I'm not sure if it was the cartoons or the clarity in the explanation, but this definitely adds a more humanistic view to sales and what it takes to be successful. More than anything, this is selling you on sales itself. Not in a bad way, though, and it gives you a bit of insight into what's involved in the process. The animation was top notch, too.
Awesome video. Sales is the core of any enterprise, yet it is not taught in schools. Relentless hustling, fearless of rejections, moving forward w/grit,and the ability to create "buy now" urgency can only be learned by doing.
The fact that he was was with a large MNC says it all. His corporate brand likely does so much work for him that he's possibly forgotten just how hard it is to generate leads.
For example, I have a buddy who's climbing the ladder at Cisco, and qualified leads are always banging at their door. The hardest part is done for them -- he just needs to work with them to find the right solution to the problem, which is the rewarding part.
On the other hand, I do sales at a startup as a cofounder. 99% of my time is trying to find customers. Emails and calls are necessary evils -- I hate doing them, but what am I supposed to do? Just wait for people to come to us? They've never heard of my company, and its a risk to work with a startup. So, the bulk of my time with them, if I get them on the phone, is convincing them that my boutique firm can over serve the big players. Also, I don't have a "team" behind me -- I do everything. Opening, qualifying, meetings, closing, negotiating contracts. Your MNC interviewer has likely never had to do all of these things.
I also have to be technical -- I don't have a technical background, but I'm having to learn as fast als possible. It comes down to learning the costomers poblems faster, knowing the idiosyncrasies of my product, and being able to discuss solutions without having to "go back to my tech team," which is common with bigcos.
In all, its just the fundamental difference between large and small organizations. I assume there are also parallels on the development side.
This is the deleted comment. Sorry about that.
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I recently interviewed with the country head of a large MNC for a geography account manager's role. Five minutes in, he said he flat out loathed sales guys who would also make cold calls to sell. "It's irritating. It's illegal. And I don't know why you do it."
The other assumption he made was this: since I sell, it's unlikely that I was technical as well. And that was that. I am a little taken aback that such dinosaurs exist. Selling is hard, even more so when people in delivery just don't trust you to sell on their behalf.
I am still recovering from what was probably the shortest interview in my career. What do you make of these statements?
Not really. This was just someone who "seemed" to not want to listen at all. No eye contact, distracted, no bites on open ended statements, nothing. A meeting with no pulse and just a couple of statements. 2 minutes in, I noticed he wanted to get back to his email, which he did, and then returned to fidgeting with something on the table and no eye contact. By then I just wanted to leave since it seemed like a mutual waste of time.
Also, I don't have a "team" behind me -- I do everything. Opening, qualifying, meetings, closing, negotiating contracts. Your MNC interviewer has likely never had to do all of these things.
Believe me, if you're good, this is to your advantage: the team "behind" a salesperson in an MNC soaks up their time and energy with enforcing consistent data entry and deduplication across at least four legacy CRM systems, utterly spurious pipeline analysis for the benefit of the management accountants and once management decides to step in with some meaningless metrics that might have worked in another industry, you'll probably end up meeting people without either of you having any idea why you're there. And that's in addition to all the non-sales-specific inane big company bureaucracy. There's a process to follow but its generally less efficient than winging it and whilst there might be people that, in theory, do things like marketing for you, you probably spend more time fielding their questions than they do assisting you.
I like to think of it as MNCs trying to level the playing field with those who actually need to work to find the customers first.
>On the other hand, I do sales at a startup as a cofounder. 99% of my time is trying to find customers. Emails and calls are necessary evils -- I hate doing them, but what am I supposed to do? Just wait for people to come to us?
I mostly play in low-value per customer markets, which obviously operate on different principles, so I focus on building my brand rather than selling units.
The interesting thing is that when I move in to higher value markets, like when I'm selling myself as an overpriced consultant? I find that my brand enables me to take the same efficient marketing principles and apply them to higher-value products. The other day I mentioned in passing on HN that I was looking for some consulting work, and I got a very qualified lead knocking on my door.
So yeah; I think you are underestimating the brand power that startups can have. Sure, you aren't going to have cisco's brand power, but assuming you have a reasonable value proposition vs. those large players, you /can/ build your reputation to the point where qualified leads come to you.
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[ 3.9 ms ] story [ 20.1 ms ] threadFor example, I have a buddy who's climbing the ladder at Cisco, and qualified leads are always banging at their door. The hardest part is done for them -- he just needs to work with them to find the right solution to the problem, which is the rewarding part.
On the other hand, I do sales at a startup as a cofounder. 99% of my time is trying to find customers. Emails and calls are necessary evils -- I hate doing them, but what am I supposed to do? Just wait for people to come to us? They've never heard of my company, and its a risk to work with a startup. So, the bulk of my time with them, if I get them on the phone, is convincing them that my boutique firm can over serve the big players. Also, I don't have a "team" behind me -- I do everything. Opening, qualifying, meetings, closing, negotiating contracts. Your MNC interviewer has likely never had to do all of these things.
I also have to be technical -- I don't have a technical background, but I'm having to learn as fast als possible. It comes down to learning the costomers poblems faster, knowing the idiosyncrasies of my product, and being able to discuss solutions without having to "go back to my tech team," which is common with bigcos.
In all, its just the fundamental difference between large and small organizations. I assume there are also parallels on the development side.
The other assumption he made was this: since I sell, it's unlikely that I was technical as well. And that was that. I am a little taken aback that such dinosaurs exist. Selling is hard, even more so when people in delivery just don't trust you to sell on their behalf.
I am still recovering from what was probably the shortest interview in my career. What do you make of these statements?
Believe me, if you're good, this is to your advantage: the team "behind" a salesperson in an MNC soaks up their time and energy with enforcing consistent data entry and deduplication across at least four legacy CRM systems, utterly spurious pipeline analysis for the benefit of the management accountants and once management decides to step in with some meaningless metrics that might have worked in another industry, you'll probably end up meeting people without either of you having any idea why you're there. And that's in addition to all the non-sales-specific inane big company bureaucracy. There's a process to follow but its generally less efficient than winging it and whilst there might be people that, in theory, do things like marketing for you, you probably spend more time fielding their questions than they do assisting you.
I like to think of it as MNCs trying to level the playing field with those who actually need to work to find the customers first.
I mostly play in low-value per customer markets, which obviously operate on different principles, so I focus on building my brand rather than selling units.
The interesting thing is that when I move in to higher value markets, like when I'm selling myself as an overpriced consultant? I find that my brand enables me to take the same efficient marketing principles and apply them to higher-value products. The other day I mentioned in passing on HN that I was looking for some consulting work, and I got a very qualified lead knocking on my door.
So yeah; I think you are underestimating the brand power that startups can have. Sure, you aren't going to have cisco's brand power, but assuming you have a reasonable value proposition vs. those large players, you /can/ build your reputation to the point where qualified leads come to you.