Defense to Offense…

A friend of mine made a career “pivot”.  After 20+ years in a pre-sales role, he was moving into a sales rep position.  I welcomed him to the “Dark Side” LOL!

His position of  “Sales Consultant” aka SC with his company was being eliminated.  His company offered him a sales role because they didn’t want him to leave.  Employee retention - quite a compliment in today’s technology field. 

He called me for a little coaching.  He wasn’t exactly sure what he just signed up for.  I began by suggesting he change his mindset from playing “defense” to playing “offense”. 

I’ve been around long enough to remember why pre-sales roles were added to begin with.  Companies were concerned that salespeople (playing offense) would, let’s just say “over-commit”.  So, they inserted a product/technology expert (typically from the operations side of the business) to play defense and protect the company from being put in a bad position. 

In my career I never purposely misled a prospect.  However, every deal has gray areas aka “hair”, aka “stretches”.  The sales rep must maintain confidence in our ability to meet or exceed our prospects’ expectations, regardless of any, let’s just say “complexities”.  One of my favorites, Mahan Khalsa who wrote Let’s Get Real or Let’s Not Play ©, offered this technique: 

… Preemptive negotiation… 'Out of curiosity, have you ever experienced an installation of this scale that went absolutely perfectly?'  When they say no, we can continue, 'And neither have we’. 

My friend was now moving into that preemptive (aka offensive) role.  

I didn’t have a concern about his ability to perform.  He was going to carry an individual quota but that’s no worries.  Others often speculate about quota performance: 

People always question whether a guy can perform when the lights come on.  The magnitude of a game is manufactured by those who sell it, not by those who play it.  The lights are always on. 

Nate Jackson             

Well, he’s been in enough “big games” to dispel any worries about shrinking when the “lights come on”. 

Then there’s “Cold Calling”.   Again, I knew him well enough to know he was fearless: 

Call Reluctance:

The difference between greatness and failure in sales is that the great salesperson is not paralyzed by this fear.  He is blessed with another talent, the relating talent of confrontation, that enables him to derive immense satisfaction from sparring with the prospect and overcoming resistance... Lacking this talent for confrontation, the bad salesperson simply feels the fear… 

Marcus Buckingham  

I suggested his new pursuit would come down to trusting the new pre-sales rep his company would now assign to his deals.  He was the sales rep now.  His job was to play offense and leave the defense to someone else.  Or, to quote the great football coach Bill Belichick, “Just play your position”. 

GAP 

When life gets tough we could get a helmet… or… we could leverage the peace and share the power of a positive perspective.