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Enterprise Selling the GE Way

by Mike Ma

One of the questions we are tackling in some recent projects are around sales staffing for multiple product lines. Our intial advice has been to have one wholesaler who can represent his company -- not just its products. It doesn't always fit, but this has been our initial hypothesis in working with clients and in Future of Wholesaling study -- to be a quarterback orchestrating a team around him.

I was reading this months HBR interview with Jeff Immelt and he was commenting on "enterprise selling" -- where one GE rep can bring in business for multiple lines of GE's business. Says Immelt, "What we need to do is set things up so that the medical rep can bring the lighting rep, the turbine rep and so on." As GE is focusing on organic growth rates that are 2-3x the global GDP , Immelt sees this as a critical strategy that works better than individual selling.

(BTW, isn't it awesome that GE compares itself not to other companies but to countires with respect to growth rates).

While I know we think that it is hard to have domain knowledge of funds, variable annuities, separates, closed end funds, ETFs, etc -- at least they are all investment products. GE faces this from turbines to hospital equipment.

To do this in our world, I think it requires three things on behalf of the wholesaler and their supporting functions:

a) Company Vision -- to see the cross selling opportunity. This could be supported by a business intelligence or customer segmentation team. The GE reps are not just one trick pony product jocks.

b) Adequate, Not Total, Knowledge -- just enough knowledege to gain permission to put an expert in front of the prospect. It is not always a "I need to know it all" endeavor.

c) Responsive Support -- the response needs to shortly follow the advisor's demand/wholesaler opportunity before the lead gets cold. This could be a retirement expert, an analyst on a portfolio team, or an internal following up immediately to on a wholesaler request. This has to be factored into the support equation.

Does it work? Well, I could live with the results that Immelt sees:

"Enterprise selling is only maybe 10% of the company's sales but out market share is probably twice as high when we combine things in that way."