from what I was just saying, the concept
that sales are now a strategic tool. There are parts of your
customer base where you probably service at a very low level,
maybe through telesales, maybe through a once a year call. What
the book was trying to do, or what these chapters were trying to
do, was actually identify how organisations can start thinking about
their customer base, thinking about the environment that they are
operating in and thinking about who their customers really are and
how they are going to service those customers; recognising that
the organisation and the organisational part of sales and the
environment they are operating in is critical to the success factor to
any organisation.
Steve Macaulay
So I guess that leads on to the second part which is about Sales
Management; tell me some more about that.
Ken Le MeunierFitzHugh
When we wrote the book, or when we devised the book, we very
much thought about sales as strategy, but we realised that actually
sales management is actually part of that strategy. There is always
a danger with sales management that they can be the best sales
Ken Le Meunier-FitzHugh
person which can be promoted into a sales management role, but
that really wasn’t enough nowadays. We realised that actually
managing a sales force can be very complex; you have got the
concept of territory design, you have got the concept of burn out in
the workforce –using your sales force in an effective way to
maximise their opportunities to maximise sales, without putting
them under undue pressure and feeling not part of the
organisation.
This comes from something I came across a few years ago where I
was talking to an organisation who had just had a Christmas party
and I said something about their sales people and they said oh no,
we don’t invite the sales people to the Christmas party; we just
send them a hamper. So it is that alienation which can start very
early on in the environment which we are trying to discuss and
making those changes.
Steve Macaulay
Now probably the biggest change has come in this interface with
the customer and that is the third part of the book – the Sales Force
and the Customer. Tell me some more about that.
Ken Le MeunierFitzHugh
Well again, it is about the concept of acquisition, growth and
retention. We are in an environment where there aren’t new
customers appearing every week. The customers you have got are
often long term investments, long term partners – part of the
family for quite a long time. So you have got to identify who they
are and realising that actually they are not just about selling to
them; it is about the long term relationship, it is about building up
an understanding of their needs, their growth strategies,
understanding that they are not somebody who is not part of your
organisation. They are, of course, not part of your organisation,
but their whole strategy and your strategy are interlinked –
especially when you start thinking about the larger customers. So
it is very much about – as I said to you at the beginning – the
acquisition, retention and growth of their customer base which
becomes critical in this complex environment we operate in.
Steve Macaulay
Now let’s take a look at that notion that organisationally sales
should and must be part of the organisation in a very interlinked
sort of way – that is the fourth part of the book. Tell me some
more about it.
Ken Le MeunierFitzHugh
It is – and it is probably the area that was my passion. For many
years I have been looking at the concept of sales and marketing
integration, and the last section was trying to bring those parts
together, or actually sales and integration with other parts of the
organisation – finance, supply chain – the whole breadth of
activities that an organisation has and a sales force has to engage
with at some level. Because without that they are really nothing,
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Ken Le Meunier-FitzHugh
they are not part of the organisation. So it really came from the
concept that sales and marketing needs to be integrated into a
single entity in terms of the customer. We were not talking about
pushing sales and marketing together into one department, what
we are talking about is that their focus is upon the customer and
the organisation’s focus is upon the customer and their future and
looking at how organisations need to think about internal as well as
external structures to ensure that can happen successfully.
Steve Macaulay
If you were to leave me with a key message from the book, what
would it be?
Ken Le MeunierFitzHugh
Organisations have got to think strategically about sales, they have
got to integrate them in their organisation so they are part of
planning, but more importantly that they are a critical success
factor of any organisation. And we have got to accept that they are
a cost and they are a very large cost to an organisation, but
managed successfully the force of a strategic tool can be very
successful and be very profitable to an organisation in terms of
success factors.
Steve Macaulay
Ken, thank you very much.
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