My goal is never to sell. No one likes being sold. My objective is to establish a connection between myself (or my team) and the technology we represent. So that when timing is right, or when the use cases arise, you know exactly who to contact :)
Solid post! Your final secret (as well as this Comments section) reminds me a bit of Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point. *Mavens, Salespeople & Connectors*
Good stuff, Brian. Thank you for the helpful tips & reminder on perspective. We're all humans with lives/families outside of work. Look forward to more posts coming from "The Chamber" :-]
great post Brian, I will definitely share this with my teams. A sellers job is to understand their customers’ and prospects business. This becomes even more important when you are an infrastructure platform that customers build services on top of. Helping think through the art of the possible with business outcomes in mind, it a fun exercise.
Shameless plug, we love your mobile app, my kids could live on Chick Fil a.
Brian - Appreciate this elaborate point of view. This will reasonate with sales folks who have been doing this for quite some time. But you know, sometimes target pressures make us forget these :-).
Welcome to my world! Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts. At the same time, I will disclose our "secrets" so that we can STOP bad sales tactics and salesperson's rookie behavior.
Wow. This is solid sales content. Thank you for your time putting this together, Brian.
A few things to add in support of your points.
The world of enterprise sales was already heading this direction before COVID. However since 2020, the clutter of outreach has exponentially increased. I would recommend everyone to find creative, alternative, yet non intrusive ways for outreach. Something that may invite the HUMAN on the receiving end to pause and reflect positively. When appropriate, I will write a handwritten letter via snail mail, or compose a personalized pre-recorded video highlighting "mastery" of the product with the prospect.
Lastly, now more than ever it is important to be a relationship seller. I believe the old adage that "people buy from people they like." While this alone is a great reason to be relationship driven while selling, in a vacuum it could be disingenuous. The highest performers I have observed across my sales career are genuinely close with their customers. Whether it is as advanced as being on each other's Christmas card list, or having conversations that never actually cover business related subjects. If you build lasting relationships, sales success can follow.
Thanks for sharing this on Linkedin. I thought your thoughts on not having time and reply to your own thread was funny because its something i see often. I would like to note that cold calling does work.... sometimes. Us sales guys have tried a service called loom which can send a video link through an email but they get blocked through firewalls and no one clicks on links anymore (i dont blame them) which is why we opt to calling, it seems more personal and you dont have to type out the value you can portray. Linkedin is a whole different story....
My goal is never to sell. No one likes being sold. My objective is to establish a connection between myself (or my team) and the technology we represent. So that when timing is right, or when the use cases arise, you know exactly who to contact :)
Solid post! Your final secret (as well as this Comments section) reminds me a bit of Malcolm Gladwell's book, The Tipping Point. *Mavens, Salespeople & Connectors*
Good stuff, Brian. Thank you for the helpful tips & reminder on perspective. We're all humans with lives/families outside of work. Look forward to more posts coming from "The Chamber" :-]
great post Brian, I will definitely share this with my teams. A sellers job is to understand their customers’ and prospects business. This becomes even more important when you are an infrastructure platform that customers build services on top of. Helping think through the art of the possible with business outcomes in mind, it a fun exercise.
Shameless plug, we love your mobile app, my kids could live on Chick Fil a.
Wow, such a great witty article on a sensitive topic!
Brian - Appreciate this elaborate point of view. This will reasonate with sales folks who have been doing this for quite some time. But you know, sometimes target pressures make us forget these :-).
Welcome to my world! Really appreciate you sharing your thoughts. At the same time, I will disclose our "secrets" so that we can STOP bad sales tactics and salesperson's rookie behavior.
Wow. This is solid sales content. Thank you for your time putting this together, Brian.
A few things to add in support of your points.
The world of enterprise sales was already heading this direction before COVID. However since 2020, the clutter of outreach has exponentially increased. I would recommend everyone to find creative, alternative, yet non intrusive ways for outreach. Something that may invite the HUMAN on the receiving end to pause and reflect positively. When appropriate, I will write a handwritten letter via snail mail, or compose a personalized pre-recorded video highlighting "mastery" of the product with the prospect.
Lastly, now more than ever it is important to be a relationship seller. I believe the old adage that "people buy from people they like." While this alone is a great reason to be relationship driven while selling, in a vacuum it could be disingenuous. The highest performers I have observed across my sales career are genuinely close with their customers. Whether it is as advanced as being on each other's Christmas card list, or having conversations that never actually cover business related subjects. If you build lasting relationships, sales success can follow.
Thanks for sharing this on Linkedin. I thought your thoughts on not having time and reply to your own thread was funny because its something i see often. I would like to note that cold calling does work.... sometimes. Us sales guys have tried a service called loom which can send a video link through an email but they get blocked through firewalls and no one clicks on links anymore (i dont blame them) which is why we opt to calling, it seems more personal and you dont have to type out the value you can portray. Linkedin is a whole different story....
Thanks Nick!