Giving a name to my sales anxiety
dimitarsimeonov.com
dimitarsimeonov.com
If you sell technology, then the last thing you want is to convince people to buy something they don't actually need. You shouldn't really want to convince people of anything at all - you should want to learn what they need and, if they're sufficiently interested in what you have to answer that need, answer their questions about it.
I run a service (https://talkjs.com) that makes it easy for developers to build a chat feature into their apps/sites. We do a lot of sales. Nearly all sales we do is "warm" - people find us, show interest (eg by signing up for a free trial) and then the process starts. I found that this sales is a lot of fun!, because:
* I get to talk about code with other engineers
* They have a problem our product very well may solve
* There's no convincing. Just clarifying, exploring
Think about selling a federated IM solution to regular users and to privacy geeks: two completely different crowds talking in different ways about different problems, even though the product might well suit both camps. If you get nerdy with regular users (“it’s federated pubsub with e2e crypto!”), they will ignore you; if you get product-y with geeks (ala Apple - “you can send emojis to each other! Best ever emoji system!”) they will ignore you. Switching between these two modes is effectively a “slimy salesman” technique, and it’s unavoidable.
Pebble was made by a guy who wanted a Pebble. Twitter was made by a guy who wanted everybody to know when he ate a sandwich. Dropbox was made by a guy who wanted to be able to share files with his sister without a hassle.
This is also why I believe that the fediverse will never take off unless the general population starts taking privacy seriously (which someday they might, who knows!)
In fact, we didn't start doing TalkJS. We started out with a totally different kind of chat app, pivoted 4 times (!), and, suprise, only when we started shipping a product that we were in the target market for, things took off.
With some exceptions. Enterprise sales reps are sometimes hired in from industries where they've been a buyer or user of the type of product that they're selling--which helps them speak the right language and understand the pain points.
But I can guarantee that many enterprise sales reps, including good ones, have never gotten hands on in even the most cursory way with the products they sell.
I recently read the book "Never Split the Difference" by Chris Voss[1], a book on negotiation by a former FBI hostage negotiator. It actually covered this, how the stereotypical sales tactics are actually pretty bad and he covers approaches that work much better. I highly recommend the book (or to watch some of his youtube videos).
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Never-Split-Difference-Negotiating-De... and his Youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/NegotiationCEO
You don't want the typical sales pitch that you might hear from a telemarketer or "slick sales person" -- you come away from those drained and annoyed -- instead you want to be listened to and understood.
Never Split the Difference spends some time talking about why more traditional sales practices don't work very well, hence re-education. You want to break the habits that are (apparently) thought in Getting to Yes and instead work on you listening skills, empathy and techniques for learning about your counter-parties emotional state, fears and desires. There's a chapter called something like "getting to no" because once the person has told you no, you can work with them to find out what they actually want and if you can give it to them. Its also very clear that you shouldn't be doing much of the talking, you should let the other person talk while you listen and poke them with tactical statements and questions to get them to focus in on the important details. This is rather different from more traditional sales "pitches" where you talk at them most of the time.
The benefit of talking to the customers and bypassing the sales anxiety was learning about what they thought about the product. Not the sales!
Or anything, really.
When I worked sales (non-commission, thank goodness) I was often in a situation where management wanted me to push certain products. I never felt comfortable with it, and ended up being told repeatedly that I needed to do better.
Luckily, I was incredibly good at helping people buy what they needed, and so I sold a lot of product, and management didn't want to rock that boat. I even had people who would come to the store, ask when I worked, and then come back later to get me to help them instead.
I attribute this to being knowledgeable about the products and, as you said, never trying to convince anyone of anything. They asked questions, I answered them with as much detail as they wanted. Super simple for me and never hurt my conscience.
The problem is that very few of the other salespeople there understood the products to that degree at all. They learned everything they knew from the sales stickers, boxes, and brochures at the store. They knew nothing that the customer couldn't discover if they spent enough time reading. It was still helpful because they could get the customer to the rough area quickly, but not much beyond that.
The company did not pay me enough for the service I provided. I was there until I got a better job and that was all.
I'm finding this with a lot of services - from small appliance stuff, 'brand store' clothing and home furnishing stuff to ... actual houses. My wife researches. Not necessarily huge amounts of time, but she googles stuff before we look at buying. Inevitably, she knows far more than any of the sales people we talk to. Whether it's comparisons against other models, last year's model, materials, warranties, whatever - she always knows more than the staff. Now, in some cases, yes, perhaps the staff 'know' something, and can't 'say' it in public - I get that - I've been there. But this happens far too often for it to be just that.
Even in large commission stuff - housing - we've been looking at housing for a while - she tends to know more - or at least, of course, from my view - stuff that's somewhat more useful. Or, even more basically, stuff that's not on the damn sales sheet.
We looked at a house with a different type of siding than some of the surrounding houses. Sales guy - who's been working in that neighborhood for a while - he's the sales guy engaged by the home builder - didn't know what the difference was, why it was chosen, or what the pros/cons were. 3 minutes on google, and 1 minute in the house, we learn this siding has a big impact on sound/noise reduction. This would be a huge selling point for some people, took about 3 minutes to look up, but... the guy who makes a living at selling didn't know some of these basics (and didn't offer to inquire or find out, either).
"You aren't allowed to persuade anybody of anything".
It's great advice because you can't really convince people of things anyway unless you have a lot of time or a lot of money.
When you don't have to worry about changing people's minds selling becomes a lot easier.
That leaves me with a moral dilemma: Am I influencing him too much? My goal has never been to get him to buy something. I've only ever talked about my interest in it and why I want it. But I feel bad whenever he ends up spending money based on my interests when he already has his own.
You never know, they might need what we have or tell someone else about the experience.
At the end of the day, it's about the experience.
This is just as important service as building the product itself. And what the article describes as sales anxiety can be an asset. Introverts are more likely to be in a position of listening and not just pushing the product to do hard sales.
The book “To sell is human” really changed my perspective, as the author makes the point that the best sales people primarily want to serve others, not just trick people into buying something they don’t need. Good sales is about communicating and matching up needs to value in an honest fashion. Not “ABC”
To add to it, we now know that "build it and they'll come" is a fallacy and we have to "make people something want". Yet, "make something people want" is not enough. We have to first make it, ensure it's something they want, and find a way to _bring_ it to people.
And that bringing to people is part of the package. Can be done through sales, or digital marketing, or outsourced through affiliates, or it can rely on advertising. Or a combo.
I feel that the proof is in the pudding, and without people actually "buying" our products, we haven't proved that they want it, not at the price we're selling it at.
So... the same as regular social anxiety? The underlying "rationalization" (guilt for bothering people, fear of rejection) together with the proposed solution also seem pretty much the same to me.
You nailed it when you alluded to there being people who your product can truly help, and therefore appreciate your reaching out. By focusing on whatever innate desire you truly have to help your customers, you can silence the self-doubt.
I have a lot of opinions on this as I work professionally with developers to help them “figure out sales” and sell their product into companies. Feel free to reach out if you want to talk.
nick@validsignal.com
She now helps other founders with (B2B) sales anxiety.