IBM
0173 IBM SALES TRAINER
IBM sales trainees were all very capable, intelligent, experienced and well trained. Above all they knew their job, at least in terms of the product and the industries they were selling to.
Second, and most important, they were highly motivated. They worked hard, for long hours. They believed in the products they were selling, and in the company that employed them and, by the end of the training, in themselves. Most of all they believed in the supremacy of `customer service'. They had no reservations about their role. It was quite simply to help the customer, and in the process they made the sale and their own enviable reputation!
With such general characteristics it is not surprising that the mix of my trainees happily included, on the same course, an ex-member of the SAS (who had spent the period immediately prior to IBM in very hot foxhole in the Omani desert patiently waiting to kill invading Yemenis) and a student just off an MBA (Master of Business Administration) course at the London Business School. They were equally successful, in their own individual ways, and happily learnt from each other as much as from me.
Over the years I spent with IBM I saw thousands of (training) calls and presentations. Surprisingly - to outsiders that is - very few of them had the slickness I have since seen in the work of other less successful sales forces. Indeed their lack of gloss would probably have made most sales trainers squirm. Yet they were successful, remarkably so.
How did this happen, and how did their customers still view them as super-salesmen? The simple answer was that the content, if not the superficial style, of each call and presentation was superb. This was what the customer saw and remembered. This content typically addressed just what the customer needed. The IBM sales professionals had taken the trouble find out what the true requirements were, and had taken as much trouble to address those needs - with a demonstrably effective set of solutions. The customer was, justifiably, impressed. He didn't see the less than slick style. What he saw was a clear awareness of his need and the empathy that came from a genuine desire to help him.
Customers tended to rationalise this as superb salesmanship, and it was, but it was a very long way from the conventional image of slick salesmanship! Indeed I was eventually convinced that half the reason for IBM salemen’s success was that they were dramatically over-compensating for their shortcomings in charisma, by working themselves into the ground understanding and meeting the customer's needs!
It has been my perception that the most successful sales professionals are highly intelligent; and this is the main `hereditary' ingredient of their success. They may not necessarily have demonstrated this academically, but measured by less academic standards they usually show up as very bright indeed.
This may conflict with the conventional image, although even this would see salesmen as `sharp' or shrewd. But a sales professional has to possess a considerable degree of intellectual prowess to undertake the detective work that is necessary to uncover prospects' true needs, and then to undertake the problem solving that leads to viable solutions.
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