7 ms·
I think this article misses the biggest reason Sales exists as a profession: because customers need help understanding what they're buying! It costs money to h
by shakil 10y ago
I think this article misses the biggest reason Sales exists as a profession: because customers need help understanding what they're buying!
It costs money to hire Sales people, and if a company were able to sell its products entirely as a self-service option, that would help them improve margins. So people in the Sales profession have to justify their existence every single day - what have you done for me lately etc.
The only way to succeed in the profession is to show results, to help customers understand and extract the value of what they're buying so they can come back to buy more and tell their friends.
You might see Sales people succeed in the short-term by lying or cheating their customers but that doesn't last. Your reputation catches up to you. Depending on the industry, every one knows everyone else, and the only way to truly succeed in the long term is to make sure you create a win-win for both the customer and your employer, every time, on every sale.
- danieltillett 10y agoExactly. Even more than this customers often don’t even know they have a problem that can be solved. You are not going to look for a solution unless you think you have a problem and then think to look for solutions. We have no trouble selling to people who know they have a problem (we are first in Google if they search for a solution), our problem is all the people that aren’t even looking. Our sales people have to literally physically cold call people to educate them that they have a problem as nothing else works.
- wott 10y agoI cannot decide whether you post is ironical or not.
- averagewall 10y agoIt makes sense taken seriously. Almost nobody is doing things optimally. There's always room to make more money or save more money or whatever. Figuring those things out is kind of what doing business is. Not trivial at all.
- danieltillett 10y agoIt certainly isn’t trivial. We have tried every other way to let people know about what we offer from advertising, website, phone calls, email, forums, conferences, and even snail mail. Nothing works other than physical cold calling. Unless you are talking directly to them in person they just don’t stop for even 2 seconds to consider they have a problem with a solution. The good news is the LTV is high enough to support this form of selling, but it certainly is a huge pain.
- danieltillett 10y agoI wish it was ironical. I am not meaning that our users are unaware that they have a problem in general, but they are unaware their problem has any solution. People only look for solutions to problems they think have solutions. Otherwise it becomes like bad weather and just accepted.
- flukus 10y ago> I think this article misses the biggest reason Sales exists as a profession: because customers need help understanding what they're buying! This is another common and overlapping problem, companies that can't explain what they're selling. No one should need to talk to a salesman to understand what they're buying, if they do then the marketing has failed. I wonder if this is caused be sales teams being in charge of the website and not wanting to make themselves obsolete. It seems to be infecting OSS too, just last night I was considering installing fedora but the website manages to tell me absolutely nothing (https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/ https://getfedora.org/en/workstation/).
- IanCal 10y ago> No one should need to talk to a salesman to understand what they're buying, if they do then the marketing has failed. I think it's a bit simplistic to suggest that an entirely one-way communication can solve all problems well.
- flukus 10y agoWhere did I suggest that? No one is saying you can't have information and salesmen.
- convolvatron 10y agoinformation doesn't upsell itself
- robzyb 10y ago> This is another common and overlapping problem, companies that can't explain what they're selling. There is logic behind hiring some people to build the product, and different people to explain the product.
- flukus 10y agoYes, but just like the quality of the builders differs so does the quality of the explainers.