Sales Misconception
Sales is often misunderstood as a field that is all about talking. An art form that is intuitive, innate natural power that someone has and is born to be. A sales person is someone who is talkative, high energy, good at talking “selling”. The more the talking the better the outcome. Sales is skills that you either have it or you don’t.
These are flawed and dangerous assumptions, as it prevents us from intellectualizing the process. In fact, sales is one of the most data-driven, scientific, and measurable field, contradictory to an intuitive blackhole “the sales thing” where people assume “you just do it” attitude.
Many founders, and companies have paid the price of just hiring a sales person and hope that that person can magically create the expected revenue. Without any kind of on-boarding, training coaching, forecasting, process, systems in place, like any function in the organization, failure is in sight.
Sale is not about selling, it’s about listening, and asking powerful questions.
Time is the most important value and resource that someone has, and is something of scarcity. The best sellers are ones who know how to use their time well. Although, the goal of a sales person is to close a deal, it’s equally important of whom to close the deal with and how to spend time. Therefore, truly listening to the customer’s pain is important because the “pain” has to be high enough in order to create a need for a product or service that the seller has to offer.
Spending the time on a wrong lead will be costly. In order to evaluate a lead “a potential buyer”, a simple framework that is commonly used among sales professional is called BANT.
BANT, Sales qualification framework
BANT stands or B: Budget, A: Authority, N: Need, and T: timing. For the sales person, this process becomes a guiding principle to formulate questions and gain an understanding of what the customers truly want, and to see if the customer is the best fit.
In sequence, it’s normal to start understanding the N: needs, then, start to uncover other areas A: authority, who is the decision maker?, then the budget, what kind of B: budget does the company have, and lastly the T: timing: how urgent it is to have the products/services?
When asking questions, we are trying to go into the conversation with curiosity, and a mindset to truly understand, truly discover the customers pain. The more the talking the less the information you will be able to gather. Therefore, selling is about asking powerful questions and is about actively listening.
A research tracking sales calls, recording each conversation, has shown that successful sales professional are those who spend more time listening and asking questions (as shown in the graphic below). There are many tools out there to make this process transparent.
Source: https://www.gong.io/blog/deal-closing-discovery-call/
Upfront contract
An upfront contract, helps set the expectation and the tone of the conversation, and helps the seller take the lead in the interaction. Typically this would take place in the beginning of the sales conversation.
The upfront contract includes, acknowledging the buyers time and showing appreciation, layout an agenda, establish and outcome. Like any interactions, it’s important to have a roadmap and an agreeable outcome. With the limited time, both parties need to be most efficient and respectful with time. The upfront contract not only gives you the opportunity to engage with the customers but also gives you the opportunity to walk away if the criteria (such as BANT) are not met.
For founders, all of the sales tactic can be taught and coached. Like any other skills, sales is no difference, the more you practice the better you become good at it. In fact, a research from HubSpot has showed that the traits that are highly sought out for a sales professional is coachability since it has a strong correlation to good performance.
This blog is captured from the content taught by Professor Mark Roberge and Professor Lou Shipley in Tech Sales course at the Harvard Business School.
