CHAPTER 7

Being the Seller Your Customers Need

What’s your sales type? How do you characterize yourself as a salesperson?

How did you answer those questions? Were you compelled to use a traditional, old-fashioned, macho-type sales vocabulary to define your sales type? Are you a “hunter”? Are you a “closer”? Are you “extroverted”? Are you “aggressive”?

Chances are that you describe yourself in these terms because you’ve convinced yourself that your sales managers want you to embody these characteristics. While your managers might say all the right things about the skills, experience, and personal qualities that typify an ideal salesperson, the informal list of qualifications in the sales manager’s mind usually boils down to stereotypical qualities such as:

   Hunter

   Closer

   Extroverted

   Aggressive

Now take a minute and review the definition of selling in Chapter 1. Selling means to provide the information that will help customers make a purchase decision. It means to be the first seller with the answers to the customer’s questions, enabling an informed buying decision with the least investment of the buyer’s time.

If you think “hunter,” “closer,” “extroverted,” or “aggressive” best describes your sales type, you should ask yourself another important question: Which of those static traits specifically speak to helping customers make purchase decisions? Any of them? Of course not.

   Hunter: Are you stalking prey that doesn’t even know it’s being hunted?

   Closer: Are you manipulating or coercing your prospects to sign an order?

   Extroverted: Do you possess superficial interpersonal skills that cause customers to be cautious and slow the development of trust?

   Aggressive: Are you talking more than listening?

There are real dangers in conforming to old standards of what a salesperson should be. The primary danger is obsolescence. A salesperson is just one of many, many sources of information available to customers to gather data about the products and services they are evaluating for purchase. If you can’t provide value by how you sell and help the customer earn a positive ROTI, then you’re in danger of losing the customer.

For example, in a 2013 study titled “The Future of IT Sales,” researchers from the Gartner Group found that customers, by more than a 2-to-1 margin, would rather deal with a technical specialist or industry expert than a salesperson at each stage of their buying process. Given the choice between technical experts, industry experts, customer support, senior management, and sales, sales was perceived by the customers to provide the least value. This data is both fascinating and disturbing.

If salespeople cannot provide value to a customer, then what role can they play in the customer’s buying process? This is why it’s critical for you to do an assessment of your sales type and perform an audit of the value that you can provide to your customers.

Based on our compellingly simple and accurate definition of selling, here are four personal characteristics for you to embrace that specifically speak to helping your prospects make better and timelier purchase decisions:

   Responsive

   Curious

   Empathetic

   Problem Solver

It’s important to keep in mind that the traditional sales traits such as hunter and closer are like a straightjacket that binds you within a rigid range of responding to prospects. Rather than these static traits that are purely sales focused, it’s important to embrace a new set of dynamic sales strengths that are about learning and serving your customer.

“What is your sales type?” is not a trivial question. It’s absolutely essential to possess a pragmatic and realistic understanding of your strengths and weaknesses. If you’re engaging in self-deception about this, then it becomes extremely difficult to identify and develop the new knowledge, expertise, and skills that will help you take your sales to the next level.

Throughout this book, I’m going to address the four personal characteristics as essential sales strengths, and I’ll show how they support the requirements of your prospects.

   Responsive: The first seller with the answers wins.

   Curious: Success is about the solution the customer needs, not about the product you have to sell.

   Empathetic: Understand customers’ problems from their perspective.

   Problem Solver: Have the knowledge and insights to formulate optimal solutions to the customer’s requirements.

How do you get from where you are today to where you want to be? Here are the first two steps:

1. Become accomplished in at least one area that helps your customer make a decision. It could be perfecting your product knowledge that you use not only to answer customers’ questions but also ask questions of them that will help them better understand their requirements. It could be expanding your industry expertise and your ability to talk about your product or service using industry-specific examples and in a language that resonates with them. Perhaps it’s your responsiveness and your ability to marshal the answers and resources that help your customers compress their decision cycle.

2. Implement your own personal sales improvement plan. Ask yourself the following question as you embark on improving your selling skills: “Am I the type of salesperson that my customer needs?” In other words, are you the salesperson who can best help your customers achieve their goals? If not, identify those areas of weakness in your skills or knowledge that you need to more fully develop. Seek out the resources that can help you increase your sales performance. It could be taking online courses in a specific field, attending classes to achieve a selling skill or a certification, reading recommended books about selling, finding a mentor, hiring an independent sales coach, or joining a professional association that gives you opportunities to talk with peers and learn how others are selling their products. Seek out the resources your employer has to offer to you, but don’t rely on them alone. You’ve got to be willing to invest time and money in your own success as well.

There’s an obvious danger in generalizing about sales types. But you have the responsibility to your company and to your career to make sure that you become a salesperson, not a stereotype. Make it your priority to develop the skills and experience that best support your customers’ requirements to make an informed purchase decision in the shortest time possible. And in the process become the type of salesperson with the performance and productivity that both you and your employer need.