The sales force is faced with with both challenges directly from customers and the macro environment. Some of the macro environment factors include:
Globalization of markets, products and services. These include customers who are operating in both up- and down-streams of the Value Chain.
Shorter product life cycles. Products are being replaced faster and faster as technology becomes the "enabler" in design, development and delivery. It took about 8 weeks from blueprint to the production of the "read/write" component in a hard disk in 1987 to under 24 hours in 2010!
Product proliferation. On supermarket shelves today, you see not one, two or five brands of any consumer products. You see an entire supermarket shelf (from top to bottom, left to right) full of product variations to fulfill every market segment (niche).
As such, the sales force needs to be aware of product/service "fads" (e.g. a typical movie release) which comes and goes, "trends" (e.g. ebooks) and "megatrends" (e.g. mobile phones)
