In my first sales job, my boss also had a quota – he was a selling manager. Everyone marveled at him because of his closing skills. Rightfully so, the guy was unreal. He could bond with just about anyone and ask the hard questions like he was asking for directions to the bathroom. Back then, it was all about closing and there wasn’t a better compliment a sales professional could receive than being a “closer”.
Not today. Asking the tough questions and moving a sale to the point of closure is still very important, but there is a much better compliment that can be paid to a sales professional today…
The best compliment a sale person can receive today is “expert”. If you are not perceived as the subject matter expert, your closing skills will be almost useless. It’ll be like Michael Jordan trying to shoot a 20 lb. basketball. I don’t care how great he is, he’s not going to make many shots. If your competition comes up in conversation and you hear them described as “analytics wiz” or “IP video guru”, you might be in trouble. Ten years ago you could’ve shook this off and felt relieved you were competing against a geek. Not today. If you’re not the expert today, you have a tough hill to climb.
There are many reasons to explain this shift, but for the sake of brevity I’ll summarize it with this one statement: your customers don’t need you like they used to. My old boss could succeed by pressuring a customer with urgency because they didn’t have many choices – we were their source of information. That doesn’t work today. Your customers have a million other sources of information at their fingertips and can buy from whoever they want… however they want. At the same time, they’re desperate for an expert to help them sift through their information overload and tell them exactly what they need to do. They’re dying for a sales professional that knows what they’re doing and can teach them. If you become that expert, you’ll never have to master the top 20 closing techniques or watch Glengarry Glen Ross.
So, the day you hear that you’re the “Yoda of biometrics”, celebrate – you have received the best compliment a sales professional can receive.
