31–40 of 61 posts
This is not a very helpful post, because it doesn’t provide many clues on how to do buyer-pull sales. It’d be nice if you could just build something useful and have people beat a path to your door, and most of us would probably prefer that, but it’s not reality.
I remember working at a company where we used a vendor extensively in their mid-tier plan. We wanted an enterprise plan with more features, so we reached out to buy it. So, their salesperson was shooting a penalty with no goalkeeper: All they needed to do was send an offer, and we would negotiate and close the deal. Instead, they called my CTO multiple times, all at awkward times, like during his lunch. When he didn'…
They always called during lunch hours (three times). When I finally had a short moment, there was (1) nothing substantial the sales person could tell me about their products or their prices, (2) they had no idea how we (public sector) have to buy things and wanted me to make an exception and when I asked them to just email me their offer to my publicly available email address (3) they didn't.
By that point that company would have been better off not having a sales person. And that type of experience was up to today nearly the only thing that happened with sales, except for one time where the company sent a technician to have a look at our circumstances which worked great.
my favourite theory of sales is that of the school of cialdini, which is basically treating the customer as something which can lead to money coming out of it if you supply the right verbal and visual stimulus.
This is not a very helpful post, because it doesn’t provide many clues on how to do buyer-pull sales. It’d be nice if you could just build something useful and have people beat a path to your door, and most of us would probably prefer that, but it’s not reality.
Much of my team would probably qualify me as about as buyer-pull as sales people get — I told my VP my strategy for pipe generation in a QBR was exercising more product influence — and I disagree with many of the author’s points. I challenge my customers and attempt to convince them they have the wrong approach to achieve X all the time. Attaching to buyers pain is the only way you’ll ever get anything meaningful don…
Yes. Under the one precondition that you can actually provide a solution. Your customer might know that pain better than you do and they may sometimes know the solution space better than you do.
That is rare, but I have been on the reverse end of that multiple times. And while it isn't a catastrophe if the sales person is just that, they may need to convince someone with an actually hard problem that they (and their collegues) have the competency to solve it.
Some problems are just genuinely hard. Not in a "we would need to restructure some things"-hard, but rather "limited by the laws of physics"-hard.
If that is the case with a customer all you can offer is to try together.
this article feels out of touch. The actual driver of sales esp in AI and enterprise tech in general has nothing to do with these academic theories
This is not a very helpful post, because it doesn’t provide many clues on how to do buyer-pull sales. It’d be nice if you could just build something useful and have people beat a path to your door, and most of us would probably prefer that, but it’s not reality.
People or businesses that break this rule and prosper are either being incredibly persistent at playing a numbers game or are doing something sketchy.
Good marketing is selling stuff that people want to buy. People or businesses that break this rule and prosper are either being incredibly persistent at playing a numbers game or are doing something sketchy.
Funny example: Futurama's Fry goes to the eye-phone store and pulls out wads of cash and yells at the cashier. First two sentences: "take my money! I hope you have a phone left!"
I've not worked in sales and marketing but I have a soft place for those who do it well. I distinctly remember being asked by a Chem Eng at a young age: what's the difference between sales and marketing. And i distinctly remembered being confused. At that time both ideas where so fuzzy in my mind I had no idea how to start an answer.
Many years later I might add strong cross functional coordination and a great COO can help a company market itself. Its a base to build off. Its such a breath of fresh air when customers think a company isn't a bunch of silos.
I remember working at a company where we used a vendor extensively in their mid-tier plan. We wanted an enterprise plan with more features, so we reached out to buy it. So, their salesperson was shooting a penalty with no goalkeeper: All they needed to do was send an offer, and we would negotiate and close the deal. Instead, they called my CTO multiple times, all at awkward times, like during his lunch. When he didn'…
No response for a week. So I emailed an email address that was included in the onboarding email.
No response for another week. So I sent their CEO a message on LinkedIn. Hey, I really want to buy, let's talk.
No response for another week (and four months later). So I gave up.
I remember working at a company where we used a vendor extensively in their mid-tier plan. We wanted an enterprise plan with more features, so we reached out to buy it. So, their salesperson was shooting a penalty with no goalkeeper: All they needed to do was send an offer, and we would negotiate and close the deal. Instead, they called my CTO multiple times, all at awkward times, like during his lunch. When he didn'…