Recruiting Salespeople That Put Revenue ON FIRE (And Not Leave You In The COLD)

Many have a few stereotypes of what a good salesperson is. Clichés include:

• Some supermen that pry open doors that are welded shut.
• Dark wizards that somehow get to Yes in front of intractable opposition.
• Even magicians who can sell?anything to anyone.

My experience in the Software sales industry has shown me that these stereotypes are plain wrong. They may reflect what some salespeople think of themselves, but the truly good ones are not wizards and magicians.

They are professionals who have carefully optimized four different equilibriums.

And since this idea came to me on a long snowmobile trip, I inserted a few videos shot from outside to spice up my written explanations.

An Excellent Salesperson Is Tenacious But Wise

One of my many sales mentors and friends, Fred Heurtebize , once told me that Sales is not complicated, but it is hard.

Indeed, the path to an enterprise sale is often akin to a gauntlet, a long obstacle course with plenty of traps that may derail the process at any time and leave you empty-handed.

Consider: sales and presales people must convince gatekeepers that your solutions will help them resolve problems, negotiate an acceptable proof-of-concept, ensure the prospect can secure budgets, often broker agreements between their Legal department and their clients, and do all of this while keeping an eye on what competitors are doing.

It is hard. And only the most tenacious will stay the course.

So, when looking for fresh blood in our Sales (or Presales) teams, I need to see evidence of competitiveness. Because if you do not enjoy the chase, you are unlikely to be successful. And to make quota, we must succeed.

This being said, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. There is a moment when tenacity becomes obstinacy, and this is when determination starts working in reverse.

Say you have invested countless hours in an account with a large revenue potential. It has been languishing in your pipeline for months. You have been keeping in regular touch with the client, and you?want to believe?it will eventually work despite some pretty strong evidence that this ship has sailed.

There comes a time when salespeople need to recognize defeat and move on. Investing more and more time in things that are just not going to happen is a sure way to miss sales objectives in the end.

But when should we give up, and when should we keep on pouncing? Excellent salespeople demonstrate this wisdom. They know how to step out of a situation, analyze it, and come up with a dispassionate conclusion, either way.

They also understand they are making a bet on each account, so they build their pipelines accordingly. They may bet on a few less likely (but large) opportunities, but they hedge these bets with more secure business.

Through stamina?and?wisdom, these salespeople are likely to meet quota at the end of the year.

An Excellent Salesperson Leads, While Being A Team Player

Throughout the years, I found that the best salespeople are "intrapreneurs."

They see themselves as the?ma?tres d'oeuvre?on each business opportunity. They chart a course based on their circumstances, start mobilizing internal resources to achieve their goals and solve problems that prevent their sales one by one.

They also have an expansive vision of their responsibilities on a particular account. "Not my job" is not in their vocabulary. They genuinely want the?client to succeed?after closing the deal, so they monitor what happens during and after delivery.

In other words, they take charge.

In my experience, this is absolutely essential. As mentioned above, selling is hard. There can be a lot of roadblocks on the way to a deal -?and?to ensure client satisfaction.

A salesperson who refuses to assume responsibility and deflects it to other parties is a major red flag. Someone ought to be the voice of customers, and salespeople have a vested interest in seeing deals done.

So, stepping up to the plate and taking charge is part of the territory. The question is how to do this most efficiently.

Some ill-advised salespeople consider this responsibility an excuse to boss internal (and sometimes external) stakeholders around. "I am paying their salaries, so they must do as I say."

And they see their quest as an individual sport. It is?their?account,?their?sole responsibility, and?their?purely individual success.

That is where things become ugly pretty quickly.

In my career, I saw pretty egregious cases of salespeople who left a lot of damage and rancor in their wake by allowing themselves to be toxic in the name of the mission. Albeit some had initial successes, their behavior quickly cornered them into a no-win zone.

You see, complex enterprise sales such as Software Sales are more often than not a team sport. To win, the Sales (or Field) Engineer must play his or her role by providing the best solution possible. Legal must be responsive and sometimes imaginative. At times, R&D may need to change their roadmap.

This is the simplest case where the account is in one location. Often, large opportunities involve several territories, multiplying the potential stakeholders.

All of these people are human. They may also be "intrapreneurs" on their own, taking complete charge of their part to ensure an account's success. And when this happens, it is pure magic - it makes it much more likely that a deal will be reached.

That is also much less likely to happen when a salesperson antagonizes everyone around him or her.

The best salespeople know this. They don't only take charge - they ensure other?relevant?stakeholders have the space necessary to do it as well. They understand that there is strength in numbers, with different people providing their expertise on a mission.

They are also never shy to shine a light on the help they are receiving, enticing their team to go above and beyond the call of duty. They see their success as a collective, not individual, affair.

An Excellent Salesperson Is A Diplomat That Can Say No

Obviously, internal stakeholders are not the only ones with whom a salesperson must maintain good relationships. Client relationships are at the very heart of their trade.

It seems like evidence, and yet I saw plenty of cases where salespeople with an over-inflated ego managed to antagonize clients.

For example, that competitor who explained in an authoritative tone to a Director of Software Development that her approach to standards was wrong and that she "needed" to do what he told her to do... which helped flip the account to us (thank you).

Often, these salespeople end up being offensive in more subtle ways. For example, this salesperson who wanted to sell me something ran me through several spreadsheets as fast as possible, while telling me that I was "intelligent, so I knew all of this." The attempt at manipulation was so blatant it was almost comical (it also ensured he lost my business).

And what about this client who confided to my employee that he felt that a competitor was thinking about his next purchase of a sports car each time he negotiated with him?

Excellent salespeople are anything but selfish, manipulative, or downright rude. They are true diplomats. Of course, they each have their own style, but they all share a constant preoccupation with building a healthy, win-win relationship with each client.

They know that their job is to build confidence and trust, which is extremely difficult when someone does not like them.

But some salespeople push that diplomacy a bit too far. They see their job as being the "schmoozer in chief." Their goal is to become their clients' best friend, and they hope this will be enough to ensure that they will have plenty of deals flowing in their pipelines.

Sorry - that's not how it works. Clients will part with their money when solutions help them solve a problem or propel their activities to new heights. Buyers who purchase purely based on how much they like a salesperson will quickly see their purchase authority rescinded - or worse.

Besides, the salespeople are responsible for ensuring that a deal is?fair to their employer. That means that, at times, a client needs to be told no.

Clients don't always ask for the impossible out of a willingness to skew the deal squarely in their direction. Some do, but most are pursuing a win-win scenario. They may not understand just how costly some of their demands may be.

Excellent salespeople know how to push back. They do so diplomatically but firmly. And they do so even when it is uncomfortable to do so.

An Excellent Salesperson Wants To Learn, But Knows Own Limits

Would you purchase a car from a salesperson who visibly doesn't know much about his vehicle besides they each have a driving wheel and four tires? I wouldn't. I expect a car salesperson would be able to answer basic questions ranging from the mechanics to the warranty to any subscriptions that may need to be paid in the future.

But then, I wouldn't necessarily expect car salespeople to get their toolbox out, walk to the car, open the hood, and start disassembling it to explain how everything works.

Software Sales is similar. Remember: clients are looking for solutions to problems or to improve things that have yet to become problems. Now, how can you convince anyone to pay attention to you if you cannot explain to a certain degree what your solution does and how it can be used to improve things?

The answer is that you can't.

Yet, in my many years in the industry, I have heard all types of "gems" around this. A salesperson should not "know too much" about their own products. He or she should utter that the solutions would "save the client time and money while improving quality."

Yeah - just like every single other solution out there.

I saw many salespeople who wouldn't dare to explain how. And jaded audiences that lost interest. Some even got publicly challenged. However, most of the time, the audience just tunes out.?

Nothing to see here, moving on.

Now, when I am recruiting a salesperson, I do not expect the candidate to immediately be able to sell the product or service. There will be a ramp-up, no matter what. But I expect the candidate would have conducted some research on our claims regarding our solutions and a capacity to understand just?how?this all works.

Of course, I hold my sales or field engineers to a much higher standard regarding their technical knowledge. Still, in my experience, a salesperson who cannot understand the basics is of limited use, as clients will feel they cannot discuss solutions at any level with that person. That candidate would be an order taker, while other team members would do the actual selling.

That being said, there is a risk for a salesperson to go too far, not by?knowing too much?but by?assuming they have knowledge they do not.

Let's face it. Enterprise software solutions are often very complex, with lots of moving parts, and lots of possible use cases. It is often downright impossible to know everything.

Yes, even for presales engineers. This is why some of them will naturally develop particular expertise in some aspects of the solution rather than others.

So, here, both sales and presales experts try to apply Socrates's way to wisdom: they try to know what they do not know and know how to properly handle situations in which they do not know.

There is no shame in saying, "I am not sure about this, but let me find out for you," or scheduling another call where an expert would be called in for a consult. It is all part of the team sport that is Enterprise Sales.

Both salespeople and sales engineers also understand that there is a time and place for transmitting knowledge. Having a technical deep-dive session the first time you meet a prospect (say, during a trade show) may confuse your audience and actually?reduce your?chances of success. The level of information that is helpful will depend on your audience.

The best professionals know this and will parameterize the flow of information based on who they are speaking with and the live reaction they get during the conversation.

But for a sales candidate to declare that he or she does not want to learn more about his or her own solutions or what their clients are doing, that it is not necessary (or even counterproductive), and that he or she would "focus on economic decision-makers"? That is a major red flag that shows the candidate does not understand how things work in my industry.