Accompanying the digitalisation of commercial relations, finding the right balance between physical and virtual sales, working on relationships without having to lose sight of the planning function... The challenges facing the manager in the digital and w
In the industry and construction sectors, senior managers report experiencing more difficulties in performing their managerial functions. These managers are on average more likely to consider the job to be stressful, compared to managers in other sectors. In any case, this is what was revealed by a study published in September 2021 by the Malakoff Humanis group with Harris Interactive. Although all sectors were affected by the health crisis with major organisational upheavals, managers in the industrial sector had to deal with the specific constraints of the production process. The solution then lies in better communication and in building a real managerial community that allows everyone to express their concerns, identify problems and find ways to solve them.
The relational functions of the manager have proved to be central to the management of the company in a context as uncertain as that of the health crisis that began in 2020. Increased unpredictability that managers have had to deal with, implying a greater workload, but also new challenges related to the management of telework and hybrid work. While the digital shift was already being negotiated before the pandemic, the acceleration was a sudden shock to the sales teams.
The quest for meaning, a taste for challenge, maintaining social ties... Managerial practices work on employee motivation.
Some of the innovative management practices make you smile, and that's the point. It is about games, demonstrating commitment to one's company, team sports and any other solution that can improve cohesion.
The manager of tomorrow must be able to count on the seriousness and the support of his sales teams working partly at a distance. Therefore, a new management style is needed. Managerial practices based on day-to-day visibility, sometimes bordering on constant surveillance, are clearly unsuited to hybrid work. For these managers, the transition to more flexible practices is inevitable and comes with specific tools and methods.
The rise of remote selling, or virtual selling, requires some adjustments within the company. The digital medium is omnipresent in these digitised processes which run from the first commercial contact between the B2B salesperson and the prospect to the final stage of the transaction.
The method proves to be more agile than traditional sales, with opportunities for efficiency and performance for the company. But the B2B customer remains attached to a quality approach, and expects the salesperson to have a perfect command of the product and the market. The implementation of this remote selling relationship depends on the relevance of the tools and methods deployed by the managers. This requires the acquisition of software dedicated to these activities and the abandonment of the unilateral nature of the traditional commercial discourse in favour of a co-construction between the interlocutors. A more suitable formula for capturing and maintaining attention on a digital medium.
