How to be a good Salesperson? Don’t sell a product — build a relationship

This article is particularly applicable to B2B sales, even if it gives general advise that could be used for B2C as well.

Sales teams are the basis of any company. Without Sales, no clients, without clients, no product, no operations, nothing left basically.

The power of Sales

Knowing how to sell is one of these skills that any entrepreneur / startup employee should know. Whether you work in Operations, Customer Support, or even in Product or Tech team — that’s a skill that can be useful in your daily work. The Customer Support people need to know how to sell the product when they are on the phone or chat talking with current or potential clients. The Product team should know how to sell the tech roadmap they are planning to implement to the rest of the team — internal sale vs. external sale in this case.

To sell well, don’t sell

I have done a lot of Sales in my startup life, both holding dedicated Sales positions and through other functions as well. Sales is something I intrinsically enjoy not only for the thrill of closing an account and bringing revenue to the company, but also because it can lead to meeting very interesting people. This is especially true for B2B sales when I have to meet up with companies and offices. Sometimes we talk a bit about the product, and then the conversation shift to something else, the business plan of our ventures, the industry, any pain point we are facing, or something totally different. These are the discussions I enjoy the most.

On the contrary, I have always personally hated when I am approached by some Sales people with an extremely “salesy” and standard message, which clearly show that they don’t care about my personal and specific use of their product and don’t know me.

The golden Sales rule for me can be summed up as: to be a good salesperson, don’t sell a product. Start building a relationship.

Building a relationship: the power of the “personal touch”

The client will want to use the product because it is great, but not only. He will want to use it because he trusts the company, knows that if he has any issues he can easily contact someone, or sometimes even because he trusts the salesperson who reached out that he will be here if needed.

Do you homework. Get to know who is your client, this one in particular and not all the clients you have. Segment them, get to know how they’re using your product, how you’re bringing them value specifically, and have a very targeted message.

When I go to a B2B Sales meeting, I know exactly who is the person I am meeting up with. Nowadays, it is not “stalking” anymore to go check out a Linkedin profile — use the tools, any tool that can bring you info about who is your client, and therefore how to talk to him and what will matter the most to him. I even end up finding some similarities between me and my clients sometimes, that I can bring up in the conversation later on and that will contribute to build the relationship sales-client (we’ve been to the same uni, done the same internship programme, etc.)

Be smart: always bet on long-term relationships rather than short sales cycle that ends up in fast client churn. Selling is not a job — it is getting to know someone.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 273,384+ people.

Subscribe to receive our top stories here.