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Around ten years ago there was a Sales & Marketing Megathread which now resides off the live forums. Past Thread Over the two year life span of the thread there was a lot of information discussed and the overall result of the thread was positive. People used the information offered to further themselves and their careers. It was fun to post in and give back a little of what we as experienced sales people know. The initial agenda of the thread was focusing on Marketing. It quickly moves into the sales area and stayed there for its life. While not ideal for the original concept it did show one thing. Sales and Marketing are two totally separate careers and the world needs to understand the difference. Sales, the Career Both employment sectors earn some of the worst appraisals of the people involved in them. Additionally, Sales people think Marketing people are useless. Ego’s aside, both have a place in the process of making products available to be purchased and getting the word out to you, the customer. They are a cost to the business but essential in income generation. Sales people have always been seen as an evil part of business. The perception is that it is filled with people who have no idea what they are doing while earning a lot of money. In many industries world wide, sales people working in their respective industries are considered some of the worst people alive. Even as you read this you are probably thinking of Real Estate, Motor Vehicle and Insurance sales people to name three. People that are successful in sales can be rated as the some of the hardest working employees within a business. Not because of the physical requirements but for mental resilience. Dealing with the above mentioned critique of their character and the manner in which they operate is minimal compared to the rejection they receive on a daily basis. Lets look at sales people in general. Most of them are as bad as you think. Using Pareto’s Principle we can say that 20% of sales people generate 80% of revenue in most industries. Pareto first talked about this in relation to 20% of his pea pods generating 80% of his peas in his garden and expanded it to his observation of the Italian wealth distribution. This relationship has been expanded to encompass all manner of processes including everything from personal relationship quotas to cost analysis of feedlot outputs. One area it is always used in is within the sales arena as a way to explain individual sales person results. Put simply, 20% of sales people generate 80% of sales. This is mostly true. In any given sales team there will be some that generate the majority of revenue and the rest produce limited or sporadic sales. Companies understand this and continue to employ people to fill the sales seats as it not just about revenue but market exposure and continuity. It is all about finding the next 20%’er. The hardest thing as a sales person is transitioning from that 80% to the 20%. It is doable but takes training and learning some key aspects of the sales process and people. It is only sustainable when you take the training and learning and build on it using additional discovery and skills that most people never obtain. The later part either comes from effort of the individual or situational circumstances that can not be easily documented. A bit about me When the old thread was open I was at “The End” of my sales career. I had been employed by three companies in a single market sector over a 15 year period and had built a captured client base that was generating an active and passive income which allowed me to retire at age 46. Prior to that I had worked in another industry that gave me understanding of staff management and gain business acuity that was needed to run a successful and profitable operation. The last ten years has had me working with business’s redefining their sales operations and how they impacted their business practices. I have worked across multiple industries and have been able to increase revenue through change in all but two. I know a bit more than I did ten years ago but am starting to know less as the world changes. What this thread could be about Anyone that tells you they can give you the secrets about being successful in sales is probably rehashing something from a book written by someone that has never sold for a living. Anyone that can not give a monetary guarantee on results should be avoided. Lets hope this thread can contain information that can be expanded with everyone’s feedback This thread is for people to ask questions about their own sales situation or query and have someone give back thoughts or comments. It is about trying to explain why some people/managers in organisations do what they do when it comes to sales people. It can be for anything even remotely linked to sales. I hope this thread could be more than rehashing tied old concepts (20%-80% be damned) and take the sales person and build upon what is already there. There will be more experienced people than me here that can offer advice to you. So have at it people. Give us some questions.
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Apr 5, 2022 10:50
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I used to work in digital advertising for five years (did ad operations, and ended with campaign management). I switched careers to something less lucrative and less stressful, which was a good move at the time. My question: Is there a big difference between ad sales and sales in other sectors? I had a taste of ad sales, I did not like it but I did like the money. So sometimes I think about trying again in a different area, but I don't know if it'd be actually any different than ad sales. It felt very absurd and stressful to think that my career would depend on if enough people bought Shari's Berries from ad buys. That may have been youthful over-thinking as it was my first big-boy job. I like to think I could do sales if I was selling something "real" (aka, not lovely ads), but at the same time it sounds naive since the point of sales is to turn a profit, not love the product. edit to add specifics: I work in university admin now, so the other sales areas I typically think about are SaaS and library vendors (publishers, databases, furniture, etc....) pizzapocketparty fucked around with this message at 05:14 on Apr 6, 2022 |
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Apr 6, 2022 05:00
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pizzapocketparty, All sales markets have their own unique quirks. Advertising Sales have AOR changes that can dramatically drive increases in sales. This is limited to the ad sales market you were working in. Another interesting aspect of ad sales is that the budgets are set before companies go out to market. Traditionally, they do not go looking to buy advertising with an open checkbook. If we look at your academic area, it too has very unique entry criteria. Campus or college wide supplier agreements, preferred supplier agreements that are not publicly tendered are two that crop up. In the end sales is sales. People want a product and someone has to supply it. Companies want to reduce the friction in between as much as possible. Google did this near perfectly with online ad sales. Others have follow their example and have benefited. It still requires a human touch and this is where the possibility exists for you. So is sales different between markets? At the base mechanics of it no. A sales person has to inform the customer he has the product and what price it will cost. The differences start to come in the expectations of the buyer. People will normally buy from someone they feel comfortable with. If the seller fits their image of the sort of person who should be selling the product then it occurs simply. Everyone will have what they think an ad sales person should or would act and look like. Same would be said for someone who should be selling motor vehicles or sewing machines. I have had to tread lightly around this concept a lot in the last ten years. It is not politically correct to comment on how people act and their looks. It is becoming a major part of selection criteria even if it is not spoken about vocally. So if you did customer facing sales and were successful for five years there is no reason why you could not transition to another market and use the same skills. The problem is you might not act or look like a motor vehicle or sewing machine sales person and both employers and customers will see that. The most interesting this is I have no idea what you act or look like and it does not matter to me but after talking to a lot of company owners, HR departments and employment agents they will say if asked honestly is how the person would fit emotionally and visually into an organisation. So why bring this up? My image of an ad sales person would not be the same as a rep selling products to a university. They would be two different types of people. This is the part that confuses people who want to succeed in sales. Why can I be good at selling stuff a a retail store but now cannot do it in a corporate role? I was the best seller at my IT wholesale company and now I can not sell this IT stuff to companies directly. It is not skills based but the way people dress, carry themselves and speak. If you speak with successful sales people they will all say the believe in their product. It is near impossible to sell if you have no faith in what you sell. Some people might try and tell you they are successful but it is not sustainable. After a lot of word lets finish with this. If you want to try give it a go. It is emotionally and financially rewarding to succeed in sales. There is enough information online to tell you the mechanics of a sales cycle. I hope the above gives you something to think of that should be told more often but it not. In fact I think this is the first time I have put it in writing. drat, is this a Jerry Maguire moment?
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Apr 6, 2022 06:13
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Maybe a niche question, but software sales. My situation: I spent a decade selling software and services around a specific IT stack (not worth discussion). The software was primarily on-prem, or on premises - meaning my clients owned a data center and installed it on their own hardware. I took some time away from IT sales and am looking to get back in - while services would be a layup, software is still more prevalent, yet every company specifically requires SaaS sales experience. My questions: A - SaaS vs. on-prem should not be that much of a leap. Ultimately, you're talking about a delivery method, a licensing/payment mechanism, and a slightly different way of managing/interacting with it. Unless I'm way off base, the sale still revolves around understanding client requirements and selling to their objective - it will increase revenues, reduce risk, improve efficiency, whatever in some kind of quantifiable way. B - This is a hurdle that I've run into a few times - unless I'm way off base on this, is it worth just fudging the experience? I'm not talking transitioning from selling home appliances to enterprise software, simply on-prem to SaaS but the same (or similar) underlying product. And if I'm way off base, how do I overcome this hurdle in an honest way?
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Apr 7, 2022 12:25
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Shooting Blanks posted:Maybe a niche question, but software sales. My situation: The industry I lasted worked in was IT. It was at a time where On-prem was the standard and SaaS was just starting. I remember the first client that said they wanted to move their email to the cloud. It was an interesting talk with the IT team as to why they thought the business wanted to change. We found out the several members of the board of the company had heard that it would be financially beneficial to do so and allow for operational improvements. A complete audit of the function of email within the company was done and a cost analysis of the change was developed. Once this was presented to the board we were told that they wanted it to be a service model and cost was not the issue. Sitting down with a couple of key board members I was able to find out that they had no faith in their own IT team and wanted us as a outsource partner to take control. We had not heard that from the IT team as they had no idea the thoughts of the people actually running the business. Within a year, the majority of their IT services were in the cloud and we were managing everything for them. While we employed half of the displaced IT team, it ended up a cost saving through salary reduction, operational costs and space allocation. Sometimes it is not about dollars but about something totally different. In many sales after, I heard different reasons for companies to move to SaaS and in nearly all of them, cost was way done on the actual driver list. quote:B - This is a hurdle that I've run into a few times - unless I'm way off base on this, is it worth just fudging the experience? I'm not talking transitioning from selling home appliances to enterprise software, simply on-prem to SaaS but the same (or similar) underlying product. And if I'm way off base, how do I overcome this hurdle in an honest way? The desire for a company to have On-prem or SaaS is normally driven by the people in charge who see and hear that one is better than the other. Like the relationship of people with car manufactures, one person is going to like one brand and another person is going to like something else. Even in the same brand there is different models offering different things. You as the sales person have to know the entire scope of differences with each platform and be ready to deploy both. If the software you are selling is only SaaS able then know both platforms benefits and weaknesses and be able to talk about both. Of cause you will always be able to find more benefits for SaaS even if it is the obvious and simple selling points that everyone uses for both platforms. I was recently talking to a business who has a middle level business software involved in manufacturing. Their sales team were finding it hard to sell against its competitors and he as the sales manager wanted me to have a look and see if I could spot anything. One thing that stood out to me was that every sales person was "selling to the objections" and not "selling to the objective". They were battling the competition every sale without pushing the benefits of their own platform. Once we turned the narrative around their success rate rose to 45%. This was fantastic for a company that was not even on the market radar three months before. By moving to topic away from what other companies platforms did meant they positioned themselves as the leaders and forced everyone else to play catch up to them. One thing about business to business sales that is key to remember is that the amount of information you can get out of the people you are selling to is directly proportional to the possibility of a success sale. I an not talking about time but real information gathering. Taking a potential customer to lunch for two hours might be useless if you can not get information from them. A five minutes phone call can be more important in the sale if it gains something vital. One last thing. When I hear people talk about "fudging the experience" my first instinct is to yell very loudly at them. Not because they are doing anything obviously bad or wrong. I want to yell at them and say Come Back To The Light! When I start to hear those sort of comment, and even more so when it is backup with "how do I overcome this hurdle in an honest way" I know the sales person can do it but is not mentally ready to do it. A quick reset from the negative or dark path is needed. If you are thinking this sort of logic at any stage of your sales career you will not succeed. You have to have faith that you will win the sale or guess what will happen. This is where sales training is so useful. The best thing about it is there is so much of it for free. All you have to do is listen to your colleagues and you will hear what not to do. This is slightly in jest but ever notice how the sales team is laid out? All the 80%'ers over there and the 20%'ers over here. Let the talk from an 80% infect a 20%'er and there could be problems. Let a 80%'er listen and absorb things from a 20%'er and watch them both grow. I am simplifying things. I have seen this so many times though. The wording we use verbally and in writing is a huge driver for our success in life. Think hurdles and watch problems develop. Think winning a hurdle race and watch them shrink as you sour over them to set a personal best time. Hope this helps.
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Apr 7, 2022 22:38
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It wasn't a question about how to sell SaaS vs. On Prem, or which one is appropriate for a given customer. My question is how do I stop being disqualified from potential jobs because my SaaS experience is limited. I understand the nuances and can speak to the difference between the two - but I've heard multiple times now "Oh, you haven't sold SaaS? Sorry, you aren't qualified." That's a problem I can't figure out.
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Apr 9, 2022 04:18
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Shooting Blanks posted:It wasn't a question about how to sell SaaS vs. On Prem, or which one is appropriate for a given customer. My question is how do I stop being disqualified from potential jobs because my SaaS experience is limited. I understand the nuances and can speak to the difference between the two - but I've heard multiple times now "Oh, you haven't sold SaaS? Sorry, you aren't qualified." That's a problem I can't figure out. I am sorry for the misunderstanding of your initial post. I read it a few times and made a judgement call on the topic rather than asking more questions. I should have come back to you and discovered more on what you wanted. Seeing your question laid out in simple terms now makes sense. One of the reasons I retired was because I could see that I was never going to transition from what I saw as the new format (I was an old on-prem sales guy ) of Virtualised/Hybrid IT platforms to SaaS. I had just spent five years transitioning skills to successfully sell virtualisation and did not want to relearn the required skills of selling SaaS. This might be hard to understand or accept but the structure of selling SaaS is different. It brings with it a wider range of conditions and results that impact the company differently. I saw a complete change in the IT sector when SaaS came in. If we take email as an example, the differences are massive. On-prem email require management of the hardware, software and associated licenses, patching and updating, security, load balancing, backup along with user control. SaaS is just user control. Understanding this makes the sale totally different as the many touch points needed are greatly reduced. The focus of the sales conversation will be around other factors. Think of it this way, a person use to sell a company its operating cars and now they want to try and sell the same company taxi/driver services instead. They are two completely different things even though both are involving motor vehicles. Are the skills needed to sell either one the same? My question for you is are you getting past the application stage to present your experience or are you getting rejection from your CV/Resume?
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Apr 9, 2022 10:07
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Thank you for this thread, there is such a dearth of legit sales chat online. Or at least I haven't been able to find it.
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Apr 9, 2022 13:54
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.dazedandconfused.. posted:I am sorry for the misunderstanding of your initial post. I read it a few times and made a judgement call on the topic rather than asking more questions. I should have come back to you and discovered more on what you wanted. Seeing your question laid out in simple terms now makes sense. I'm failing to get traction from the resume. And the recruiters I've spoken to have largely shut down when I've tried to tell them that I have plenty of experience selling on prem. I disagree in a sense that selling SaaS is that different from selling on prem - it's still delivering value, a needed function. It's that the delivery mechanism is different, and the required skills to manage it are also necessarily different.
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Apr 9, 2022 17:10
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GoodluckJonathan posted:Thank you for this thread, there is such a dearth of legit sales chat online. Or at least I haven't been able to find it. Advise for sales and sales people on the Internet normally has a cost associated with it. It might be clickbate for advertising dollars or to sell a course on being a sales person. I am not aiming to do anything like that so I hope I can give some information and advice that might help anyone that has questions. My aim for this thread is to be as brutally honest and open as possible. This will come off as confrontational at times. In the end, giving anything of value away for free has to be this way. Shooting Blanks posted:I'm failing to get traction from the resume. And the recruiters I've spoken to have largely shut down when I've tried to tell them that I have plenty of experience selling on prem. I disagree in a sense that selling SaaS is that different from selling on prem - it's still delivering value, a needed function. It's that the delivery mechanism is different, and the required skills to manage it are also necessarily different. Why have people told you no? What is their reasoning? Have you asked them for feedback? I understand you disagree. What I want you to understand from me is that I know it is different. If we are looking for a who is right or wrong (as people on the internet are liken to do), do you have a job selling SaaS at the moment? My recommendation is go back to the people rejecting you and ask why they shut you down. Even if it was not recent they still should be able to tell you what they are looking for. If it is just SaaS sales experience then it is up to you to sell yourself better and remove the objection. It is not our role as sales people to argue that our point is right. It is to find out why we got it wrong and change our approach. Do this and I guarantee that your experience of job hunting for a SaaS sales role will change. I did not get the sale/job/kiss from a girl Most sales people I speak to will always try and explain why they did not get the sale. These sales people can always say it was not their fault. Then there is the sales people that will provide answers they received from the customer on why they were not successful. These sales people then work that into their next sale opportunity to improve their success rate. I spend a lot of my time analysing both of these sort of responses to better understand the mentality and maturity of a sales person. As I said in the OP, companies have sales people and seat fillers. I still have my personal sales data dating back twenty years. Any sales opportunity over $10k has detailed information. It amazes me that any sales person would not do the same as it is an invaluable tool to be able to reflect on all actions and interactions done on each sale. Looking over the data I can correlate the responses from the customer against my data and see where I did not match the expectations. Implementing the same for companies I now work with and the typical result is sales people either leave or improve. Takeaways Only the customer can tell you why they did not end up going with what you were providing. They are the most valuable resource a sales person can have. Use them to improve your offering.
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Apr 10, 2022 10:55
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.dazedandconfused.. posted:Advise for sales and sales people on the Internet normally has a cost associated with it. It might be clickbate for advertising dollars or to sell a course on being a sales person. I am not aiming to do anything like that so I hope I can give some information and advice that might help anyone that has questions. My aim for this thread is to be as brutally honest and open as possible. This will come off as confrontational at times. In the end, giving anything of value away for free has to be this way. "I've been told specifically that candidates need SaaS sales experience." Editing just to be clear - this has happened 3 times now. It's not a one off.
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Apr 10, 2022 20:38
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I'm very interested is hearing what this thread brings out. I am a small family business owner of a franchise of a niche- but often necessary service that most clients use exactly 1 time. I perform consultations and make sales in people's homes weekly. I greatly enjoy this part of my job. I feel good at it. The compensation for my job is not where I want it to be. Lately I have been considering selling my business and getting a more "normal" sales job. I have 2 young children and my current business can have me away from home for 50+ hours a week. I also have some weeks where I am only away from home for 18 hours. I would hope to increase my salary and have a more consistent schedule. There's a part of me that is also competitive and I want to see how good at sales I really am. All this is to say that I would love it if the anecdotes or advice in the this thread could help inform my decision. Even if not, I've already put some thought into how many lost bids I can call and ask how I could have gotten the job.
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Apr 11, 2022 19:19
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Gin posted:I'm very interested is hearing what this thread brings out. I am a small family business owner of a franchise of a niche- but often necessary service that most clients use exactly 1 time. I perform consultations and make sales in people's homes weekly. I greatly enjoy this part of my job. I feel good at it. The compensation for my job is not where I want it to be. The business and personal life of a franchisee or small business owner is one and the same. There is no differentiating the two. Until a small business becomes “a business” the sole proprietor is the person responsible of every task required. It makes it hard to see any headway as it is typically heads down and go. The area that does most small business owners neglect is lost sales. Owners seem to think if it is lost then it can be ignored. By doing so an opportunity to learn and expand is thrown away. Additionally, the ability to modify the sales pitch and/or marketing is gone. Franchisees are normally given the proven sales techniques for their service/products. It is always better to follow it as it is offered for a reason. A lot of the time the franchiser does not offer training or processes around what to do with losses. Last year I did some work with a cement garden edging company. They wanted to increase their after sales care programs. We put together a maintenance program for this. When I took a look at rest of their business I noticed that no-one was talking to the home owners that did not purchase their services at the initial contact. Further to this no-one was following up lost sales. By contacting these two groups the company was able to increase their sales revenue by 120%. Just because someone was not ready to purchase when they first inquired does not immediately make them a non-customer. Additionally, the amount of goodwill that was generated far exceeded the time and effort in making the follow up calls. quote:Lately I have been considering selling my business and getting a more "normal" sales job. I have 2 young children and my current business can have me away from home for 50+ hours a week. I also have some weeks where I am only away from home for 18 hours. I would hope to increase my salary and have a more consistent schedule. There's a part of me that is also competitive and I want to see how good at sales I really am. There is no better way to show how good you are in sales than establishing and succeeding in your own business. It is a make it or fail environment. Sometimes sales people do not push themselves as hard as they can because that know they are going to get a salary plus commissions. Do yourself a favor and use your energy to succeed at your business to a point where you can employ and train the next successful sales person who can start selling for you. I can tell you from my own experience that being in a situation where I reject advance payment offers to assist companies that have reached out to me through word of mouth is immensely satisfying. Knowing I am able to say no to sales is success on a totally different level.
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Apr 12, 2022 02:51
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Saas tech sales guy from one of the major application platforms here. I joined this company about a year ago from a smaller data / kind-of saas company. Looking forward to this thread. For the resume thing, I got some of the same feedback even though I was selling software on a subscription basis, but it was hard to get my foot in the door at one of the big players. It's just persistence and luck, and forming your story. For me, my experience was in integrations to major platforms (the software part of my previous role) and I played to the bigger picture of how my sales impacted customer value, company objectives, major initiatives etc, basically showing that I saw and sold to the bigger picture. I will say since I have got my current company name on my resume, the world has seemed to open up. I get so many recruiters now from top tier companies. Just in the last week I have had Okta, Coupa, and Palantir reach out for 350k OTE roles...it's insane coming from where I started out. Now isn't the right time for me to move for a variety of reasons, and I am well liked and on a good trajectory here so I am going to see where the next year of so takes me, but it's a good feeling for sure. Another surprisingly good resource is r/sales - there are some experienced and thoughtful people on there I have found.
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Apr 12, 2022 05:08
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Thanks for the advice in this thread. I'm helping a small business test the waters of B2B sales (from scratch) and will definitely start with former clients to work in their feedback. Plan was to begin with high-research, low-volume contacting, other than reading up on techniques/privacy laws I don't know what to expect: phoning versus e-mailing, how personal the attempts at small-talk should be, how many will even respond, etc.
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Jun 10, 2022 17:08
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tomanton posted:Thanks for the advice in this thread. I'm helping a small business test the waters of B2B sales (from scratch) and will definitely start with former clients to work in their feedback. Plan was to begin with high-research, low-volume contacting, other than reading up on techniques/privacy laws I don't know what to expect: phoning versus e-mailing, how personal the attempts at small-talk should be, how many will even respond, etc. The key to remember with any marketing that "Data Is King". For small businesses the data you need is normally in the one or two peoples heads that started the company. They have all the contacts, the history and the dealings that they have done in the past. The first task is to get it out and into some sort of customer relationship management database. This is your first step. The more time you spend putting this together the better prepared you will be to market the business. Most accounting packages will give you an option to extract the customers details. Get debtors name, contact details of all employees, their spend and any other data that is kept in the accounting package. Compile this in what ever CRM you choice. It could start as simple as a spreadsheet or a free CRM web based offering. If there is a budget to spend use as much as possible on getting the maximum functionality you can. Since they are your customers already, they are also your first point of call to get referrals. How you handle this phone call really depends on the product or service you are selling. At this stage you are just trying to build data of potential new customers. I am old school and love the phone for this sort of data collection. The simplest approach is "You love what we do for you so who else do you know might let me talk to them about supplying them the same thing?". It is always good to give them the idea that they are helping you as deep down in the human brain most people do want to help others. Once you have run out of customers, start on the customers competitors. They get two even simpler questions. "Our customer A buys "this thing from us", who do you buy it from?" "What makes you buy it from them?". These two questions are some of the hardest questions for sales people to ask yet most people will answer you if you are friendly enough on the phone. Spend a dedicated week doing these two types of calls and you will have enough information to increase sales. Just remember to put every bit of new data into your CRM so you can build an understanding of who you are dealing with and how they operate. The last thing I will offer is the how personal you should be. A lot of sales people forget that they are dealing with people and focus on their products or their targets. I tell all small business sales people to concentrate on the person on the other end of the phone. Forget the end result and honestly engage the person they are calling. People will always open up if they feel they are being spoken to with respect. In fact a lot of people have forgotten how to speak to others and actually like it when someone calls them to ask them about their work.
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Jun 13, 2022 10:25
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Hi all, hope this is an acceptable question to ask here. My brother is in sports sales and enjoying it. He wanted to me to ask for him here if there are any books that aren't bullshit that will actually give valuable insight in terms of how to steer conversations, cold calling tactics, etc. Just kind of a bunch of real advice that is actually going to help hone his instincts? Much appreciated all.
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Apr 6, 2023 17:59
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fawning deference posted:Hi all, hope this is an acceptable question to ask here. Legit answer: The Art of War is a great book to read if you are in sales. otherwise, I don’t know about a book, but what he should do is find the top 5-10 sales reps, ask if they can spare 15 minutes , and talk to each of them one on one over the course of a few weeks. If it’s over the phone, that’s what I do although I do almost exclusively inbound versus outbound. Outbound is def way way harder. For an outbound call, you have to have whatever script ready to go and talk confidently and use a powerful statement to both grab their attention and also make sure they know you are legit and know your stuff. Controlling the conversation after that in general is all a combo of: know your poo poo, have confidence , speak clearly, and listen to what the customer says. Overcoming almost every objection is “well, you said A B and C, so the reason we are recommending this is because of what you said.” You always have to be able to answer the “why” to the customer on why they should buy something. That’s it.
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Apr 6, 2023 20:39
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Duckman2008 posted:Legit answer: The Art of War is a great book to read if you are in sales. Interesting suggestion re: the book, I will pass it on. In terms of the networking, he's all over that and getting pretty buddy-buddy with a lot of different people in different organizations who already have their eye on him / have started mentoring him a little because he's so good at networking. fawning deference fucked around with this message at 22:10 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 22:00
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Any thoughts on "Inbound Selling" as being worthwhile (or not)?
fawning deference fucked around with this message at 22:16 on Apr 6, 2023 |
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Apr 6, 2023 22:07
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Sales EQ by Jeb Blount Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff To Sell is Human by Daniel Pink I don't agree with everything in these books but if he reads a few authors, he can pick and choose the strategies that feel right for his personality/approach/industry.
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Apr 6, 2023 22:46
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fawning deference posted:... any books that aren't bullshit that will actually give valuable insight in terms of how to steer conversations, cold calling tactics, etc. One of the best bits of advice I was given was that no one person or book or resource has the answers. Look for something that makes sense to you everywhere. I love reading so I devour books. Some I take nothing away but a read and others a single sentence will allow me to better approach a situation. A public library card is a wonderful thing.
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Apr 6, 2023 23:29
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fawning deference posted:Any thoughts on "Inbound Selling" as being worthwhile (or not)? All sales roles are rewarding if you find the work enjoyable. Let me tell you it is WORK. While not physically taxing I have seen people suffer with bad health due to stress and fatigue. Every so often someone will coin a phrase that will be the new norm. Inbound Selling is customer growth. Rather than looking for the customers, it is taking people who have have contacted you to the successful sale of your product or service. It also applies to the Sales Support role. They typically take on an already engaged customer and build report and look towards growing more business rather than bring them onboard. I recently got told by a USA friend that IB Sales is look at as the person handling web-based enquiries and completing them. Seems everyone has a different definition. She also said the roles does not pay anywhere near as much as a pure sales person.
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Apr 6, 2023 23:44
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Thanks everyone, these are cool and good replies.
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Apr 7, 2023 00:23
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