In Episode 44 of Razorleaf’s Stay Sharp podcast, How to Get the Most Out of Your Sales Team, co-hosts Jen Ferello and Jonathan Scott welcome returning guest Derek Neiding, Vice President of Sales at Razorleaf. Together, the threesome examine the often-maligned role of sales people, digging into the good and the bad types, why we should think of them as “sales professionals,” and the unique value they can bring to customers.
Jonathan starts the conversation by asking what value salespeople can bring to organizations that want to undergo a digital transformation—noting that the role is loaded with stereotypes, and they can easily get a bad rap. Jen, a sales professional herself, chimes in, “It’s not just from the customer side. Sometimes the product and services people aren’t all that happy with the salespeople either.”
Jonathan admits to his own frustrations, saying “people inside the delivery part of an organization can get frustrated with salespeople because they think they over-promise, they over-commit, and they set the relationship up for failure.” Derek adds the common perception that salespeople are “coin-operated.” But he points out, “I continued to think that until I started working with some true sales professionals and saw what value they brought. There’s something important that that guy’s doing.”
Change Your Perspective on the Sales Role
The coin-operated perspective, Jonathan explains, comes from a commission-based model where salespeople are compensated and incentivized based on how much they sell. And that can lead to the sense that salespeople don’t care about whether a product and customer are a fit or not, they’re only in it to make the sale. There is a benefit to that model, Jen points out, such as prioritizing deals that will close. But she also notes that better service can come from a commission structure that Derek describes, where the sales team doesn’t receive compensation until the delivery team starts meeting deliverables.
“If that doesn’t happen,” Derek says, “if he undersold the project, if he oversold the project…then he’s not going to get the compensation he was anticipating. He needs to stay invested and that causes him also to think about making sure that what we’re offering is something that we can actually do and we can do well.” Jonathan goes on to make the point that in some respect, we’re all coin-operated. We’re all working for pay. He adds, “There’s good models of that and bad models of that. You can’t assume everybody as a bad model.”
The Salesperson vs. The Sales Professional
Jen defines the difference between the stereotypical salesperson and a sales professional as “them understanding their own value to the organization and to the customer. My value to the customer is to bring my industry knowledge, my breadth of experience, my connections, to our relationship and to help them solve their problem. Conversely, my value to my organization is to represent the product service fairly and protect my technical resources.”
Jonathan adds that the best salespeople he’s seen are matchmakers, because they take the time to understand both sides of a relationship and ensure they’ll fit together. He also notes that this kind of role is particularly useful in the space Razorleaf is in, where there’s no such thing as a commodity. “You can’t just go buy a digital twin,” he says. “There’s a lot of value in that matchmaking, in finding those relationships and making them happen.”
Trust Experts in Their Roles
Much like travel agents or concierges, good salespeople have a broad view and knowledge of the industry. Because of that perspective, they’re often especially good at helping customers identify the business problem they’re trying to solve, as well as connecting businesses and customers together. Derek says that smart companies—vendors and customers—make use of sales pros for their experience and their ability to level-set on the best approach for what the customer is trying to accomplish.
The trio also spends time discussing exactly what sales professionals bring to the table that other roles do not, including thinking bigger-picture based on what they’ve seen and helping to seek solutions that are unconstrained by what engineering knows how to do or likes to do. Derek explains, “Their job is to have a variety of information at a high level across a lot of things and know where the industry is going. If you utilize them for that, you’ll have a lot of knowledge at your disposal.” The key is to understand what they are expert at, and make use of them for that expertise, but not expect them to be expert in other areas.
Learn More About the Value Sales Can Bring
The full podcast episode offers more details including why one of Derek’s sales team says he sells trust instead of services, how sales professionals can even help customers identify the appropriate budget, when sales professionals are better people to have around than technical folks, and more.
Check out the full conversation in Stay Sharp Episode 44: How to Get the Most Out of Your Sales Team, and join us each week for a new podcast.
Follow the Razorleaf Podcast, Stay Sharp in Digital Engineering on:
