Sales For Non-Sales Types

Before I ever thought about becoming a tax guy, I was a sales and marketing guy. However, before and also while I was a sales and marketing guy, was a science and engineering type. I did atmospheric monitoring, water chemistry, environmental rehabilitation, hazardous waste removal, radiological contamination control, health physics, and even had a brief foray into nuclear medicine. In fact, I started my adult life off as a nuclear power electrician in the U.S. Navy. Most of my formal academic studies, including undergraduate and graduate education, have been in technical and scientific fields.

Therefore, it probably goes without saying that I’ve been more comfortable with ideas, concepts, and machines than with people most of my life, and I have no qualms admitting that’s true. Anybody that knows me very well knows that I’m a somewhat socially awkward person.

How, then, is it possible for somebody like me to be successful in such a people-oriented field as sales? Ask any engineer, IT specialist, or numbers-oriented accounting type that has struck out on their own, and they’ll all say that accepting their new role salesperson is one of the most difficult parts of setting up shop.

Earlier this year, I was chatting online with a close friend about this very topic. It actually became a quite heated discussion. This friend is an IT consultant for a living, picking up what work he can, but not nearly as much as he would like in order for him to get ahead of his bills and whatnot. He often mentions wanting to make more money, and during this particular discussion I was trying to urge him to develop some sales and marketing skills. No matter what industry you’re in, if you are self-employed, you are first and foremost a salesperson — there is simply no way around it. This friend was trying to tell me otherwise, since he does no ‘sales’, but just does work that comes his way through his network of contacts and word of mouth.

He refused to accept even the slightest sliver of the notion that on each and every job he did, he still had to provide a quotation, define an objective to achieve by the work done, get the gig, and then collect the money. These are ALL sales functions, and without doing them, there is simply no getting paid — regardless of whether or not you’re actively soliciting business. If you refuse to accept this reality, and instead try to survive on just what work comes your way rather than actively seeking work, there’s a pretty good chance that you’re going to be perpetually broke.

One of the biggest things for techie types to understand when trying to adopt a sales mindset is this: It’s about what they want, not what you know or have, they being your prospective customer. I was just as guilty of this as anybody else when I got my first job, selling water treatment equipment and well drilling services to rural residents. After a couple months of not making much money, my boss made me realize that people don’t care how many grains of hardness their water will be or what their flow rate will be at different well depths. Nope, these folks just wanted enough water to run their homes, and they wanted that water to not look like mud and to not taste like crap — that’s what they wanted.

There’s another oft discussed cliche in sales: People buy benefits, not features. This is also known in sales circles as “sell the sizzle, not the steak.”. On that note, Texas Roadhouse and Outback Steakhouse, two popular restaurant chains in the United States, don’t really sell meat on a plate. Rather, they sell a dining experience that is unique to chain, with a special environment, flavor, and twist that make each of them unique. For Outback, it’s the whole Australian theme, and for Texas Roadhouse, well…it’s the cowboy bar atmosphere and throwing peanut shells on the floor that you dug out of a barrel.

Let’s take a look at some feature vs. benefit comparisons for different things to give you a better idea of what I’m referring to:

Feature: Caffeine. Benefit: Cramming all night to pass that final exam.

Feature: Gazillion megapixels. Benefit: Preserving family memories in greater detail for time and all eternity.

Feature: Add-on video card with dedicated video memory. Benefit: Faster game play and astonishing graphics rendering — see the blood splatter in vivid, gory detail!

These examples hopefully show what I’m taking about. People make buying decisions based on emotion, and justify those buying decisions with logic (sometimes). Joe Schmoe really wants a pimped out Escalade because Kanye kicks it in one and Joe wants to be cool, too, but he justifies it to Mrs. Schmoe, and himself, by emphasizing rollover and crash protection for the kids in the back seat (the spinners might be harder to explain…).

When it comes to writing detailed engineering proposals in particular, it is important to write the proposal to address the concerns of your audience, e.g, the prospective customer. One of the most powerful articles I have ever read on this subject is actually titled Selling the Sizzle, Not the Steak, by Dr. Terry Bacon. It is an incredible overview of this very important topic, and goes into quite a bit of detail. I could regurgitate all the basics in this article, but Dr. Bacon does a very, very good job of covering it all, so read his article if you’re new to sales, you won’t regret it (even though it’s a long article).

One of the best things you can do for your personal economy is to study sales and marketing…and do so a LOT. The most successful business people I know spend more time studying sales & marketing than anything else, including their own industry, and I do so likewise. While I keep well ahead of most of my peers in tax law changes, and actually enjoy reading legislation and tax code, I still spend almost as much time studying sales and marketing as I do taxation. The reason is simple: Without clients, my tax knowledge is useless. The same is true regardless of your profession, be it plumber, civil engineer, IT consultant, or bricklayer.

If you’re looking to get started with some sales and marketing fundamentals, here are the books I recommend for everybody to read first:

1. Anything by Dan Kennedy. A most excellent place to start is The Ultimate Marketing Plan: Find Your Hook. Communicate Your Message. Make Your Mark.

2. Jeffrey Gitomer is one of the premier sales trainers in the world. One of his best books is The Sales Bible by Jeffrey Gitomer

3. Brian Tracy is well known for breaking apart the mental processes of success in business. One of his best sales books is The Psychology of Selling: Increase Your Sales Faster and Easier Than You Ever Thought Possible by Brian Tracy

4. Jay Conrad Levinson has written a slew of books in the Guerrilla Marketing series. These are hands on “how to” books, and this one gives a 30-day, step by step plan for launching a marketing campaign: Guerilla Marketing in 30 Days (Guerrilla Marketing)

5. Tom Hopkins, originally a real estate guy, is one of the legends of sales training. One of his oldest books is also still one of the best: How to Master the Art of Selling by Tom Hopkins

Any of these books will get you started, and open a new door of opportunity for you in your business. One of the biggest things you’ll see as you enter the world of sales and marketing is that, much like engineers, marketers think differently than normal people. Your technical skills and abilities will actually come in hand in sales, such as your ability to think critically, apply problem solving methods, and analyze things from multiple dimensions.

I’ll probably be writing a LOT more about sales and marketing on this blog in the coming months, as my primary focus in 2010 will be the fully operational implementation into our tax business of the well over 150 marketing ideas that I have been been researching, testing, and refining over the past 18 months.

Until my next post,

Jassen Bowman