A lot of people have a lot of things to say about what sales is. Some say it’s turning potential energy into kinetic- prospects into buyers. Some say it’s all about relationships. Others say it’s about understanding and presenting value. Ask any salesperson, they’ll tell you something different.
I did a bit of research (I Googled “sales job description”) and came up with a few things you will be expected to master in a sales role:
- Value definition and propositioning
- Brand positioning
- Handling objections
- Relationship building/management
- Prospecting and Lead qualification
- Internal business processes
- Purchasing
- Negotiation and contracts
- External business processes
- Politics
- Brand representation
- Closing/driving consistent increases
- Persuasive writing
- Public speaking/debate
- Presentations
- Photographic memory/eye for detail
- Organized/self starter
- Record keeping
- Working with teams/cross functionally
- Technology use
- etc, etc, etc.
It’s a confusing world, and a lot of failed salespeople will describe their efforts in a jack-of-all-trades, smorgasbord of traits.
So what is sales? Simple- it’s a small set of specific strengths and the ability to use them to your advantage in a business setting. No one will be able to master all of the potential skills in a sales toolkit- but the best salespeople master the use of the ones that they are best at. If you’re still confused- here’s an example of what I mean.
I once worked in retail sales at a bicycle shop. My job was to sell mechanical service to people who needed it- and to help them see the value of taking care of their bicycle. I’m not much for presentations, and I despise traditional value propositioning. My memory for faces and names sucks, and at the time I had very little negotiating skills. However- I am very talented at relationship building, and demonstrating value through action. I am also a decent public speaker and fairly good at thinking on my feet.
Using these traits- I was able to build a rapport with people by offering value they could see immediately. If there was a chance I could give something away for free and have it make business sense (IE- if there was potential for a bigger sale in the future, or if it would make a current transaction’s objections disappear), I would always take advantage. This led to big gains both in revenue, customer satisfaction, and internal culture.
A colleague of mine at a different job demonstrated this principle to me in a memorable way. He was gruff- a rough-and-tumble, Harley fan with a fantastic wit and eye for detail. We were selling highly technical electronic components to engineering organizations. Our target audience was full of seasoned engineers with technical needs and little regard for business value. To put it frankly- our targets demanded technical understanding far beyond the ability of a non-engineer. For a non-technical person, this is a difficult hurdle to overcome.
This colleague used his wit and just enough gruff-ness to his advantage. He knew he didn’t have the technical understanding the engineers were looking for. He also knew they knew it. Instead of keeping up a charade that they were expecting, he brought down walls of objection by keeping the tone light and cutting through the bull****. On the internal side- he used these same skills to get the internal technical teams to answer questions on a regular basis, and even to join him on customer calls. His targets learned to trust him not as a technical resource, but as a facilitator, sans-BS. He used his strengths to make it happen, despite lacking core skills or value that his customers demanded. This is sales.
Christian McCall 