Are you a shitty salesperson? Sales is about adding value.
What do you think of sales? How do you feel about a salesperson? If your thoughts are not exactly positive, you’re not alone. , the author of To Sell is Human (I recommend you to read it!), asked his readers “when you think of sales or selling, what is the first word that comes to mind?” He took the top 25 most frequently mentioned words and put them in a word cloud. Words like “pushy,” “yuck,” “ugh,” and “sleazy” were viral. Craig Wortmann , a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Kellogg School of Management, asks his sales course students to think of the first words that come to mind, when he says this word, salesperson. “These are the words people say. Aggressive, pushy, persistent, slick, relentless, hustles, sleazy, helpful, and manipulative.” In fact, according to a new survey from HubSpot Research , only a mere 3% of people consider salespeople to be trustworthy.
Why do I care?
Well, as a founder and entrepreneur, a big part of my job is selling. Selling our product, our team, our vision, etc. But coming from a technical background, sales was not and is not natural to me, yet! Having a negative mindset about salespeople, I used to ask myself, am I doing something terrible here by selling? I was self-conscious about it…
After starting my second company, I started to take sales courses with a mindset that, to survive, we need to sell, so let’s just learn how to do it and get over it. I started course by Craig, and it changed my life ! Surprisingly, I discovered I was looking at it the wrong way. As Craig or my sales coaches put it, sales is about helping someone find the solution to a real and vital problem they have. It’s being an advisor. Sales is being a doctor and curing people’s pains.
Why you should care?
Well, regardless of how you feel about it, we are either selling or being sold to all the time. That is a fundamental consequence of being a social animal. Remember that occasion that you started talking to that cute girl? You were selling. Job interview? You are selling. Asking your friend for coffee? You are selling. Presenting your results to your team? You are selling. Sometimes, we have done it so often that we don’t recognize it anymore; but we are always selling and buying.
Can you be a great salesperson?
OK, being able to sell is essential. The question is if you can be good at it? I think you can as long as you care about who you are selling to. lists 10 psychological traits of what makes a great salesperson. Let’s look at the top 5:
1. Ability to Build Empathy
The more mature I get, the more I find how invaluable it is to be empathic. Being a salesperson who knows how to connect, build relationships, listen, and build rapport is hugely crucial.
2. Ability to Listen and be Naturally Inquisitive
It goes hand in hand with empathy indeed. You cannot know how you can add value to someone without listening to them genuinely and of interest. Put your agenda aside and listen!
3. Ability to Put Yourself in Someone’s Shoes
Putting yourself in someone’s shoes is the foundation of empathy, which enables you to form rapport with anyone.
4. Intelligence and Ability to Infer
Opinions and needs are not always stated explicitly. You need to dig deep and dig intelligently. Good salespeople can make inferences and logical deductions, reading between the lines to understand the true meanings and desires of their prospects and be able to elicit pain points strategically.
5. High Emotional Intelligence
Emotional intelligence is what defines an exceptional salesperson vs. a mediocre one. Being able to understand, predict, and act based on what your knowledge of the other side’s feelings is pivotal for success.
Where to start?
OK, you decided that you want to be an exceptional salesperson. Where do you start? There are all of those fancy sales training programs like , Challenger Sales and etc. I’m going to take some of these in the following months and will keep you posted about my opinion about them. Before that, I think we need to work on the top 5 skills and traits listed above. Some of us are more natural in some than the other. However, we can definitely improve by practicing. I used to be not very good at listening. After becoming aware of it, I challenged myself to develop in that area, and today I can say that I am great at it! So here are some resources to become better in each:
1. How to Build Empathy?
2. How to Listen and be Naturally Inquisitive?
Read this.
3. How to Put Yourself in Someone’s Shoes?
4. How to Ask intelligence questions to Infer?
Read this.
5. How to Have High Emotional Intelligence?
Read this.
What next?
I’m going to continue writing on this subject, so stay tuned! Also, please let me know if you found this helpful; it makes me happy to see that I am helping you. My email is info@hamidomid.com.
