We are selling, we are selling
Getting comfortable with sales
One of the things that invariably comes up in my conversations with would-be Corporate Escapologists is selling. Or, rather, fear of selling or being bad at selling.
It’s something with which I identify.
Many of us carry stereotypes of salesman – and saleswomen too. From the oh so suave Mad Men Don Draper, to the charlatan Mr Wormwood in Matilda, and the tragic figure of Willy Loman and comedy Del Boy.
I might like to look like Don Draper and have Del Boy’s chutzpah, but if this is selling, I don’t think I can do it.
And just the thought of pitching in front of a boardroom of bored suits makes my heart race. In a bad way.
All these are caricatures, of course. They persist because they contain some truth. But they’re not the whole truth. And they’re nowhere you need to be.
My fear of selling was one of the things that made me leave consulting before joining bp. I sneaked out the grade before you were set a sales target.
At bp I became the client.
I was much better at that.
But as anyone who’s worked with me knows, I hate someone smarming up to me and selling.
Only three times in sixteen years did I run a pitch to find an agency or partner to deliver something for me. And only once would I say it was successful.
The rest of the time I built relationships. One person at a time. I went into a potential partner’s office, to meet them on their home turf, casually over a coffee. I politely stopped them midway through their creds deck and tried to get to know them as a person.
And so why should it be any different now I’m on the other side?
Of course, there are clients who want the grand pitch, the big idea with the big reveal (for free), to be wined and dined, to have their ego massaged.
But they’re not my kind of client.
Find the right customer for you
I know I’ve told this story before, about the out-of-the-blue message on LinkedIn the day before I left bp, but it was pivotal in helping me see that, in spite of the leap into the unknown, I was going to be ok.
It was my first chance to sell myself on a phone call we’d arranged over LinkedIn. Murray didn’t want a pitch. He didn’t ask for a creds deck. He wanted a conversation, to hear my thoughts on his problem and to test how well we would work together.
Crucially, he liked what I’d done at bp, a client of his own company. So I had credibility. And note, the identity and association persisted after I’d left – which is something we don’t expect (three years later I still talking about bp in my ‘selling’).
So, the first point is find the right customer for you – and build a relationship with them. You can call it selling if you want. Or helping. Or solving problems. Because that’s the kind of selling that experienced people like us do best.
You’ve got the skills to sell
The second point about selling is it’s not really a single thing, except perhaps closing. Selling is a bunch of interactions and behaviours – and we corporate people are really good at them.
This week I met with one of my new Corporate Escapology coaching clients to look through the previous week’s work I’d set her on better understanding her skills, experience, knowhow, strengths and energisers.
During the previous week I’d heard the familiar refrain “I’m bad at sales”. And yet her write up of her capabilities was full of the qualities that good salespeople share: Listening, Asking questions, Joining dots, Solving problems, Creating order from chaos, Leading people to an outcome, Building consensus.
She is not unusual.
To get on in corporate life you can’t not be a salesperson. Persuading people. Understanding stakeholders. Handling objections. Storytelling. Even the deeply technical wizards I worked with in bp’s technology function quickly realised they lost out budget to peers who had sold their ideas better.
Fear of being bad at selling is one of those Bad Thinking Barriers that can actually stop people who want to leave from going through with it. It’s that big. I think it’s because of both fear of the humiliation of failing and fear of the consequences of failing, i.e. no income.
As with all fears, the only solution is to face them rationally with logic, e.g.
Most of you won’t humiliate yourself selling in front of a big group because that won’t be the kind of selling you do (maybe ever).
If you don’t win some work with a client, the opportunity just fades away – it doesn’t get announced on LinkedIn - no-one knows.
You have highly developed skills to successfully build relationships, which are the foundation of sales.
You’re actually a natural at selling. Except you’re not. Like many things you now do, you’ve learned these skills, you’ve honed these strengths, you’ve proven your experience. You’re going to be ok.
I really hope this helps. I’ve learnt a lot about how to get comfortable with the kind of selling that’s right for me – with whom I want to work. And I believe you can too.
If I can help more, drop me a line.
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