The Motivations of Sales
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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%?
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@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
How are those not in conflict?
There is always conflict.
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@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
@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
Not if you are smart! You sell your skills, your value, your potential every day. Some days are less than others. But you do it every time you want a raise or, really, every day you don't want to get fired.
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@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
Because now you job is to work in the best interest of the company
Well, that's never true unless you weren't getting paid and you were doing it for free. It's your self interest first THEN the interest of the company. Otherwise you would not have asked for the job, you'd have only taken it without pay if they asked you first. The very fact that you require pay means that your interest are coming ahead of the company's, and there is nothing wrong with that. Nothing, whatsoever. Nada.
After that your job is to take care of the company. But you are always the same as a consultant from the outside. Both have the same upsell biases and the same motivations. Both are paid to look out for the company, both benefit from selling themselves. Internal IT carries all conflict and bias as external consultants. The idea that internal IT is exempt from that conflict is a myth, and a dangerous one, because we start to assume trust where it does not apply.
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@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
@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
Not if you are smart! You sell your skills, your value, your potential every day. Some days are less than others. But you do it every time you want a raise or, really, every day you don't want to get fired.
That's not sales, that's being ethical. You're using they skills they pay you for.
Not using them would be unethical, according to you. -
@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
@scottalanmiller said in The Motivations of Sales:
@Dashrender said in The Motivations of Sales:
@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
Not if you are smart! You sell your skills, your value, your potential every day. Some days are less than others. But you do it every time you want a raise or, really, every day you don't want to get fired.
That's not sales, that's being ethical. You're using they skills they pay you for.
Not using them would be unethical, according to you.Selling is ethical, not sales?
Are you sure? You think that they are paying you to sell yourself to them?
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I think it is very important for both parties to have a clear understanding of their obligations in a sales situation. Ultimately the buyer is in the position of power, and as a decision maker, they have a responsibility to themselves, or their organizations to do their due diligence. You’d be surprised at how often this is not the case and the buyer is actually dissatisfied when expected to understand their own needs. Salespeople without integrity aside, this mentality is what leaves people open to exploitation. It gets complicated when a buyer doesn’t properly understand their own needs and it’s left up to the seller to act on behalf of both parties. Obviously, they won’t want to leave food on the table.
Similarly, the salesperson has their own responsibilities. Obviously, they exist to generate cash flow but they must ask themselves if their sales process adds any value to the customer. A good salesperson has a duty to ask the right questions and fully understand the needs of their prospects. If they don’t align properly with your needs, then it should be no surprise that they didn’t close the sale.
As a buyer, it’s important to note that meeting needs is only an obligation of sales if it encourages sales. If more sales are made by selling what the customer does not need, salespeople are obligated to let the customer buy. At the end of the day, it’s entirely up to the customer to determine what their need is, and one could define the agreement of a sale meeting their need by the fact that they completed the sale.
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@RestoronixSean said in The Motivations of Sales:
I think it is very important for both parties to have a clear understanding of their obligations in a sales situation. Ultimately the buyer is in the position of power, and as a decision maker...
This is huge. Only the buyer chooses to engage sales or to complete a sale. Sales people never have this power, by definition. But most of the feelings of ethics are projected on them through the belief that somehow sales are determined by the salesperson rather than the buyer. Ultimately, if ethics are violated in the process (without breaking into lying, deception, etc.) those ethics must fall on the buyer because the sales person's stance is so clear.
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Great example that just happened: https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2010974-delete
It's really clear that the CIO oversold himself to management. And for some reason (we can guess at the insanely obvious reasons) he lets sales people tell him what to tell the CEO. Who is unethical?
No question, the CIO is. He's the buyer's agent not doing his job. The sales people, we can pretty safely assume, are just doing sales. But the CIO, ultimately responsible for making sure that ridiculous sales ideas don't get taken seriously, didn't just take them seriously but made them "law".
There is only one party responsible for protecting the company, the CIO. He's the one that didn't do his job. Sure, everyone makes mistakes sometimes, but this is beyond a "mistake" and when it was pointed out how massive and obvious a blunder this was, it was attempted to be covered up rather than fixed.
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@RestoronixSean said
A good salesperson has a duty to ask the right questions and fully understand the needs of their prospects. If they don’t align properly with your needs, then it should be no surprise that they didn’t close the sale.
Right, and by selling them only what they need.
As a buyer, it’s important to note that meeting needs is only an obligation of sales if it encourages sales. If more sales are made by selling what the customer does not need, salespeople are obligated to let the customer buy.
How would this come up unless the sales person in unethically telling the client they need more than they really do?
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
@RestoronixSean said
A good salesperson has a duty to ask the right questions and fully understand the needs of their prospects. If they don’t align properly with your needs, then it should be no surprise that they didn’t close the sale.
Right, and by selling them only what they need.
No, that's completely false. It is absolutely NOT their obligation, job or even slightly something that they are supposed to do. There is zero reason to even think that they have the ability to know that.
Only one person every has an ethical obligation there.. the buyer. Any sales of something unneeded is the buyer buying more than they needed. The seller cannot make that decision.
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@BRRABill said in The Motivations of Sales:
How would this come up unless the sales person in unethically telling the client they need more than they really do?
You don't understand what's ethical here. The sales person exists for the sole purpose of selling more than is needed. That's not just not unethical, it is their ethical obligation to their employer and one that you agree to in the social contract when you engage with a sales person.
This what I've been trying to explain. The ONLY one that can be unethical here without lying, is the buyer whose task is to protect the company, not the seller whose job is to protect the seller.
For the sales person to be unethical would require them to look after the needs of the buyer, rather than the seller. You have what is ethical actually flipped.
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@RestoronixSean said...
Similarly, the salesperson has their own responsibilities. A good salesperson has a duty to ask the right questions and fully understand the needs of their prospects. If they don’t align properly with your needs, then it should be no surprise that they didn’t close the sale.
