What makes a good seller

What makes a good seller?

Use the word seller rather than sales person intentionally. Sales person is a specifically hired role within an organization. A seller on the other hand could be a sales person, but it could also be anyone in a customer facing role with an opportunity to discuss new products and services. Anyone in a business can be a seller when the need arises. 

I recently purchased some technology services for my business. It was quite an enlightening experience as I got to go through a ‘sales cycle’ with multiple businesses in the same space. I always enjoy being in the buyer shoes and being able to sit back and let sellers do their thing. In the process of acquiring the tech I needed, I dealt with 3 different sales professionals at three different companies. Each had some fairly clear things they were focusing on and each had some areas where they really impressed me with their approach. 

I went into the situation knowing specifically what I needed the tech to do, and what the deal breakers were for me. I knew what I was willing to pay and what leverage I had to get the best deal (I was in a position to make a quick decision, every seller’s dream!). Skip forward through a few demos and catch up calls and the conclusion of the story is that I ended up going for the most expensive solution in the space I was looking at. Why did I pay more than I needed too? Honestly, I wasn’t sure. Had I (a sales coach no less) been successfully ‘sold too?’. Maybe. For someone in my space this definitely seemed like a learning opportunity so I started to document my own decision making process. Here’s the summary;

The players

Vendor 1 - Well respected and established UK based vendor

Vendor 2 - Less well known, new player in the market, great tech

Vendor 3 - US based market leader / most expensive

Kicking things off right

The three vendors that I ended up speaking to all had ‘book a conversation’ links via their website. I used these links and from there went via a calendar scheduling service in order for me to select a time to talk. A very seamless process. However, Vendor 1 followed up my enquiry by sending me a long list of questions to answer ahead of the session. And I mean a long list! After completing it, the sales rep even emailed me back to say that I had not provided enough information. 

Maximising minutes

I had aimed to line up all these meetings on a single day so the information would be fresh in my mind for a fair comparison. Vendor 1 (who asked all the questions beforehand) clearly thought she knew everything she needed to know about me from our email chain. She proceeded to give me a ‘demo’ of their system telling me all about what works for other customers of theirs. To be fair the product was really good. The pricing was even better. But I found myself increasingly feeling like I was just one in a long line of calls she had that day. I was being treated exactly the same as her last one, and the next one would be no different. She made no reference whatsoever to the information I had provided her with before the meeting. However compelling her proposition was, it was clear I was just a number. 

Vendor 2 asked me a ton of questions on the call and was very interested in my business, which made me feel great. But at no point did they attempt to show me anything or explain how they could help me. This, they explained, was the ‘qualification’ stage, and I’d have to wait for the next meeting for a ‘demo’. So from this point they were always going to be one meeting behind the other vendors in their sales cycle. Essentially, I could have made a decision on one of the other 2 before even booking the next meeting which they felt was so important to separate. 

Vendor 3 asked me no questions via email before we met. He qualified me on our call with a standard list of questions. Though at times these questions felt like a checklist, he made an effort to question my answers and dig a little deeper. In the second half of our session he used what I had told him in order to decide exactly what to show me. It wasn’t an ‘off the shelf’ software demo. It was him presenting his solution as a vehicle for me to achieve everything I had told him I wanted. 

Pre-handling objections

Vendor 3 also did something the others had not done. He knew that his (US based) business had suffered from a previously poor reputation when it came to working with firms in the UK. Their data was ‘not suited to the UK market’ was what I had read in a couple of outdated reviews. But he knew this. And he knew it may cause an issue. But rather than waiting for me to raise it (which I may never have), he brought it up himself. He acknowledged the past issues and explained why I should not be worried about those issues anymore. As he did this he showed me data which proved the work that had been done to fix this issue and sent me more detailed information on it to review after the call. I call this pre-handling objections. Many sales people might have not mentioned this issue and just hoped for the best. Those sales people would have ended up either wondering why they lost a deal, or having to scramble to handle my objection when I finally explained why I was going for something else (when it probably would have been too late). 

As a side note on this; both vendors 1 and 2 did indeed mention that vendor 3 did not play well in the UK. Far from helping their cases, this attempt at competitor bashing, having already been de-bunked, just made them look desperate. 

Nailing next steps

After the first meeting I had narrowed it down to Vendor 1 and Vendor 3. I wanted to make a decision that week and I didn’t want to go through the process of arranging more meetings just to allow vendor 2 to follow their own process. 

Both remaining vendors had asked for a follow up call (15 minutes) to be scheduled for the following days in order for me to review the information they had shared. Vendor 1, already on the backfoot after a poor first meeting, set no agenda for this 2nd interaction. It was positioned as a ‘check in’. Vendor 3 on the other hand made it super clear what this follow up meeting was going to be about. Before we finished our first meeting he had asked me;

‘What was most important to me from a decision-making perspective?’ 

Was it price? Was it features in the platform? Was it the ability to pay in installments etc? I gave him my answer. He then asked a great follow up question which deserves copying in full. He asked; 

‘If I was able to accommodate everything you’ve said you need from a pricing and a tech perspective, is there anything that would stop you from going ahead with us tomorrow?’ 

If I had said ‘no, there’s nothing to stop me proceeding if you can hit all those items’ then he knows exactly what he needs to do in order to get the deal. If I had said ‘yes there is still something that would prevent me from proceeding’ then he is quickly going to question me further to find out what that barrier is. This guy knew his onions. 

Why did Vendor 3 win

Though the answer by now may be obvious I’ll explain why vendor 3 won my business. As I mentioned at the start, vendor 3 was the most expensive vendor. They were also dealing with a bad rep and had the additional challenge of being based overseas. So why did I invest with them? Its pretty simple. Their sales process made me feel like they were a business that had thought of everything. They created a confidence because despite my knowing that I was being ‘sold to’ I knew I was being sold too well. And being sold too in a way that factored in my needs. It wasn’t a hard sell and it wasn’t pushy. It was an effective approach that was customer centric and covered all bases. My feeling was that if this was how the sales operation worked, then the rest of the service this business provides must be on a par. 

Invest in your sales people and invest in having a process. The way we sell our stuff is fundamental to how people view our entire organisations.

True Nature Sales offer sales training and sales process building services for businesses of all kinds.

If you want to learn how to put more process into how you sales hit up murray@truenaturesales.com