
Corporate Sales 101
Discover how understanding your product, building meaningful customer relationships, and asking the right questions can lead to corporate sales success. Learn the importance of persistence and maintaining a human touch in sales for professionals.
Hi, I'm Nil, have I ever told you about myself? My favorite part of my professional life is sales. It's a profession where the more you define your own style and are aware of yourself, the more successful you are in this job. If I have to go back to the beginning of my article, talking about myself, the purpose of this blog is to share my professional life experiences and my new learnings, in other words, my lessons that I continue to experience with great pleasure every passing day.
Now let's talk about sales. I had write successful stories in the field of corporate sales (B2B) in the growth years of one of Turkey's leading start-up and was later deemed worthy of the leadership position in the sales team. We would learn incredibly and achieve incredible success with my sales team, which was a real sales hunter team. When I asked myself what made us successful, my answer was that we could write the book of our job without having to think about it.
The Secret to Success in Corporate Sales: Writing the Book of Your Job
First of all, we knew our product very well. The product we sold was software that called SaaS, which provides its users with a service that can be accessed over the internet in its simplest form. My favorite aspect of our program was that it provided a service that facilitated the financial affairs of small, medium and large companies and offered real benefits to its users. We also sold this service to tradesmen, company owners, entrepreneurs and employees in finance departments. We would communicate with our customers knowing that we were interrupting their day. This also means knowing your target audience well. This audience can be busy, can sink money in an instant, can put their business at risk, etc. Therefore, our priority was always to be a professional friend. We would get to know people and their businesses well and introduce our product, which we were already very good at. As I mentioned in my previous article Looping Tactic, the tactic of being a professional friend is exactly this; your customer on the other side is also a human being and you should be providing a benefit to this person. Because as I said at the beginning, we were aware that we were interrupting people's day. So? If I'm interrupting this person's day, shouldn't I offer this person a privilege? This is exactly the most enjoyable part, after asking questions to the customer and listening to them thoroughly, we would explain the solution we could offer with our product, the ease of life and their new life.
There were many other things that were special about this company, team and product. Like the product being really useful, the company culture being special and the existence of team spirit. In fact, everything was there to do our job well, and that's exactly why we did it well in a way that suits our product.
When I say everything was there to do our job well, everything was really there, we need to know that passion also accompanies us. No matter what job it is, if I do it for a purpose, if I touch someone's life and contribute to them, my purpose is combined with passion. There was passion in this company culture. Passion made it child's play for us to be able to write the book of our job. The expression child's toy represents the toys I enjoy playing with. Exactly that.
Sales Hunters
Every sales specialist has a special profile. Both their own profile is privileged and the profiles they sell to. The salesperson's own profile, from the tone of voice to the gestures and facial expressions they use, gives them a difference and a character, and following this, there are customer profiles where this character captures very good energy and makes sales easily. However, there is a fact that brings all successful salespeople together in the middle. They are hunters. So what is being a hunter in sales? In my opinion, both in my own sales and business consultancy work and in the teams I lead, hunting is a characteristic that should be in every job at every stage of sales. Hunting means not missing any opportunities. Did a customer mention another friend or acquaintance who is thinking of buying your product? The hunter profiles do their best to get that person's information and sell to that friend. Did the customer say they would definitely buy months later? Months later, they call again with the same energy without giving up and close the sale. Is the customer not buying because of a deficiency in your product? They do their best to eliminate that deficiency and do not leave the top of the product team. This list goes on and on… In short, hunters smell the opportunity, follow it and make the most of that opportunity.
Hunting means also seeking to learn. If I were to give an example of this, it comes from our special team that I mentioned in the previous title. At the end of each month, we would listen to the people who were successful and unsuccessful in that month. We would share their success stories, find inspiration for ourselves and learn. We would also understand the failure stories and talk about our own solution suggestions. A team that is sharing and hungry for learning means a team of real sales hunters to me.
Finally, I would like to add this to this title, there was a saying written on our wall in the office for months: “Seek first to understand then to be understood.” Hunters do everything they can to first understand very well, and then to be understood very well…
Corporate Sales 101
We talked in detail about how we are the hunters who knows they are interrupting peoples day. Now let’s come to corporate sales 101. Since we said 101, this article should actually be about the main rules of corporate sales. So what are our main rules?
In this diagram, which I prepared a few visual options and selected from them, I tried to visualize the cycle that we should keep in mind and follow over and over again in every conversation we have with our customers. I should know my customer well, ask questions, listen, explain my product well, talk about my professional identity well and mention the successes of the company I work for. Of course, we should do these in harmony, in other words, in a flow. For example, our customer said I am good, how are you, and we said I will tell you about our company right now. Of course, this is not possible. Successful sales people cause the subject to open up. For example, when a customer says I am good, how are you, we say we are very good, our company achieved great success recently, so the celebratory atmosphere in our office affects us positively, I hope I can pass this energy on to you, etc. Here, the salesperson creates harmony, since my style is sincere and humorous, the example I gave from myself was a bit sincere. You can fill in the headings in this diagram completely according to your own style. The important thing is to comply with these rules in every conversation and to fill them out and improve them more with every new experience.
If you want to be a good salesperson and stay a good salesperson, your first rule is to ask the right questions and really listen. Really…
There is another topic I want to talk about under this heading. Sales is a profession that I respect, the biggest responsibility of respecting this profession is to sell the product that I believe in and find useful. This is the biggest reason why I switched to consulting and do short-term project based jobs. There is a purpose and passion that does not leave the truth that I want to help and share my experiences. If the product is not useful enough or I do not like it in any way, that is, frankly, I cannot be modest, if I do not want to sell the product, I create a strategy for how to do it, shape the team's digital world (crm, reporting, data categorization, etc.) and finalize the project. I worked hard to get to this level and now I can make my choices. I wish all sales enthusiasts to achieve much better success, my heart is with you. Anyway, I shouldn't talk too spiritually and emotionally, then its hard to stop... Let's get back to the topic. Selling a product you find useful, in a company you appreciate and with a team you love is an invaluable feeling. Such a great goal.
Sales is a process and this process can be long or short. The closing process of the sale varies depending on the product we sell, target audience, price, and operation process. Now let's look at these processes.
Follow-Up Rules
There are sales that are closed in the first meeting, which we call one call sales, and yes, it makes you very happy when you do it, but when we look at the big picture, this rate is low. That's why the salesperson needs to do regular follow-ups. The notes we take in every conversation we have in order to remember our customers we follow up with are very important. These should also be personal, that is; if our customer tells us about their health, work or any other problem when we call or reach them through any channel, we convey a personal and beautiful energy like how are you, I wish you the best, and we also show that we remember that person and what they said. In my opinion, the approach of doing these things tactically and saying that they have to be done is incredibly wrong. Because sales is the job where human relations are the most intense. If you say "I don't care, it's their own trouble." and you feel like you have to have many conversations like these every day, you don't need to read the rest of my article because sales is a human relations business. It is necessary to convey value to people tirelessly. This value can be personal or professional, it doesn't matter. If you don't like human relations and socialization, then sales is not your job. In my previous teams, there were people who made sales without establishing sincerity and capturing that energy, I can't say that they don't. But in terms of pleasure, the pleasure they felt was not the pleasure this job deserved and they were happier in other jobs as they progressed in their careers.
Let's get back to the follow-up topic, remembering is our most important rule. Imagine you are talking to your friends, if they told you something important in the previous meeting, wouldn't it make them feel valuable if you remember it and ask what happened to that job or that situation? Exactly that. When we do follow-up, we make our customers feel valuable and we don't end the meeting without getting the answer about when they plan to buy our product. Look, this topic is also very important for the following reason; If your product's sales closing process is long, when you are a professional friend, they won't get up and say "Why are you calling me every 3 days or every week?" Politeness and mutual respect prevail in your communications with your customers. This largely protects us from harsh rejections.
Among the secrets of being a successful salesperson, we talked about being a hunter. Is it enough to be good at hunting? No. For me, there is a harmony in corporate sales and all other jobs. How does harmony occur? In corporate sales, "hunting" requires catching opportunities in the short term, taking action immediately and being alert at all times; while "farming" represents establishing long-term relationships, nurturing and growing customers and patiently waiting for the day when it will bear fruit.
A successful sales professional should establish a good balance between these two approaches. While the hunter focuses on evaluating opportunities quickly and closing the sale; the farmer focuses on patiently closing the sale by establishing a solid, trust-based relationship with the customer. Although it may seem difficult to apply the harmony of these two, it is actually incredibly simple and incredibly successful. As a hunter salesperson, you should know where you need to be aggressive, I am saying this from my own experience, which was something I never knew at first, but I can say that I learned by directing myself in different directions with harsh rejections. When chasing opportunities, it may be necessary to get results quickly or it may just be you who wants it that way. I understand this very well. As a farmer, you should patiently grow long-term relationships and be in constant communication to gain the trust and sincerity of the customer. While acting strategically like hunters that exist in nature, you should also nurture relationships like farmers, which I think humans do best, representing integration and nourishment with the existence of nature, and make the customer loyal in the long term. When you establish the balance between these two different approaches, your harmony is now ready. Well, we did all of these and our sales did not close. Now that we have learned the concepts of hunter and farmer, it is time to talk about the benefits of these concepts in the big picture.
Corporate Sales and Funnel Management
Funnel management, as we see in our visual, explains this very clearly and explicitly. The number entering from the top of our funnel is always different from the number exiting from the bottom. This reveals the conversion rate, or success rate of the salesperson. While our success rate is emerging, we plant many seeds; if we meet with 100 customers and sell to 30 of them, the remaining 70 have chosen not to buy our product for certain reasons. From my perspective, today’s unclosed sales are tomorrow’s closed sales. We establish synergy by establishing communication with our customers from the beginning of this funnel. The synergy we create will undoubtedly provide us with returns. This is not a belief system, it is reality. It is a reality that I have experienced a lot in the products I sell one-on-one and that I have also seen in the teams I provide consultancy to. A corporate customer who does not need your product today may need it tomorrow, and a customer who cannot allocate a budget for your product today may allocate one tomorrow. Successful sales people always work with this mindset. This is a cycle, like the cycle of nature. If the seed I plant today does not bear fruit tomorrow, it will bear fruit the following month or the following year…
I may be perceived as speaking very positively, but if you love sales and have done this job with passion and continue to do it, I know very well that you will find certain points in what I have said.
Also, since we talked about the funnel, let me make a funny addition. With this special team that I mentioned at the beginning of my article, we used this funnel both in our sales and when we were getting crazy we would put this funnel on the head. In other words, our saying was like I got crazy because of my funnel and then i put it on my head, literally…
Dealing with Long-Lasting Processes and Rejection
I talked to a former manager of mine whom I met while writing this article. When I asked him what he thought about corporate sales, he said B2B is the best. When we talked about it in detail, what he actually meant here was that selling to SMEs (small, medium and large-scale enterprises) is great, it is easy. However, the enterprise level in this category is a bit of a matter of patience. Why patience? No matter how well we do our job, we may not be able to close a sale or it may take a long time to close it due to the product we sell and our target audience. What we do in corporate sales is to sell to companies. As the size of these companies grow, the process of closing the sale may also take longer. The prolonged process can sometimes tire us salespeople and a more meticulous process may be required. It is necessary to meet demands, be accessible and continue the process without losing patience and maintaining the same energy.
In addition, we need to know very well why we lost our customers. Mistakes may have been made by us during the process or we may have lost them due to commitments from them that they will buy our product in the future.
Whatever reason we could not close a sale should be a learning for us. Sales is a dynamic job. In fact, as every job should be. While a salesperson improves themselves and tries to be better every day, the company they work for and the product they sell should also be progressing with this momentum. Satisfaction starts here. As I mentioned at the beginning of my article, we first understand very well and then try to be understood, at every stage of our work. Every rejection should be a new direction for a salesperson. I once wrote this statement on a piece of paper and pasted it on my computer. Because it is very likely to take rejections personally, especially if you are at the very beginning of your career. Of course, I and my team have made this mistake. Also, it is not humanly possible to always know and apply this fact very well. One day my mood is good enough and I do not take any rejection personally, but one day my mood is bad and I take that rejection personally. Being professional only means reducing the rate of occurrence of the negative effect. I think it is not very possible to get rid of it completely in human psychology. Therefore, if rejections reorient us, it is an inevitable fact that we will be more successful day by day.
Well, we have done all of these things we have talked about, but when we look back, can we not find what we did wrong or incompletely for that customer in our dynamic workflow? Is something going wrong? This is the best part, but not just in business, but in life as well…
Stories
“Stories connect people, have a story about your product.”
I used to read this quote a lot and repeat it. I sold a lot of products whose stories I could tell, created a connection and achieved great success. I recently came across a very simple explanation of storytelling. I will share a section from one of my favorite authors, Brene Brown’s book “Rising Strong”, which has become a weekend read and I can’t put it down:
“The idea that we are designed for stories is more than just a sentence that sticks in your mouth. Neuroeconomist Paul Zak discovered that listening to a story—a narrative with a beginning, middle and end—causes our brains to release cortisol and oxytocin. These chemicals trigger the abilities to connect, empathize, and create meaning that are unique to humans. Stories are literally in our DNA.”
I have always enjoyed listening to storytellers throughout my life, and when I learned to apply this to my work, I felt like I had unlocked a key. But I will say it again to everyone who reads my article. If you do not enjoy human relationships, storytelling, and listening to stories, sales is not your job. Humans are such powerful beings by nature and structure that they deserve to spend their lives doing what they enjoy.
I talked about creating harmony in our "Corporate Sales 101" section. Storytelling creates harmony, and this harmony connects people. Even the slightest connection greatly affects my preferences as a consumer. As an individual who loves human relationships and being able to make someone’s life easier and touch them, sales will be a job that I will never be able to escape from, and that I do not want to escape from.
I have also known people who gave up sales jobs in previous companies I consulted for, simply because of the company founder’s impertinent and unprofessional behavior. It is not enough to know how to do this job correctly to be respectful, as you progress in your career, that is, as you reach leadership positions, you need to know how to manage correctly. I think that making people think that this job is not for them is a huge mistake that companies and managers, and sometimes even teammates, make.
Final Words from Nil
In this blog post, I tried to explain corporate sales in my own language as much as I could with my professional life experiences. If you have read this long post up to this point, I would also like to thank you. I have met many people in my business life who have very valuable information and yet have never been able to convey this valuable information. Therefore, my goal is to be able to convey my information accurately and modestly as I learn and grow in my professional life. As sales enthusiasts, you may have read my post right now, perhaps at the beginning of the road or as someone who has advanced in their career. I would like to have created a harmony in your mind. The magnificent harmony of being a hunter and a farmer, telling stories and doing what you love. If you want to capture this harmony and are having difficulty, please do not hesitate to send an e-mail or a message. We deserve to talk, share, be inspire and be inspired. With the hope that we will plant beautiful seeds together…