Years ago, I was interviewing for my first sales job. I was sitting across the desk from the vice president of sales. I’d been through a few rounds of the interview process and had completed the last stage of the process, which was an assessment. So I was thinking things were going pretty well. I was expecting that this would be my chance to get an offer. And that’s when the vice president of sales looked at me and said, “You know, Scott, everything in our sales assessment says that you are not going to be successful in sales.” All right. That hurt. But he went on to say, “Our assessment data essentially say that you are going to be too focused on the client relationship. And that you’ll spend too much time being concerned with the clients’ issues and the client relationship to press for the close. I just can’t hire you.”
That was tough, and I felt awful. He said that I had “high closing reluctance” or something like that. It sounded like a disease or an illness of some kind: high closing reluctance. I was devastated at the time. But I got over it. And what I know now is that his data were absolutely right. It was the conclusion that he drew from that data that was misguided and wrong. See, I was very much interested in doing work with clients, working closely with them to solve problems and address issues and help them to meet their goals, much the way you work with your clients. I wanted those things.
But what was completely unappealing to me was this idea of being somewhat aggressive in the sales process and pressing for the close. Now, in their mind, that meant I’d be a lousy closer. Well, four years later, I was finishing up my year as the No. 2 salesperson worldwide in a division of a Fortune 500 company. After that, I went on to be a senior vice president of sales and an executive vice president of sales, each time leading companies to record levels of revenue and profit. And the difference, the reason that we were able to achieve those objectives, was because we focused on creating relationships that were based on value. By sharing expertise and sharing insight, and not worrying about what we were selling, the products or services, in a world of competing alternatives, the thing that makes the difference is the quality of the client relationship and how we use that relationship to create value for our clients.
Scott Edinger is an expert on leadership for revenue growth and has been hired by companies like AT&T, Lenovo and the Los Angeles Times to work with their senior leaders on the topic. Hear more in the May episode of MDRT Presents:
I totally agree. My experience has been that clients do not care how much I know, rather they want to know how much I care. That eludes to Scott Edingers point that cementing the relationship first, generally leads to a successful business relationship later.
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