"Great listeners are great sales people."
- Tom Peters
sales.
In my first full-time sales role, I spent two years (1997 -
1999) as an account manager for an IT staff augmentation
firm called Software Synergy Inc. I owned the Eli Lilly
account, and it was a big one: there were weeks in 1998
when I had more than 40 new open positions for IT
contractors at Lilly. I was competing against 8 other
preferred vendors who dedicated between 2 and 4 people
to the Lilly account. I had no other dedicated help from my
company, and I had to compete with my fellow account
managers for access to talent. It was a great experience,
though, because I had the opportunity to assist with
recruiting, mentor & coach consultants, and do everything
else involved in nurturing and growing a major account for
a professional services firm. Thanks to some excellent
recruiters (who attracted good talent), I grew our consulting
staff at Lilly from 23 to 57 people.
More recently, I spent three years as Director of Business
Development for business intelligence consulting firm
Pinnacle Solutions. My accomplishments in that role are
described here.
I never stopped selling in the years between those two
roles. I joined a couple of e-commerce startups as
business development manager, but the dot-com bubble
had already run its course, and neither gig had a happy
ending (two lessons in failure). Spent time between jobs
selling myself as an independent statistical analysis
consultant.
Looking back, though, I never entered the field of sales with
the idea that I wanted to become the guy who could "sell
ice to an Eskimo." My sole intent was to simply become a
better communicator -- a skill I knew would serve me well
for the rest of my career. At the time, I thought that being a
better communicator only meant being a smoother talker
and presenter. I gradually learned to spend more time
(70% is my rule of thumb) asking questions and listening,
less time (30%) talking.
In the process of honing my own unique selling skills, I also
learned to become a better speaker. I'm now at a point
where I nearly crave opportunities to do presentations -- to
tell a story.
I'll end with a couple of quotes by Tom Peters which inspire
my selling efforts to this day:
- If every quarter is a 'little better' than the prior quarter,
then you are not taking any serious risks.
"THANK YOU" notes: World's highest-return investment!
email at =curt
spammers from grabbing my
email address.
