I Learned to Sell Better & Faster from Great Salespeople — You Can, Too.
Hands-on experience is underrated
I was the Pathfinder in military service.
Then, my full-time job was to find the way. With the entire battalion behind me, I must,
- Bring outdated maps to life,
- Lead them to the attack point,
- Chaperon them to the retreat harbor.
When we do a great job — the assault team takes their mind off the rough terrain and focuses on what they must do later.
When we do a terrible job — the battalion loses energy by wandering in circles.
Bad idea.
This line of thinking applies to sales too.
Do you have a Pathfinder trekking in front of you in business attire showing you the way?
My Mentors in Consulting Sales
They are the snipers and assassins in the professional sales world.
These folks know (exactly) what to do. Give them sales and client targets. Step aside.
And then, watch.
Watch how they turn dust into gold.
You will notice the following.
- They know what clients want without asking.
- They can figure out sales pitch landmines before we step into one.
- They can close the deal without pesky follow-ups.
I know it sounds fictitious. But no. These are real people who mentored me.
These folks routinely trash their quarterly sales targets and then some.
Thus, when they speak, I listen.
These are the killer sales skills I replicated from 3 sales grandmasters over the years. I present them here for you to steal.
Speak Their Language
Easy to say, unbelievably tricky to master.
I work in consulting sales. And the nature of the job requires us to work with clients from various industries, companies, domains, and specializations.
KB, one of my mentors, used to say this.
“Speak money to the finance team, eyeballs to marketing, and go-home time to operations.”
It takes years and years of experience to switch from a service-oriented brain to a dollar-indexed one within seconds. And do so you must because the client CFO is coming your way.
This is how I mastered different business languages.
- I rotate projects and go for maximum client exposure.
- I emulate how different mentors carry themselves in front of their clients.
- I make small talk, catch how clients express themselves, and then attempt to parrot back.
This is the same as learning Japanese via cultural immersion in Kyoto.
Sure, your learning is steep.
But you get there fast.
Don’t Just Follow-Up. Instead, Follow Through.
Let me tell you what clients hate most.
Ready?
(Drum roll)
It is to deal with multiple points of contact for different things.
And you know how this works. You know it because you are a customer, too.
How does it feel…
- When you are referred to Kenneth for commercial proposal updates?
- When you are directed to John for the project schedule?
- When you must call Sarah to escalate software issues?
It’s a nightmare.
Trust me. We in consulting sales know this too.
Joanne, my Managing Director then, never endorsed this pass-the-buck practice. We get an earful from her if she finds out.
We were expected to stick with the customer as their status got updated from suspect to lead to prospect to account to diamond.
Joanne called this the One-Face client policy.
It is a wildly successful strategy.
Joanne was the only Managing Director (then) with 14, 15, and 16-year-long clients. No one else came close.
Do you believe in personal branding? If you do, then this is it.
Best part?
Her clients always knew who to call. There is zero ambiguity. Joanne always knew who they were and what they were working on.
This is client intimacy at its best.
Be There
You must be there for your clients.
This statement is not what you think. Our physical presence is the prerequisite for in-depth customer intelligence. It is that edge against our competitors.
And yes, Zoom meetings and parties do not count.
Here’s why.
- Understanding how your clients interact with their workplace tells you how they work.
- Cross-domain collaboration is unobservable to the distant eye.
- What they say might not be what they do.
Johnson, a senior manager, knows this. That is why working with him involved a running tapestry of back-breaking local and regional travel.
We would go on…
- Bus trips,
- Plant visits,
- Site observations.
… to further enhance our understanding of the client. To Johnson, seeing is believing.
And he is right.
Because these observations kept us up to date.
And we pitch with confidence during client management meetings.
- “I am presenting this software add-up because I know you have these issues.”
- “This is the customized syllabus of the workshop and how it supports teams A, B, and C.”
You are not only talking.
You are talking about specific issues to an identified audience with context.
That’s how you close a deal.
In Parting
Getting people to put money into our pockets is the toughest thing in life.
And there is no algorithmic way of generating sales.
We pitch, bang our heads against the wall, collapse, get back up, and find another way.
Cutting our teeth in the School of Hard Knocks without a mentor can be arduous, meandering, and circular. Don’t.
Seek sales pathfinders. And then,
- Stick behind their butts like blue cheese,
- Understand why they operate the way they do,
- Replicate their techniques,
- Inject your style.
This approach accelerates our journey as sales professionals. We earn more, faster.
And that is what we seek.
As a content contributor, I write my daily life observations and business exposure. Our life experience is the bedrock of our unique perspectives.