[windexh8er]

> Contrary to myth, successful sales is about listening, not talking.

I've been in pre-sales for about 8 years now. From the vendor and reseller side. Mostly on the technical side (SE) but I also know the process side of the account executive (AE) very well at this point.

Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer. If a customer is always telling me what they need from me then I'm not providing any value. And, honestly, it's very rare to find a customer who's ahead of a good sales team. We have full access to PMs, internal business units and access to far more insight to our bits and pieces than any reseller or customer. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying customers can't be experts. But I'm here to know and bring things to the plate that they just can't.

Understanding your customer is often times more valuable than listening to them outright. I've found paths for the customer that has helped them avoid making mistakes, saved them money or improved their operations through paths they hadn't considered or didn't know existed. Good sales teams work hard across the board through strong technical positioning as well as strategic deal creations.

There are sales teams that rinse and repeat for every interaction and then there are sales teams that are looking to help their customers, trying to find where the wins are for the prospect. I've walked away from deals by telling a customer we weren't a fit for them. Sales gets a bad rap, but there are some of us out there that walk into every conversation not with the only intent of closing quota, but trying to make a positive impact.

[sitkack]

> Understanding your customer is often times more valuable than listening to them outright.

Listen is a big word, one has to take all meanings into account.

[chiefalchemist]

> Yes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer. IYes, you need to listen. But you'll never sell anything if you can't articulate a destination, lay out the path and showcase to the customer how what you're representing will benefit them more-so than the products you're trying to displace or something new that will bring with it a myriad of gains for said customer.

But you don't know where the customer is trying to go...you don't know their pain...you don't know their priorities...

Without listening.

[windexh8er]

I realize this. Which is exactly why I said that "Yes, you need to listen". The parent comment responded to implied that was the only way.

If you don't listen you can't do what I stated above. And if you can't do what I stated above then you're not going to be able to help the customer and, ultimately, not be all that successful in sales.

Case in point... I had a customer years ago about to spend roughly a million dollars on a remote site upgrade architecture we had been jointly working on for about 6 months. In the background I was tracking a new product that would make their initiative cheaper and had both better ROI and performance specs due to refreshed hardware.

I made sure to present this, get all the information in front of the customer, engage in discussions using our PM and derive a strategic deal that would save them money over the three year term for buying a new product early.

They didn't do it. My counterpart appreciated the option even though it would have slipped their project by 2 months. Him and I are still friends even though I've moved on since then, but the moral of the story is he still brings that up because, in hindsight, he said he should have trusted our proposal. They spent more, got less and had to upgrade earlier due to unforeseen circumstances. Part of it was bad luck, the other part was a cognizant decision he made against the sales team better judgement.

I listened. I knew the customer very well, in fact. But I had knowledge and experience with the products that outstripped his for navigating this situation. That's how a good sales team operates.

[chiefalchemist]

I wasn't disagreeing. Simply trying to summarize.