Developing sales organization towards the future
Immonen-Gudmundsson, Sanna (2022)
2022
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Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022060716447
https://urn.fi/URN:NBN:fi:amk-2022060716447
Tiivistelmä
In today’s world the technological advances require all of us to adapt to the new conditions and competences. There is a need to upskill and reskill towards these new competences. The target organization, Epiroc Group, is facing these competence development challenges in preparing their workforce towards the future. The objective of this thesis research project was to create a development plan for the Nordic Customer Centers’ sales organizations of the target organization. It aimed to define what the organization should take into consideration and what would be the development needs of today’s sales organization to become a value adding sales organization of the future, both to the company itself but also to the customers. The aim was to focus on the organizational level and not on specific employees.
The thesis research project was done together with Epiroc Group in 2021-2022. The research was conducted with a qualitative research method with constructive research methodology. The data collection was done with semi-structured interviews from three different participant groups who presented the sales employees of the Nordic sales organization, sales leaders as well as competence development responsibles of the target organization. The individuals in question were chosen to get a wide perspective from different angles of the research topic.
The research outcome showed that the current competences of the Epiroc Group’s Nordic sales organizations focused on customer relationship and technical competences. The future target for the sales organization is to have strong customer focus and be more data driven and data enabled instead of focusing on technical competences. Understanding technology and what it means to customers will stay as part of sales employees’ profile, however there is no need to have high competence on technical matters as this competence in the organization must be with technical specialists. Local actions towards competence or organization development of the sales employees have not been taken actively which was an improvement area for the sales organization. The gaps in knowledge have been recognized but actions towards filling the gaps needed to be taken, for example through training.
As a conclusion the recommendation for Epiroc Group was to reactivate and review the value-based selling training concept which has been in use before. In addition, it was recommended to set up a sales excellence program where the focus should be in customer interaction and what digitalization, automation and innovation means for sales work. It was also suggested to review the sales employees’ job description as well as the roles in the sales organization, what should be included in the sales employee’s job description and what duties could be performed by other roles, especially when it comes to the competences like technical matters or project management as these were not seen as the core competences of the sales employees in the future.
The thesis research project was done together with Epiroc Group in 2021-2022. The research was conducted with a qualitative research method with constructive research methodology. The data collection was done with semi-structured interviews from three different participant groups who presented the sales employees of the Nordic sales organization, sales leaders as well as competence development responsibles of the target organization. The individuals in question were chosen to get a wide perspective from different angles of the research topic.
The research outcome showed that the current competences of the Epiroc Group’s Nordic sales organizations focused on customer relationship and technical competences. The future target for the sales organization is to have strong customer focus and be more data driven and data enabled instead of focusing on technical competences. Understanding technology and what it means to customers will stay as part of sales employees’ profile, however there is no need to have high competence on technical matters as this competence in the organization must be with technical specialists. Local actions towards competence or organization development of the sales employees have not been taken actively which was an improvement area for the sales organization. The gaps in knowledge have been recognized but actions towards filling the gaps needed to be taken, for example through training.
As a conclusion the recommendation for Epiroc Group was to reactivate and review the value-based selling training concept which has been in use before. In addition, it was recommended to set up a sales excellence program where the focus should be in customer interaction and what digitalization, automation and innovation means for sales work. It was also suggested to review the sales employees’ job description as well as the roles in the sales organization, what should be included in the sales employee’s job description and what duties could be performed by other roles, especially when it comes to the competences like technical matters or project management as these were not seen as the core competences of the sales employees in the future.