Sales-Centric

What is Sales-Centric?

When a business takes a sales-centric approach, every aspect revolves around pushing sales and growing revenue. Sales-centric businesses prioritize shortening the sales cycle, closing deals, and meeting revenue targets above all else.

Businesses that adopt this sales approach typically have a strong traditional sales model. Here, the focus is on closing deals and making profits, not on finding the ideal customer for your product, building long-term relationships, or providing exceptional customer service. 

Today, these types of companies fall into one of the following categories:

• Telemarketing and call centers
• Door-to-door sales companies
• Commission-only sales organizations
• Retail chains and outlets
• Auto dealerships
• Insurance and real estate agencies

While sales-centricity has its benefits (high revenue potential, quick turnaround time), it can also lead to an overemphasis on short-term success. In some industries, like real estate and insurance, the focus on sales can even result in unethical practices. 

Most businesses today excel using a blend of sales-centric and customer-centric strategies. This allows them to accelerate the sales process and prioritize efficiency while still keeping the customer’s needs and long-term satisfaction in mind.

Synonyms

• Sales orientation
• Sales-focused
• Sales-centric strategy
• Sales-centric approach in business

Characteristics of Sales-Centric Companies

Certain characteristics become prevalent when businesses center their business strategy around closing deals and maximizing profits.

These include:

• A focus on numbers, sales quotas, and targets over customer needs
• High-pressure sales tactics
• Early, often aggressive sales pitches
• Favorable commission structures with high earnings potential
• Short-term relationships with customers
• High turnover
• Individualistic company culture

Because of this, sales-centricity works best when the buyer’s journey is naturally short, and products have a broad total addressable market. Some industries that benefit from this mindset include retail, where the buyer’s journey is typically brief, and insurance or real estate, where the potential customer pool is large.

Sales-Centric vs. Product-Centric

A product-centric approach focuses primarily on the development, improvement, and marketing of a company’s products. This approach places the product at the center of all business activities and decisions, emphasizing its quality, features, and innovation.

Key characteristics of a product-centric sales strategy include:

• Creating and refining their products to meet high standards of quality and innovation through significant investments in R&D
• Highlighting the unique features, benefits, and technical specifications through marketing and sales collateral
• Building a strong brand identity around their products (e.g., Apple’s brand is synonymous with sleek design and cutting-edge technology)
• Ongoing feedback-based improvements and updates to extend the product lifecycle

Product-centricity works well in industries where innovation and competition are high, such as technology, fashion, and beauty. For example, companies like Apple and Samsung invest heavily in R&D to create innovative products. Their marketing strategies highlight the unique features and advanced technology of their products to attract tech-savvy consumers

While a sales-centric strategy prioritizes closing deals and maximizing profits, a product-centric approach focuses on product innovation — creating the best product to meet customer needs and drive sales.

Sales-Centric vs. Customer-Centric

A customer-centric approach places the customer at the heart of all business decisions and strategies. Customer-centric companies prioritize the ability to understand and meet customer needs. Their goal is to build strong, long-term relationships.

Characteristics of customer-centric businesses include:

• Actively listening to customers’ current situation, pain points, and needs during sales conversations
• Matching each customer with the right product or service
• Basing product/service improvements on research, feedback, and direct interactions
• Fostering customer loyalty through continuous engagement, follow-up, and support
• Aligning marketing, product development, and customer service efforts to support the sales team and enhance their effectiveness in closing deals
• Tracking CSAT, customer health, and NPS scores in addition to sales targets

A customer-centric strategy works best when customer retention and brand reputation are the driving forces behind a company’s success. Hospitality, travel, healthcare, retail, ecommerce, and financial services are all examples of areas where customer-centricity is crucial.

Customer-centric strategies are also incredibly important for B2B SaaS. Since SaaS companies rely on recurring revenue and offer multiple versions of their product, they have to ensure customers continually see value in their platform.

To continue generating revenue from a customer, software companies need to facilitate customers’ full utilization of the product’s features. And that starts with the sales process — active listening and a keen understanding of customer needs enable them to find the best solution for each buyer.

Pros and Cons of a Sales-Centric Strategy

Pros

For businesses with short sales cycles and a broad potential customer pool, sales-centric strategies have several advantages:

• Fast sales growth. Since the primary focus is on closing deals, sales-centric companies can generate revenue quickly.
• Shorter training cycles. The sales ramp-up time is much shorter when the focus is on simple (albeit pushy) sales tactics and fast deal closures.
• Clear sales goals. With numbers and targets as the primary focus, it’s easy to set and track sales goals.
• Lower investment cost. In sales-centric companies, the bulk of investment goes towards hiring sales reps, meaning R&D, product development, and marketing are much smaller expenses.
• Powerful incentives for sales reps. With high potential earnings from commissions, sales reps are motivated to close as many new customers as possible for the business.

In some sales-centric organizations, sales reps also have the autonomy to make decisions and close deals as they see fit. Instead of following strict protocols, they can use their own judgment and persuasion skills to secure a sale.

Cons

While the defining traits of a sales-centric company may be effective in generating quick revenue, the drawbacks can negatively impact employee morale, customer satisfaction, and overall company reputation.

Drawbacks to a sales-centric sales approach include:

• Damage to your company’s reputation. Being known for pushy sales tactics and an unrelenting focus on numbers makes your product seem cheap and frustrates your customers to no end.
• High risk of churn. Closing customers who aren’t a good fit for your product means they won’t stay around for long. They also won’t write glowing reviews about their experience.
• Lack of long-term sustainability. While you can drive lots of revenue in the short term, it’s hard to maintain growth without a focus on customer satisfaction and retention.
• Limited understanding of your customers’ needs. If you aren’t actively focused on doing so, it’s nearly impossible to base long-term plans and product improvements on customer preferences.
• Lost sales. When buyers can smell a rep’s commission breath, they back away. It’s impossible to trust someone who doesn’t take the time to understand your needs and goals.
• High employee turnover. A money-oriented company culture is inherently materialistic and individualistic. In reality, money isn’t the only motivator — employees want to work where they feel valued and can positively impact customers’ lives.

LinkedIn’s 2020 Global State of Sales report found that only 32% of people describe sales as a “trustworthy profession.” In the B2B space, Gartner’s research finds that three-quarters of buyers prefer a rep-free experience altogether.

The reason for this is simple: they think sellers are trying to help themselves, not their customers. And sales-centric strategies are the reason why.

The Shift from Sales-Centric to Customer-Centric

Today, customers want to buy, but they don’t want to be sold to. They want to build relationships with businesses whose reputations are built on their own success, not aggressive sales tactics.

There are several factors driving this:

• In competitive markets, customer loyalty is more valuable.
• Customers increasingly want personalization, which is only possible when you understand their needs and goals.
• Social media and online review sites have given customers dozens of platforms to voice their opinions and experiences, making negative reviews more damaging than ever.
• Customers are more willing than ever to switch vendors if they find alternative options with better customer service or reputation.

Transitioning from sales-centric to customer-centric sales is especially important in B2B sales, where the average sales cycle lasts 102 days and requires 7+ decision-makers. Sales reps can’t just push for a sale — they need a modern sales methodology to qualify their leads, align with customers’ needs, and adapt their approach to each account (and further to each buying group member). 

This isn’t to say the modern sales organization should abandon a focus on revenue and profitability. Rather, successful companies today have found a way to balance sales goals with customer satisfaction, retention, and long-term growth. They know the key to success over time is to build a great product, create a positive customer experience, and develop mutually beneficial relationships.

For example, you might streamline the sales process with software like CPQ (configure, price, quote). At the same time, you’d use one of the several types of sales methodologies to gather customer information, understand their pain points and buying criteria, and communicate in a way that resonates with them. And internally, customer feedback can drive product development.

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