Heeding the Customer

Who can doubt that a born salesperson with a disarming manner and a comprehensive sales plan can persuade a carefully qualified buyer to make a major purchase? The four HBR classics that follow explain, separately, the native qualities of the successful salesperson, how to identify the people worth approaching, how to overcome the typical buyer’s resistance to standard selling techniques, and how to transform the selling effort into a coherent process that results in a contented but still receptive customer. The first article, “Making the Major Sale,” by Benson P. Shapiro and Ronald S. Posner, proposes implementing a methodical, eight-stage process when the size of the transaction both demands and justifies the effort involved. The authors suggest that a credible third party introduce the sales team to the true decision makers, from whom the team elicits information about the company’s needs. The sales presentation that ensues is more likely to take into consideration the purchase’s impact on the company’s operations and budget. Because each successive stage of the process rests on the successful execution of the previous one, the sale’s actual close seems almost anticlimactic. Although some sales, such as of a company, can be so large that they are unlikely to recur, the authors note, in general it is a good idea for the salesperson to continue nurturing the account relationship by indicating other areas of service available and ensuring that the purchase does not subsequently disappoint. A rational selling process like the one Shapiro and Posner describe assumes a buying process that is no less so. Consequently, the techniques developed to overcome coolheaded consideration, which have given sales a bad name, can be counterproductive, according to Edward C. Bursk in “Low-Pressure Selling.” The point is to avoid arousing a buyer’s defenses and to “unleash the buying urge,” which the author maintains exists a priori. A gratis analysis of the buyer’s situation informed by a sincere concern for the buyer’s wants and needs and the product’s fitness for satisfying them can be far more productive than the quasicoercive tactics some salespeople still favor, which may in fact conceal the extent of the prospect’s interest in one’s offering. A salesperson equipped to discern a buyer’s unarticulated requirements has “empathy,” claim David Mayer and Herbert M. Greenberg in “What Makes a Good Salesman.” But empathy by itself is never enough. Effective salespeople must not only care about the customer, they must also care enough about themselves to hunger for the conquest. One might think it is the rare salesperson who possesses this combination of almost contradictory qualities. The authors’ studies found that approximately one person in five has it but that it must be inborn. Although it may be possible to describe the ideal salesperson, the concept of “buyer,” with his or her singular psychology and motivations, is a terrible oversimplification, says Thomas V. Bonoma in “Major Sales: Who Really Does the Buying?” To be successful, a salesperson must have “a feel for the buying center”—that is, a sense of where and by whom the decision actually gets made and who would be in a position to influence or block it. To develop that feel requires much digging, since “the decision-making unit” usually does not appear on an organizational chart. A sales effort characterized by aggressive but intuitive salespeople in pursuit of distinctive but collective prospects undeniably requires much judgment and planning. A sophisticated sales department will take the trouble if it means increasing sales and eliminating brute force and buyer’s remorse. —The Editors

Heeding the Customer

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