Second post eh? Must be on a roll.
I'm a fan of things like LinkedIn - it's a tool that is very useful to a good sales person if you want to find out if you are talking to the right people. As a side bonus it also has a large amount of content added to it by normally rather clever people.
Yesterday wasn't one of those days.
I read a post that was trying to say what makes a good sales person and what makes bad ones. Sadly the writer didn't tackle that, just listed a bunch of things that were light and fairy comments. It was in the comments section that you actually find the wealth of content and valuable insights though!
This cracker popped up: "We have two ears and one mouth. Listen twice as much as you speak."
I should point you to the person who said it, but really that saying is so old that i'm sure the source has been lost by now and everyone knows it. At least everyone should know it. I have heard it only perhaps once from a "Boss" though - and that boss turned out to be less a boss and more mentor than anything.
It's true though. The minute you stop talking (ie: Selling) and start listening (also known as data mining) you get a feel for things faster. Dale Carnegie taught people that everyone wants to talk about themselves. It's the easiest thing to practice, get people talking about what they do, what has made their companies so great and they will gladly tell you. A good sales person will soak that up like a sponge and then tailor every product they can to complementing that list of information that people freely give up to them.
Think of it as stealth sales, not many people like sales people, that's pretty much a given these days - so the best sales people (In my biased opinion of course) simply let things pan out and coach prospects along.
I met with a couple of my "competitors" in Manchester yesterday. I say competitors, but I have a dislike of the word. There are very few real competitors - the Internet Industry is too small, and everyone has to eventually buy from each other at some degree down the chain. We consider ourselves friends before competitors, or peers in the least.
Competitors are simply companies you have failed to share a vision or idea with. Most companies have that unique spark that makes them different, even die hard competitors to each other have the ability to create a synergy between themselves that actually fuels the growth of both companies. In Manchester as an example, we have lots of Datacentre's (Big buildings full of cool technical equipment and providing services to millions of consumers around the UK/EU/Globe) and each one has many selling points. Most of those points match though, so you have to dig a bit deeper to find true differences, some are more financially sound than others, some have huge market presence, some are ideally placed and others are just simply great at what they do. We can all work together though, if the right mix of talent, products and services are put out to the market.
The guys I met with I would class as "hardcore" sales people. They are bloody good at hitting numbers. They may not win every person round to themselves, but they hit targets and they make employers happy. They have an approach that works for them, but it isn't for me. I would say though, they do know how to listen and they get the idea of looking for the weaknesses in what they offer and how to overcome that - great skills that most sales people just aren't trained to do.
Next time you try and sell something, stop yourself from giving the pitch. Get your prospects to speak to you instead and make them sell you their company and then turn it around as an opportunity to help complement that with your own offering.
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