IBM
0114 IBM Sales – Detective Work
Understanding, for a sales professional, comes about essentially as a result of being able to link together the jigsaw pieces of detailed knowledge into an overall picture that is meaningful; and is recognisably the same perspective as that of the customer. This process has more to do with acquiring a language than learning a science. Indeed the most important aspect of it is often the vocabulary.
Each trade has its own language which is subtly different from other trades. Occasionally the differences can be quite marked. Thus, in my career I learnt at least four separate languages (as well as several dozen `dialects'), all of which were significantly different from each other and from normal English, with several thousand words unique (or at least unique in the sense that they were used) to each of their vocabularies. In chronological order they were: physics, marketing (including the sub-language of advertising), computing (including the major sub-language of IBMese) and medicine. We took great pains to teach new entrants to IBM the special language of computing; and then took even greater pains to force them to unlearn it - so that they would use plain and understandable English with their customers!
As soon as the sales process starts many of the challenges and emotions of the hunt are there for the aficionado to savour; the adrenalin starts to pump even as you enter the first meeting with the prospect.
Once through the door I have found that many of my calls have turned into feats of detection that would have done Sherlock Holmes proud. Like many sales professionals I am not really a natural listener, no matter how important I recognise this is - for such listening is at the heart of the sales professional's job. So I have compensated for this shortcoming by treating the whole process as a piece of detective work. Finding out what the prospect's real needs are and following the clues through to their logical conclusion can be as satisfying as solving a good Agatha Christie whodunit.
I personally got much of my own satisfaction from getting to know my customers' businesses in depth, and from solving their complex problems. As a result, this was the slant that I gave my work. Perhaps fortunately, this was also the area where most of the business came from, and it was a `technique' that was very effective. I don't know how I would have coped if this hadn't been required but, then, that was why I chose the job in the first place.
Perhaps the greatest satisfaction of all comes from knowing that you have done a good job. Almost everyone wants to do a good job (even if many don't succeed). What aspects of the job you consider most worth doing well is, of course, a purely individual choice. I once worked for a manager who had, for various odd reasons, apparently been friendly with the heads of the Genovese family when they were the most feared godfathers in the Cosa Nostra. His experience was, surprisingly, that they had just about the highest developed moral sense of any group he knew. The problem, for the rest of society, was simply that the Cosa Nostra's morality was some distance removed from that adopted by the remainder of us. But even the Cosa Nostra wanted to do a good job - and the Genovese family clearly displayed their satisfaction, reportedly over a quiet Saturday tea, as they discussed whose body they had dropped in Long Island Sound that week!
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