“The best salesperson is paid to solve problems and incentivized to be curious”

The best sales people understand the following;

-Good vs. bad business (customer-company fit)

-Speaking too little > speaking too much

-How their org functions

Good Vs. Bad Business

As 22 year old salesperson this was difficult to understand. Certain customers aren’t worth acquiring. When you’re being paid 100% commission, every deal matters. But the pain of deal unwinding before fulfillment or even worse, after fulfillment, can distract selling efforts and negatively effect income.

Be mindful of how certain customers perform during discovery and evaluation. Always go the extra length in qualifying. Certain simple tactics can help you avoid “clawbacks.” While some clawbacks can be out of our control, most can be thwarted during qualification and discover. I’ll briefly touch on them here. In simple they involve double and triple checking that the prospect is in for the long haul.

-When it appears the prospect is going to buy, ask the question “are you sure you want to this?”

-Asking “are there any stakeholders we have not included in the conversation?”

-Presenting pre-mortem’s like “let’s pretend for a second it’s 90 days from now and we’re not in business together. Why is that?”

Understanding what can unravel a deal is important but the effect on the overall health of a business if more important. If sales efforts yield unwanted customers, the business is built on unstable foundation and ultimately put you at risk. You need This can help create a stickier customer in the long term or what I call customer-company fit. A good manager while know how to spot these customers and help their team engage their efforts elsewhere. Sometimes certain products weed out bad customers on their own. But understanding customer profile and cross checking attributes is a good barometer.