The sales team as a driver of business innovation.
Innovative companies revolutionise industries and improve people’s lives. However, their success does not depend exclusively on the innovation itself, but also on the company’s human team and how they bring new prototypes, products and services to customers. In this area, sales teams play a key role. Their close relationship and proximity to the customer enables them to understand the customer better than any other department and to better answer the question: What needs does our customer have and will have in the future?
In the following article we will examine the importance of teamwork between the innovation and sales departments, as well as some of the activities carried out by INDPULS to create synergies between the two teams.
The importance of sales teams in innovation
Sales teams are responsible for identifying and attracting new customers, managing relationships with existing customers and promoting the company’s products and services. For innovation-driven companies and industries, these tasks can be even more challenging.
Often salespeople work with prototypes that, although they may answer an existing need, are completely unknown in the market. In this case, if this product or service, resulting from a process of innovation, does not provide an optimal response to the customer, all the trust generated over the years, and even the business model itself, can be put at risk.
Xavier Marcet, president of Lead To Change, a strategic partner of INDPULS, highlights in his article ‘Salespeople and innovation’ the necessary complicity between both teams for innovation to reach customers in an optimal way: “If a salesperson is convinced that what comes from the innovation teams generates a lot of value and is not just an occurrence, they will be the first to be interested in trying to sell it”.
Thus, an empathetic sales team, that knows how to observe and understand the customer, and that above all trusts and believes in the value generated by innovation, makes it easier to overcome certain challenges and barriers that appear within and outside the organisation itself.
A partnership that brings us closer to the future
Without innovation, companies would undoubtedly be offering products and services that respond to technologies and needs that are most likely obsolete. Innovation brings us closer, not only to finding answers to today’s problems, but, most importantly, to the problems of tomorrow. Innovation generates reflection, exploration and a willingness to rethink models in order to improve, change and move forward.
In this sense, collaboration between the innovation team and the sales team is crucial to achieve a solid innovation strategy. The sales team will be able to identify customer needs and concerns through observation and empathy, and the innovation team, for its part, will be able to explore and implement the technology, processes and services that respond to these needs.
Meeting between the sales teams of INDPULS partner companies
The importance of teamwork and interdisciplinary work in companies in order to successfully carry out innovation was the main theme of the session on “Innovation and sales teams” organised by INDPULS, which was attended by a total of 24 people representing all the associated companies. The session was led by Xavier Marcet, president of Lead To Change. Mireia Mir, director of INDPULS, presented the objectives and programmes of INDPULS. During the session, an interesting dialogue took place and the idea that for innovation to exist, leadership and internal coalition are needed was reaffirmed.
Xavier Marcet concluded the meeting by reflecting on the evolution of INDPULS in this respect. “In the early days of INDPULS, the forum was composed only of the Innovation Directors, but it quickly became clear that if the CEOs of the companies were not included, high-impact developments would not happen. Having achieved this, it is now important to have the involvement of sales people, as they are the ones who channel this innovation to the customer and who have the answers to their needs”.
