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In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

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Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#21

Post by nextworddev »

admissionsguy wrote: post #12
armchairhacker wrote: post #10

#1: An inmate who preaches "criminal wisdom" of questionable quality, like " want to know how to disable a burglar alarm with aluminum foil? " #2: A telemarketing old lady with a "warm voice and metronomic cadence". #3: An NYC beggar who "walks up to a table, falls to his knees, interlaces his hands as if in prayer, and begs, at the top of his lungs, Please please please, money, please I need a dollar! "

Which one translates best into high ticket SaaS sales?

Hire #2 for the first call, #1 to close, and #3 for contract renewals

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#22

Post by willcipriano »

armchairhacker wrote: post #10

#1: An inmate who preaches "criminal wisdom" of questionable quality, like " want to know how to disable a burglar alarm with aluminum foil? " #2: A telemarketing old lady with a "warm voice and metronomic cadence". #3: An NYC beggar who "walks up to a table, falls to his knees, interlaces his hands as if in prayer, and begs, at the top of his lungs, Please please please, money, please I need a dollar! "

> "want to know how to disable a burglar alarm with aluminum foil?"

He just saw Beverly Hills Cop and wanted to sound impressive.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DupMnMsQXxM

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#23

Post by hansvm »

normie3000 wrote: post #11
ipunchghosts wrote: post #5

Let me save u 10 minutes and get to the punchline. "Eventually, it clicked, and I learned one of the bedrock principles of salesmanship: Whether you’re peddling long distance over the phone, Bibles door to door, or your own political candidacy on live national TV, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling—it matters how you make people feel. If you make them feel good, they’ll say yes. If you don’t, you could be selling…

> a pill that reverses male-pattern baldness and makes you lose weight without exercise Sadly only one of these exists.

I asume that you mean only the weight loss pill exists? Would that be something like manjaro (inhibiting the desire to eat) or one of the few _actual_ metabolism boosters in existence (which all make you produce insane amounts of heat and have fairly high fatality rates -- not necessarily a bad thing given their other side effects)?

Assuming that's what you mean, reversing has spotty success, but prevention is easy for most men if you can tolerate the side effects. Just take your favorite testosterone-blocker.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#24

Post by kcplate »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #13
Ozarkian wrote: post #4

This piece obviously puts sales in a bad light. If you had asked me what a salesman is like in my early 20s, I would have described them much as this article expresses. But in my career in Silicon Valley I really came to respect good salespeople. I often had roles where I was debugging customer-reported issues, and good salespeople make everything smoother. I came to a conclusion that there are two types of sales tra…

> I really came to respect good salespeople You can respect a person without respecting their profession. I also serve the same dysfunction in much more widely respected ways, but my role is still part of the same cancer.

> without respecting their profession

I’d venture to guess that almost everyone reading this thread owes their job to talented salespeople and more importantly the sales profession as a whole.

I respect them and their profession because it’s kept my family fed for nearly 40 years. I am not a salesperson, but they sure as shit sell the things I build. I need them more than they need me because talent salespeople can sell nearly anything.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#25

Post by imperfect_light »

ipunchghosts wrote: post #5

Let me save u 10 minutes and get to the punchline. "Eventually, it clicked, and I learned one of the bedrock principles of salesmanship: Whether you’re peddling long distance over the phone, Bibles door to door, or your own political candidacy on live national TV, it doesn’t matter what you’re selling—it matters how you make people feel. If you make them feel good, they’ll say yes. If you don’t, you could be selling…

>If you make them feel good, they’ll say yes.

You could really generalize and say this is about relationships in general. If people leave interactions with you feeling good about themself, it will be a relationship they want to continue and grow.

And the ratio of good interactions to bad needs to be at least 5X (at least that's what the Gottman Institute found with romantic relationships)

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#26

Post by Jimmc414 »

The author draws broad conclusions about sales from just three cherry-picked examples from high-pressure, ethically questionable contexts (jail, telemarketing scams, aggressive panhandling) and creates a false dichotomy of being ethically compromised or unsuccessful in sales.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#29

Post by dstroot »

inSenCite wrote: post #18

The best sales people I've worked with were incredible strategic thinkers and not really sales people at all. They built an intimate knowledge of their customer and their industry, built strong connections with the top brass of their client by delivering exceptional work that got those people promoted, and were really good at building autonomous teams that could get the (exceptional) work done with their guidance on…

This. This is elite sales.

Re: In my life, I've witnessed three elite salespeople at work

#30

Post by robertlagrant »

> We were victims. Therefore, we had license to take whatever measures were necessary. Once this worldview sets in, it’s very difficult to break out of, not least because it often feels so perfectly just.

One of many nuggets of wisdom in this excellent text.

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