A Good Salesperson Can Sell Anything!
I was having coffee with the COO of a large organization a few weeks ago. We were talking about selling and the characteristics of fantastic sales people. He made the statement, “A fantastic salesperson can sell whatever business.”
I reflected on his statement, replying “I’m a pretty excellent salesperson—I’m really fantastic at very large complex deals, but I’m not sure I could sell whatever business.” He answered, “You’re far too modest, I know you can be fantastic selling whatever business—selling is in your blood.”
Since our conversation, I’ve thought about the topic a lot, can a fantastic sales person sell whatever business? I suppose there are some elements of truth to it. The examples I keep coming back to are things like, selling a car, working as a sales person in a huge box store, selling insurance.
Each requires fantastic talents and skills to be successful. At the lowest levels, the steps are the same—find an interested prospect, determine their needs, present a solution that meets their needs and compels them to buy, question for the order. I also suppose that I could sell cars, or in retail, or even insurance. I could probably close a few deals—but could I sustain my performance? Could I beat my targets year in and year out? While I probably could close a few deals, I’m not sure I could sell in a B2C environment. There are even some B2B environments I’d probably struggle at.
All kidding up your sleeve, the job of a car sales person is really hard. It’s basically a one call sales cycle—establishing a quick relationship, developing the level of entrust necessary for the transaction, and carrying out the transaction in one call—maybe with hostile/distrustful customers.
It takes me a while to build a relationship, I want to really get into the customer’s problems, issues and goals. I also may be a small slower, I like to reflect on the customer situation and reckon about the best approach to solve their problem. I can’t necessarily do that in an hour or so that a car salesperson might have. I certainly couldn’t do it in the few minutes a huge box sales person might have.
Then there’s this business called passion. Part of being a fantastic sales person is being excited and passionate about what you are selling. Years ago, I was Vice President of Sales for a technology company. They had a wide product line. The core products were, for me, uninspiring—I was really excited about a few product lines that were more complex, much more fascinating. I spent a lot of time looking at those product lines, helping sales people on those deals—but had fantastic difficulty with the core products—the one’s that paid the bills. It was a real struggle for me. We met our goals—but if they had relied on me to do the deals, we wouldn’t have. Fortunately, we had sales people that were passionate about the core products.
A rose by any other name is still a rose—but selling is not selling is not selling. While at its core, B2B and B2C selling may be similar, to be successful requires very uncommon skills, competencies and attitudes. Both are challenging, but for uncommon reasons. One is no better than the others, though there is a lot of posturing about B2B and B2C. Both are challenging, they each require passion, fantastic skills, real competencies. But they are uncommon!