What I Learned Today About Sales

Today I start my journey into learning tech sales. Upon beginning my adventure, I realized that I really do not know what a salesmen actually does, besides closing deals. I have never worked or studied this field before. I only know what I have seen in movies (probably not a great source). So today I wanted to answer the questions: What is a salesmen? What does a salesmen do?

My New Understanding Of The Salesman

It is the job of the salesmen to interact with potential customers, understand their problems, and help guide them towards the solution. Through research on the internet and reading from a textbook, I learned a few more important things.

Salesmen need to serve the customer, not necessarily just sell to them. Something that I was surprised to learn was how much literature stressed the importance of developing good relationships with customers and networking. Developing good relationships and trust with customers leads to higher conversion rates and loyalty. This is contrary to my previous understanding. I thought that salesmen first and foremost must make sales and hit their numbers, but this is just one piece of the puzzle. The internet has made the buying experience much more personalized, and customers expect to be treated well. The customer has a problem, so if you promise a certain product or service can fix their problem, you should be sure it will do just that. Otherwise, you risk losing the trust of the customer, and they will take their business elsewhere. Ethics is a term that is thrown around a lot in this field. Basically, do not be the sleezy salesmen we have all seen in the movies. Your job is to help the customer solve their problems. You do this by listening to them.

Salesmen need to be technologically savvy. While interpersonal skills and other traditional salesmen soft skills are still required, being technologically savvy is essential. With all the new technology of today, salesmen need to be able to use all of the resources at their disposal to do their jobs. Salesmen must utilize social media, online communication, customer relationship management tools (CRMs), and online learning resources, to name a few. The salesmen of tomorrow need to be adaptive, flexible, and be willing to try new things and utilize technology in all of their endeavors.

Why This Is Important

For me to succeed as a salesmen, I need to understand the field and what is my job in simple terms. Simply put, I help customers solve their problems.

What I Want To Learn Next

After learning about what a salesmen does and who they are, I want to learn about the different types of salesmen and those that they interact with. I saw a lot of terms thrown around in the various resources that I read, some of them included SDRs, AEs, SEs, BDRs, managers, directors, and decision makers. I want to understand each of these roles and how they influence how I do my job.

Wrapping Up

Today was a humble start, but I feel happy with my better understanding of the salesmen. Again, I am not a teacher, just someone documenting their learnings.