The Future of Trade and Sales Leadership

Sales Performance in any organization is a function of competition, sales team optimization, product innovation, and enough cash in the bank to weather the down turns. As a sales manager, you focus your efforts on fine tuning the sales team. Hiring, firing, training, coaching and planning are daily events. After all nothing happens unless something is sold. Right? Although many of the other elements of sales performance are delegated to other members of the company team, you can’t ignore their impact on your sales team’s performance. Consider competition and some of the interesting trends and developments that you should assess in your next sales plan.

“In less than 10 years, Canada has concluded free trade agreements with eleven countries and is negotiating with 30 more. The biggest of these deals will open markets in the 28-nation European Union and give Canadian businesses access to half a billion affluent customers and create thousands of jobs for Canadians.”(1). With the most recent NAFTA negotiations stalling across the border, Sales Leaders need to pay attention to competition and trade disputes.

​

These agreements are the tip of the iceberg in a new and emerging competitive export market for Canada. Of course these agreements are reciprocal. This means that all these countries have equivalent opportunities to compete in Canada. Trade barriers are falling, and so are the traditional national and international sales territories we manage. With opportunity comes risk. As the tide of competition washes over Canadian shores, local companies selling to local markets will search for high ground. Without an export strategy they will become an island in a sea of competitors.

​

Let’s take this discussion from local regulated to international unregulated business in Canada. Consider the recent, and some say pathetic attempt by the CRTC to make Google and Netflix comply with providing market information to a CRTC panel looking at how Canadians receive and pay for TV programming. John Traversy, the CRTC Secretary General said they “undermined the authority of the regulator…”(2) by not complying. Of course, why would they comply? They have eaten the lunch of the regulated networks and cable operators for years, and go figure, now they refuse to provide the evidence to shot themselves in the foot. Of course they were gracious enough to come to the panel to throw salt in the wound. In the past 15 years hundreds of advertising sales reps have been laid off from traditional media including TV advertising. How much ‘regulated’ control does Canada have within its borders?

​

Look at Uber as another classic example of the regulated paradox across the world. Municipalities under provincial and state run legislation have struggled to keep them out. The argument is simply that local cabs pay huge fees to be a taxi in local markets. In large centers like New York, Toronto and LA it can be in the hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Of course, these fees help assure the consumer that drivers and cars are being vetted properly. Is it fair that anyone can get in the business and have access to potential customers in local markets without government approval? Fair or not, Uber is valued at a breath taking $30 billion and growing. Uber and Netflix share a common theme. “Consumers should vote with their dollars.” Maybe they are. Cab drivers all over the world have had the rug pulled out from under them waiting for governments to solve their competition issues. Too late. The Genie is out of the bottle.

​

All these trends are having similar impacts in all industries. Most recently Canada struck a deal with China; The second largest economy in the world…soon to be the first. Over 1 Billion consumers are only a click away from purchasing your product, or selling directly to your customer. Take a look at the label in most of your products. Many are manufactured in China. So what’s different now compared to 15 years ago. Traditional supply chains are under attack. Today, it’s cheaper to purchase a shipped bottle of wine from Australia to Canada than it is to buy local Canadian product. Hard to believe, but true. China was happy to manufacturer low cost products with cheap labor over the past 25 years. This is changing. Average incomes in China are going up. China is reducing its dependence on middle men. They are selling direct and often bypassing traditional Taiwanese and Hong Kong trade routes. They need to take a bigger cut of the profits to fuel the growing wage demands of their population.

​

So where does this leave you as a sales manager? Supply chains are growing beyond the confines of government regulation. Your competitive battle cry of ‘buy local’ is somewhat hollow when most of your locally purchased products are sourced somewhere else when local products struggle to be price competitive. Whether you are selling ‘business to business’ or ‘business to consumer’, the writing is on the wall. You need to consider new markets or run the risk of a tsunami of competitors flooding your existing sales patch. You can’t stop them, but you can minimize their impact by floating opportunity in new markets.

You need to be an export market champion in your company. Sure, others have a say in the final decision, but you and your team are the frontline ambassadors. Your opinion matters. Gather your market intelligence, write your sales plan, and challenge the status quo.

​

The Genie is out of the bottle.

​

1- See more at: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/news/2014/03/11/canada-korea-free-trade-agreement-ckfta-benefits#sthash.N1SkZzoN.dpuf

​

2-http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crtc-to-netflix-since-you-won-t-co-operate-we-ll-ignore-you-1.2781748

​

Paul Kidston, MBA, CSP

Sales Leadership Strategist

Contact: 1-877-353-725

3

Email: pkidston@salestrainingexperts.ca

​