Business Insight Zone

The Carpet Salesman by Tanel Teemusk

Maybe your job isn’t selling. Formally.

But you are a seller. If you’re in business, you might need to talk up the benefits of your product at any time. Maybe you sit next to a guy on your flight back from St. Louis; he’s friendly, you chat, . . . and it turns out he’s the perfect prospect for your company. Not just a good prospect, but the prospect who could make your year. You’d better believe you’re a seller.

You don’t need to oversell. You don’t need to get down into the spec sheets and the pricing grids and the purchase orders, right there in Row F of Flight 468. But you’d better be ready to listen to his needs and explain how your offering might suit them.

We’re not talking about a 30-second elevator pitch (though if you can’t give one for your product, that’s the place to start your process of education). You’re doing the informal version of a full-bore consultative sale. He’ll forgive you for not knowing the answer to every question; he understands you’re in IT or operations or finance, not sales.

Why does this come up? Because this week I realized I don’t know nearly enough about Access Hoover’s. (That’s the product that lets you use Hoover’s inside, say, Microsoft Dynamics CRM.) Do I know some? Sure. But not enough, for example, to do justice to the hard work our developers have done on this major upgrade. Not enough to have a fruitful conversation with Mr. Right in Row F. So I’m taking myself to school.

Is it time for you to go to hand-selling school? In this economy, how could it not be?

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Category: Marketing & Sales