Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

What you DON’T need to know to be successful in inside sales

  

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There's a lot of decent literature, both online and in print, on how to become a successful salesperson.  But there's a lot of poppycock, too. Some sales philosophy is caught up in New Age mysticism, and suggests applying practices for which there is no scientific basis. In one sales course I attended, the trainer insisted that we wear headphones with two earpieces. Why? Because we use both our left brains and right brains, she said, we had to have audio input in both ears in order to use both sides of our brains during a sales call (I guess that means during the previous 50 years, armed with only single-audio handsets, salespeople must have been pretty nonproductive.) On the other hand, some sales courses for technology salespeople are so technology-driven that they put them through a rigorous course in technical principles. In one such class, I, along with my sales colleagues, received a 500 page technical manual at the end of Friday's training session as "homework" for the weekend, and we were expected to have it down cold by Monday.

Today, I'd like to debunk two commonly held notions, one from each of these schools of thought, and in doing so, make your job easier, in lead qualification, price neogtiation, and closing sales. For one thing, you don't have to understand the concept of "personality types." For the other, you don't have to be an expert in the technology you're selling. Let's explore these, one-by-one.

1) Debunking myth #1: selling to a personality type has value

In the 1970s, a whole school of thought emerged that suggested there were four types of personalities that bought products and services. These were often characterized as "amiable," "dominant driver," "nurturing," etc. Entire sales training philosophies were based on these concepts, as if, by identifying with them, and crafting your sales discussions to them, you could gain primacy over your competitors by bonding better with each prospect's "personality type."  You would be friendly with the amiable type, directive toward the dominant type, etc. What this type of simplistic theory ignores is that the same individual will be nurturing when trying to cadge a date, dominant when dealing with an insurance company over a cracked windshield, and amiable when playing cards with friends. What I've found, in my years of selling, is that prospects only care about what you can do for them, and it basically comes down to helping them make more money, or stop them from losing money. They don't care about your style of communication, but more about what you're asking or saying. Whether you're friendly or a bit stiff, all you have to do is have a meaningful conversation with them, understand their challenges, and prove that your solution meets their needs. If you ask good questions, put yourself in the shoes of the other guy or gal, and try to make his or her life better through your solution, you won't have to care about determining what kind of personality he or she has. One of the better inside sales reps I ever met was a fellow with clipped, direct sentences, very short on small talk. The prospects loved him (and I knew, because I coached him) because he listened to what they said, asked good questions, and didn't waste their time.

2) Debunking myth #2: you have to be an expert in your technology

There's a reason many companies don't ask engineers to become salespeople. Often (but not always) engineers are so in love with the technology that that's all they can talk about! And in doing so, they often ignore the human reasons people need their solutions. Back in 1986, I took a sales position at Atron, a small company that made debuggers for programmers writing in C language. The first day on the job, my boss, Perry Lynne, showed me how it worked. A bunch of "1s" and "0s" flashed all over the computer screen, and I couldn't tell what the damn stuff meant. "Perry," I said, "does this product really work, and are the customers happy?" He told me it did, and they were. I asked if I could have pre-sales tech support, and if so, I'd just like to get on the phone and sell it, and I could learn the technology later. So I started selling C debuggers the afternoon of my first day on the job. Soon I'd sold millions of dollars worth of them, and four years later, when my company was sold, I still didn't know how the product worked! But it did work, and we had thousands of happy customers that told us so. And I had great engineers to back me up, both pre-sale and post-sale. Technical questions were important, but I had my prospect fax them directly to my engineers (this was before the days of email). My specialty was in asking about the prospects' businesses, understanding how my product could improve their bottom lines, and making them more productive. The minutiae of the technology was my engineers' business, but selling was mine, and formed the core of my sales philosophy.

I've often said that successful selling is a lot about knowing what you don't have to know. Another way I've described it is being "intelligently ignorant." There are some fine details of engineering that frankly, I just don't need to know about. Successful selling is really about understanding your prospect's business and providing a solution that fits his or her needs. When you do, you won't have to concern yourself with what kind of personality he or she has, what he or she does on the weekend, or on the details of the technology that your presales engineers understand better than we in sales ever can. So I invite you to take charge of your sales situations, and concern yourself with helping your prospects. Leave their personalities to New Age gurus and the engineering to your presales techs. Instead, spend a bit of time understanding your prospect's business and how your solution can make his or her life better. And add this to your Best Practices playbook.