Sales Professionalism: From Good to Great

THE DIARY OF A PROTEAN SALESMAN

With

Rasheed Adewusi

(Rasheed is a Sales Manager in one the telecommunication companies operating in Nigeria. He also runs the personal blog, Wise, Wide and Wild)

To paraphrase the words of the Late Sage – Obafemi Awolowo – “A human being must know everything about some things and know some things about everything else.” This exactly is the bedrock of being a Great Sales Professional. This image of a Sales Professional as a Walking Encyclopedia may look far-fetched, but it is the foundation that sets a Sales Professional apart from a Sales Person in terms of excellent execution and amazing results.

Great Sales Professional must know absolutely everything about the products/services they are selling. They must understand product/services positioning (why does P&G make both Gillete and Nacet Razors?), and brand leveraging (why is Dettol as a brand more popular than the company that makes it?). They must understand the technical make-up of the products/services they are selling. They must be very analytical, adept at working out profits, margins, and returns in black and white. They must know the improvements that have been made in new products and relaunched products. They must be able to answer any question or resolve any objection that a potential buyer might raise. And most importantly, they must apply this rigorous pursuit of knowledge and understanding to all competitive products/services. This affords the opportunity of having a database that allows you to highlight your competitive advantage and build your sales pitch around that, accentuating your strengths and downplaying your weaknesses. Moreso, it prepares you such that you cannot be blindsided by a potential buyer.

Next to the also important matter of knowing some things about everything else – this is where Great Sales Professional distinguish themselves from the rest of the pack. The world does not revolve around the products/services you sell alone, and your clients/buyers have other interests aside your product/services, thus possessing information and knowledge about the other aspects of human endeavour which people find interesting such as Sports, Music, Fashion, Movies, Technology, Arts, Politics, etc will be a great advantage to getting amazing results. Knowledge of these aspects are usually borne out of interest, thus a Great Sales Professional must develop interest in them. You do not have to take them as another vocation, but understanding the talking points, the new trends, the significant moments, etc will be a good foundation. Discussing people’s interest with them usually create a bond, thus taking care of the human behavior aspect of the pitch, paving the way for you to close the deal. Also, logical analysis of a distinct issue where you stand to benefit nothing from, such as who is a better footballer between Messi and Ronaldo; or who the better musician is between TuFace and DBanj, will make the potential buyer trust your judgment better on an issue where you stand to benefit from, the sale. From personal experience, analysing the different Fuji Music styles of Saheed Osupa and Pasuma Wonder has helped me close a huge sale and consequently forged a great relationship with a buyer.

Paramountly, knowledge on its own is really not significant; the application of knowledge is what gets the job done. Applying what you know requires a great deal of pragmatism. A perfect example to illustrate this is the greeting “Good Morning” which is a given in our society, irrespective of the terrible national/societal/individual situations, the “Morning” must always be heralded as “Good”. The same applies to seeing a customer with five layers of make-up on her face, even if you have the knowledge that those make-ups contain some harmful chemicals, you still have to say something akin to “Madam, you are looking radiant, what’s the secret?” At that point, you have to weigh your need to be a Chemistry teacher against the woman’s need to be happy with herself, and if your need weighs heavier, you can kiss that sale goodbye. Pragmatism is the ability to use only the necessary amount of ammunition from your overflowing arsenal to win over a potential buyer, if you can spend ten minutes to close a sale, why spend one hour? In essence, “Knowledge” and “Understanding” are very important, but the perfect deployment of the two in different scenarios takes “Wisdom” and that actually is the most important.

Editor’s Note: Rasheed’s column now features on Mondays

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