5 Points on Selling Without Selling Your Soul

You know who you are. You hate selling, but here you are, making your way as entrepreneur, having to sell or sink.

Me? I'm a terrible salesperson. I'm also bad at networking, cocktail parties, and small talk with people I don't know. Do I seem stuck up, aloof? Not really, just awkward.

I'm probably still scarred from my miserable failure at selling encyclopedias when I was in high school. I spent all summer, never made a sale, never managed to convince even a single person that I was really conducting an educational survey, and not selling encyclopedias. That miserable summer might have been what led me to hippiedom, way back when ... but that's a separate story.

And yet, hating to sell or not, I sold myself to business clients well enough to support a big family on my business plan consulting for 15 or so years, while simultaneously starting to build Palo Alto Software as a product business.

And I've had the privilege of working with and watching some greats in this category. I watched, and I learned. It comes down to 5 points:

1. Really listen

Really. Shut up for a bit and listen to the other person. No, don't half listen while your mind races ahead to the next point. Really listen, and absorb what they're saying. I like this quote in a Time magazine interview with Larry King:

I never learned anything while talking.

2. Empathize

There's no way to avoid it: you have to actually feel what this other person is feeling. Jump into their skin, or into their head, and look out from inside their head at the rest of the world. My mother used to call it putting yourself into the other person's shoes. My sister-in-law used to say "borrow my eyes and see through them for a while." See if you can imagine how he or she feels and he or she sees it. What experiences have they had which led to that point of view?

There's no substitute for empathy. It's the most important quality in business.

3. Always tell the truth

Lies come out, in the short term or long. Even plausible lies are time bombs.

When asked questions you shouldn't answer -- it happens; in the software business, for example, some questions about platforms and programming code and such -- just tell the truth, and say you don't feel comfortable answering that question. Explain why not.

When asked questions about weak points or flaws, answer them. You'll gain some credibility and avoid the long-term loss you risk if you lie and your customer finds out later.

Your credibility, which is inseparable from your integrity, is the key to long-term relationships.

4. Solve the other person's problem

One of my favorite things when I used to take sales calls, from back when my company was just starting up to just a few years ago (even as president, I used to grab the sales phone on random calls a few times a month), was to recommend a competitor's product instead of our own. It went something like this:

"If you want a business plan just because you need a stack of papers on a banker's desk in two days, and nobody's really going to read it, then you don't want our product. Ours likes you to think. You want __________." Ours doesn't write any text for you, it's not fill in the blanks ...

And I would end up giving them the toll-free number of a competitor. There was great satisfaction in that. And, in the long term, it's good for the business. People see that you realize what your product is good at, and that other products might be better at different things.

I've seen our best salespeople do it over and over: they listen, empathize, and solve the other person's problem either with our own product or by suggesting something else, that isn't ours, that will solve the problem. We're dealing with humans here; not everybody is a potential sale. Some of those people whose problems we can't solve now will come back to us later, when they have a problem we can solve.

5. Grow thick skin

The first person who ever worked for Palo Alto Software as a full-time salesperson was amazingly persistent. He would leave voice messages for key gatekeeper people once a day for months, without ever getting a returned phone call. And, at least in several key accounts, those months of unanswered phone calls eventually got him -- and our product -- in the door.

Yes, I know, it's somewhat contradictory to include empathy and thick skin in the same post. If you really empathized with the people who ignore messages, you might not persist in calling back. But business and life is full of paradox. I can't resolve this one.

Follow Tim Berry on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Timberry

Comments

[TJCole]

Here's another thing, try not to sell anything you wouldn't at least like to buy yourself....believe in the product you're selling...!

An when you encounter customer like KTM don't bother selling to them as you don't need their money and will be sorry to have them as customers..!

[brooklyncitizen]

I think honesty is important....selling has a negative connotation because it implies that it is all about the bottomline of making a sale/making money. But believing in what you are selling and believing it will benefit the buyer is key.

[Gronkie]

If you really want to learn how to sell, try selling timeshare for a couple of years, especially if you're young. It is the art and science of sales distilled down to it's essence. You take a family who doesn't want to be there, has no interest in your product, probably doesn't even know what it is, and 2 hours later they are handing you their credit card for a $15,000 purchase. The experience of selling timeshare makes you a fearless salesperson who will ask the tough questions, insist on truthful answers, and get to the bottom of the true problem that needs to be solved. Oh yeah, and you won't be afraid to ask for the order. Take that experience and knowledge to any other company and you'll be the best salesperson they've ever seen. Selling timeshare is fun, too.

[KillTheMessenger]

Lovely sarcasm.

Or so I hope.

:-)

[Gronkie]

I'm a half partner and the Director of Sales and Marketing in a small, but booming, start-up, and I would offer my favorite piece of sales advice:

Patient Persistence: Similar to #5, but I wouldn't leave the same message for the same person over and over. It makes you look like a stalker or maybe the guy doesn't work there and you're leaving a message oin a voice mail that nobody will ever listen to (I've done it). I would try many different angles, calling different people at the company, for different reasons, until someone finally engages you in a conversation. Alternate calling with emailing. The key is being polite, friendly and confident. When you get them on the phone, you don't say "FINALLY! I've been trying to reach you forever!" Act like it's the first time you called. In the past few months I've landed two huge accounts after trying for over a year. In both cases, it finally happened becasue they heard something about us from someone else and decided that it was time to take the call from that guy.

[KillTheMessenger]

If you call me twice I know two things about you:

1) You are desperate.

2) Your product doesn't sell well.

From both it follows that your product sucks.

Call me once. You have ten to twenty seconds to get me interested. After that I am on automatic "get the hell off my phone" mode. You will know that that's where I am when I make nice smalltalk with you and I am not asking questions about the product.

With corporations, if you want to look like a believable business contact, you have one try to call the right person. It has to be someone on your level and with the authority to talk about you to the real decision makers. Call one level below that person or one level above and you look like an idiot who knows nothing about corporate structure.

Just my two cents. You can keep them.

[Gronkie]

Your name and your comments tell me that you are one of those corporate egotists who are part of the problem with current corporate America. If you think two calls means that the person on the other line is desperate to sell a bad product, then you could very well be missing out on something great. One of the clients I mentioned above did tens of thousands in additional business the first month they used my product, and were very sorry that hadn't hooked up with us earlier. Now they are recommending us to their branches in other cities. The other is using us as the closing pitch in a huge upcoming deal. And why would I let some low-level flunkie be the one to pitch to the decision makers? He/She can't sell my product anywhere near as well as I can, so I'll go to the decision makers myself, thank you very much. If I come up against someone like you, then you lose - you can't have my product. I'll spend my valuable time and spectacular product on someone who gets it. Eventually you'll hear about us from your successful competition. Keep your two cents - you'll need it after the next downsizing.

[PocketWatch]

As a Business Consultant and as a Business Manager, I tell clients and the C-level people in sales all the time that sales is solving problems. No matter what you are selling, you are solving someone's problems with your product or service. A project manager needs a piece of equipment. That's a problem he has to solve. If you work with him to solve that problem for him, you have a sale. Someone needs a carton of milk. Get that to them conveniently at a reasonable price and make sure thay are satisfied with it, you have a sale. Your customers and clients have a problem to solve, and if you help them solve it, you have a sale.

I'm a terrible salesman, and have sold millions of dollars of highly technical equipment and the service that goes with that because I AM a terrible salesman. I was simply trying to help my customers with their problems, and offering them the right solution to their problems. Period.

[KillTheMessenger]

Now there is someone who gets it. Call me.

:-)

[Gronkie]

Problem solving is always the way to go, but the main problem with this philosophy is identifying the TRUE problem in the first place. Clients will spout all kinds of fake problems at you, but it takes a great sales person to be able to drill down and really discover what the real issue is, and how they truly want it solved. It may not be price, it may not be service, it may be something as simple as how to change the toner in the copy machine because it gets all over the boss's assistant and makes her mad and then takes it out on him. You can pitch price and service all day long, but until someone shows him a copier that has clean toner cartridge, he's not closing. Finding that crazy, hidden need/problem is the real trick.