352 The Arrogance Of The Sales Amateur

<p>Recently, I was asked to do a hands-on session regarding post-Covid sales for a group of CEOs.  What was interesting to me was the different idiosyncratic approaches many of them had come up with to make sales.  It was immediately clear that none of them had ever had any sales training.  This meant that they had been relying on trial and error and hope to make sales.  Given the amount of information out there for free and the easy access to high-quality sales training, this choice set is a bit puzzling.  What was also profound was how they were all so deeply invested in what they have been doing, even though it hasn’t really been having any significant success.  I realised that there was an arrogance here about sales, as if it wasn’t an actual professional activity.  The sense was that anyone could do it and do it anyway they wanted.<br />  One of the leaders mentioned that his technique was to be helpful to the buyer and build up a sense of obligation, so that the buyer would purchase from him.  He said he did this in the small talk at the beginning of the meeting, trying to make useful suggestions to the buyer, like which are the great restaurants in Tokyo.  I had to restrain myself from bursting out laughing at this suggestion that today’s hard-nosed buyers would be swayed by something that trivial.  The problem with this approach is we need to be helpful to the company when they use our solution and that is what will make the buy decision much easier.  That buyer sitting in front of us has to sell the idea internally and telling others that he or she had received some genius restaurant recommendations won’t cut much ice with the other decision-makers.<br />  Another CEO mentioned that getting referrals was the way to get business.  His firm had a method where they would scout out people who knew the buyer and then get that person to recommend them to get a meeting. I asked what happens when you cannot get a referral and he just said in that case they don’t contact the buyer.  “Wow, what a self-limiting app