The Motivations of Sales
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
Are you a salesman, since you stand to benefit?
Are you the one doing the replacement? Normally the customer would just replace it. but if you are selling time for you to do the replacement, then sure, you are always a salesman of your services.
You know a lot of customers hiring IT help that would replace their own drive? I don't.
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I think that a big problem that arises is the concept of trust. People often use the term "trust" to mean "have faith that someone will act in my interest" but nothing in the word implies that. You can trust a brick to... be a brick. You can trust that if you drop it it falls. You can trust that if you stand on it you'll be four inches taller. You can trust that it won't stab you in your sleep. But you can't trust it to be your technology adviser and to tell you when to change your hard drives.
Same with a salesman. You can trust them to be a salesman, to act as their ethical and job obligations expect them to do. As much as you can trust anyone, of course.
Questions around trust with sales are really weird for two basic reasons:
- The thing that people should trust them to do is act as ethical salespeople which is never what they mean, so the use of trust is nonsensical.
- People saying this would never just "trust" some random person to be their advisor, yet ask if salespeople can be trusted as if they are all always either totally trustworthy or not as a group.
Why do we so often single out sales as needing "trust" differently from all other people with whom we interact in life?
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
Are you unethical?
There is nothing unethical about sales. How does this question ever come up? I'm so confused where people find the idea that there is even a chance for something unethical to exist (in the sales process.) Of course if you assume he's lying about you needing a drive, then that would be unethical. Or if he broke the drive to make you need one.
Because when most people think of sales, they think unethical. When you go to a mechanic and they say you need XYZ replaced, and you really don't. I mean, that happen ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time. Are they not sales people there?
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
Because when most people think of sales, they think unethical.
But... WHY? Most people think of unethical with business people, IT folks, doctors, lawyers, etc. Do we talk about them in the same way?
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
When you go to a mechanic and they say you need XYZ replaced, and you really don't. I mean, that happen ALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL the time. Are they not sales people there?
Of course they are. But the issue is that they are liars, not sales people. Your five year old tells you that they didn't break the TV when you saw them hit it with a hammer. By the implication above, instead of calling them a liar, you'd call them a salesperson?
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For me, the confusion comes where there is someone like me. If I am doing side work, I don't care about making the sales ... I am looking to help my client. Do I make money? Sure. But I'd prefer to make the money 100% honest than make it like every other thread on SW where the customer gets taken advantage of.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
Because when most people think of sales, they think unethical.
But... WHY? Most people think of unethical with business people, IT folks, doctors, lawyers, etc. Do we talk about them in the same way?
No because no one other than you (with the exception of lawyers who everyone hates) thinks any of those other groups are unethical.
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Do you see the difference? People in all walks of life lie. All kinds of people are unethical. Doctors, lawyers, teachers, mechanics, politicians, salesman. But people in all those professions are honest and ethical, too. Associating a generic career or job function with honesty makes no sense. Life doesn't work that way.
By that logic, we would be forced to say we are all unethical scum because so many IT people are exactly that.
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
Because when most people think of sales, they think unethical.
But... WHY? Most people think of unethical with business people, IT folks, doctors, lawyers, etc. Do we talk about them in the same way?
No because no one other than you (with the exception of lawyers who everyone hates) thinks any of those other groups are unethical.
That's not true, and you know it. People randomly distrust all of those people all of the time. And loads of people don't just trust salespeople, many swear by how much they trust them. So your logic doesn't hold. Because in the real world, many of those groups, especially business people, take more general distrust than sales people.
Again using "trust" here makes no sense, it's a bad concept because it doesn't mean what you think. And trusting or distrusting people in a profession makes no sense. You need to trust or distrust individuals, not careers.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
Because when most people think of sales, they think unethical.
But... WHY? Most people think of unethical with business people, IT folks, doctors, lawyers, etc. Do we talk about them in the same way?
No because no one other than you (with the exception of lawyers who everyone hates) thinks any of those other groups are unethical.
That's not true, and you know it. People randomly distrust all of those people all of the time. And loads of people don't just trust salespeople, many swear by how much they trust them. So your logic doesn't hold. Because in the real world, many of those groups, especially business people, take more general distrust than sales people.
Again using "trust" here makes no sense, it's a bad concept because it doesn't mean what you think. And trusting or distrusting people in a profession makes no sense. You need to trust or distrust individuals, not careers.
People trust doctors. YOU don't (and that can be forked to a separate thread) but many do. I know many people who have had their lives saved. They trust.
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
People trust doctors. YOU don't (and that can be forked to a separate thread) but many do.
And many don't. Exactly like salespeople, hence the point. If you think they are different, that's the issue. YOU are seeing one as a unique untrusted entity instead of as normal people. OR you are seeing the other as trustworthy in a completely irrational way.
You don't "trust" or "distrust" any profession. If you do, that's the problem. That's illogical and means you have an issue to deal with. Sure, some professions attract people under less than ethical circumstances and some professions might require doing some things that can be seen as unethical to be allowed to do them. You can make arguments for those professions not being trustworthy because of those shared factors. Sales is not one of those, everyone is a sales person sometime, everyone. So replace ALL of your thoughts of "salespeople" and "trust" with "humanity." Does it still make sense?
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
I know many people who have had their lives saved. They trust.
I know lots of people sold a SAN that they think saves their business and they trust sales people. That people make bad logically correlations isn't in question.
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Getting back to Bill's question.
You are hired to maintain a server.
You don't have authority to replace hardware.
You see a drive fail. What do you do?In a private conversation, someone said they simply inform the customer. If the customer says nothing more you just walk away.
If the customer asks you to handle it - are you now a salesperson? Or are you still a consultant?
Let's move this up a scale... while doing maintenance on the server, part of your contract is to watch performance logs and report when the reaches thresholds that make it appear it's time to upgrade. Assuming they ask you to bring them options...
So are you now sales or are you a hired consultant?
As I'm writing this I'm thinking that we need to have that conversation--- are you hiring me to find the solution for you? My rate is x, etc
But maybe I'm wrong. -
@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
If the customer asks you to handle it - are you now a salesperson? Or are you still a consultant?
You are both, of course.
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@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
Let's move this up a scale... while doing maintenance on the server, part of your contract is to watch performance logs and report when the reaches thresholds that make it appear it's time to upgrade. Assuming they ask you to bring them options...
So are you now sales or are you a hired consultant?Both, of course.
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How are those not in conflict?
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Maybe I have to state this implicitly because I think this is missed.... all employees are salespeople of their own services. All. Every person who has an IT job has it because they sold their "private consulting services" to their employer. Everyone does sales sometimes.
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We are all sales people. The thing that all people are obligated to do is to identify when people are in a sales moment or situation so that they can identify the bias and understand when that person has a sales motivation going on. We do this all day.
We don't actually think that the girl at the McDonald's counter thinks we need a large fries, she just has to say that. But we know she is doing sales.
The guy at the shoe store telling me that those shoes look good on me, we all know they don't, he's forced to say that.
The commercial on television telling me that that one chicken noodle soup will make me feel better when sick is the one thing that I have to eat is obviously trying to sell soup.
We deal with this all day, every day. People want things, they have a bias that gives them a reason to promote an item. Some are hard to see, people selling physical products or services are easy to see and the motivations are large (single sales might represent months of income.)
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
Maybe I have to state this implicitly because I think this is missed.... all employees are salespeople of their own services. All. Every person who has an IT job has it because they sold their "private consulting services" to their employer. Everyone does sales sometimes.
Sure, but once you accepted the job don't you sales skills get put away? Because now you job is to work in the best interest of the company
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A key difference is when someone says "this part is broken, it needs replaced" we know that there isn't really any "opinion" or potential for bias to be injected. Your tire is blown, you need a new one. You are 10,000 miles since an oil change, you need one. It is what it is. Do they want us to pay them to do the replacement? Sure. But it's trivial to verify that we do in fact need the replacement, they'd have to be lying (unethical) for it not to be so. Having them do the work is the same as having someone that didn't make the sale do the work. There's no ethical sales incentive. But they are in sales.
When dealing with basic services, the incentives are often trivially low and insanely apparent. The person saying "you need two hours of work" is also the one that will do the two hours of work. We can't miss it.
But the guy selling you a SAN doesn't always feel like the guy getting a new car out of that one sale, but if we think about it at all, we know that he is.
A key difference is that in one case it's a sale of something trivial and obvious with no means to inject opinion. Bias doesn't have a place to matter because there is no opinion involved. A drive is dead, it needs replaced with the same model. There is no upsell option.
Or is there opinion... you need a new SAN because it will do "stuff" for your business. I "think" this will work well for you. I "think" this is what your business needs. All the cool kids do this. It isn't a fix or a need, it's a want or an opinion. In most cases there is nothing except for the bias.
Does that make it more clear? Is bias 1% of the conversation, 50%, 100%?
