Preface: John Tan is CRO of Data#3 in Australia. He’s a great friend and client, leading one of the highest performing sales organizations I’ve encountered. John’s thoughts resonate with me because they span several perspectives. First, a personal perspective as a seller. Second, a leadership perspective as a CRO who cares deeply about the people on the team. Third, a vision of what we and our customers achieve through working together–and isn’t that our ultimate goal as sellers?
The sales journey is such a personal thing and everyone’s story is so different. I think thats what makes the sales game so interesting. As much as we try and apply firm logic to the approach it still requires human intuition and people engagement to get higher levels of success. Sure digital has its place but a lot of our customers have complex problems to solve, be heard and want trust as an underlying factor.
I had my first sales role selling shoes when I was in University. I loved the leaderboard, I loved getting out of my comfort zone as I wasn’t a natural outbound person but the competition pushed me to put that aside. I also have been a customer who has been sold to and I totally empathise with our sales team and how difficult it is to really know what challenges an organisation is going through.
These formed a foundation for me. My interest in selling today has evolved based on what we sell and why we do so. It is 3 fold:
Competition – I love competing and I love working with the sales teams on outwitting and outselling our competitors. I want our teams to feel the tension and reward of putting together compelling propositions which allows us to play to our strengths.
Transformation – working in technology allows us to change the way people go about their every days. Whether its Universities, Public Services, Hospitals, or Retail. The motivation and satisfaction we get from being a part of big projects means we are positively changing customer engagement, customer experience and productivity.
People – seeing people prosper and provide for their families through a successful sales career is very satisfying. Sales is such an exposed career that the results are very clear. The good side of that exposure is that it creates a possibility for people to also be successful in life through a competitive and rewarding career. For me this investment of success in their success is personally rewarding for me. I also often spend time coaching our managers on how best to foster this for the team as individuals.
Thanks for encouraging this conversation!!
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