Death of a Salesman

This is an overworked phrase if there ever was one. Ever since Arthur Miller wrote his play Death of a Salesman, pundits have been using the phrase to forecast the demise of practitioners of our profession. Reports of our death may be premature.

Mind you, some types of selling, and with it some salespeople, have died. The back-slapping, joke-telling, low-content salesperson who roamed the North American continent early in this century has become, like the dinosaur, extinct.

Times have certainly changed, and so has selling. The information explosion, both written and electronic, has created a more knowledgeable customer with an increased sensitivity to BS (a technical term). If you don't know your product or service extremely well, you're on the way to extinction.

When I say you must know your product or service, I don't mean what it is, but what it does and what it means to your prospect. Too many salespeople are still rattling off facts and features and expecting the prospect to uncover the benefit. If the prospect can say, "So what?" to your sales presentation, you're not doing your job.

A classic example of this is the car salesperson who delights in telling you that the car has a 225 horsepower, 16 overhead valve cam engine, and ABS brakes. So what, so what, so what? What do any of these things mean to me?

Product knowledge isn't enough. Most salespeople are knowledgeable in their product/service, if only because of the "sales training" they receive. This training usually consists of reading a catalogue, product brochures, or data sheets. Frankly, based on my experience with a large number of people who call themselves salespeople, I'm not sure they even read the stuff!

Salespeople become superfluous when a product or service becomes a commodity. In the last few years we've seen computers become a commodity, and I expect to see automobiles turn into a commodity before I retire from the sales profession. As soon as the general public knows more about your product than you do, it's in danger of becoming a commodity.

The professional salespeople who survive into the next century will be those who bring something more to the sale than a glib tongue and product knowledge. They will provide a value-add of some kind.

The value-add may be a service that goes above and beyond the expected. Simply taking the time to properly qualify a prospect by asking intelligent questions is a value-added service that most salespeople don't or won't offer. Too many seem intent on selling before they qualify a prospect. Selling without qualifying is like a doctor who writes a prescription without first making a diagnosis.

I was recently subjected to a 15-minute sales pitch. Without knowing anything about me or my company, the salesperson dove right into telling me ALL about his company and what they offered. My mind was wandering and I was just about to say, "Let me tell you a bit about what we do here" when he finally ran out of things to tell me and started asking questions. This 25-year sales veteran had never had any formal sales training and was still operating under the old telling-is-selling philosophy.

It's up to the salesperson to add value. As the wise, old Sales Wizard says as he finishes every sales training workshop, "Don't just make a living, make a difference!"

If salespeople develop the skill to truly make a difference, the reports of our death will indeed be premature and we will live on for a long, long time.

Brian Jeffrey (a.k.a. The Sales Wizard) is president of SalesForce Training & Consulting Inc.; author of The Sales Wizard's Secrets of Sales Management, a book full of common-sense techniques for managing the small business sales force; and publisher of $alesTalk, a newsletter for professional salespeople. He can be reached at 613-839-7355, fax 613-839-1842, or email: saleswizard@SalesForceTraining.com.

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