If they aren’t buying, stop selling

I just dropped out of a Linkedin discussion group thread called “5 Qualities of a Great Salesman”. It’s one of those “discussions” impeded by self-promotion, with someone upping the anti to 7 and others contesting what the number should be.

Apparently misunderstanding the assignment, I briefly suggested that the ability to explore a customer’s need was important, to which one participant replied: “Solely understanding the customer's need is not enough, the word "need" had gone out of marketing dictionaries since WWII.”

Here’s the point I would try to make, were anyone listening:

Whether a great sales person should have 5 qualities or 10, they should all add up to the one quality of helping a customer solve a set of problems. In any engineered or considered purchase situation, when a sales person finds that the customer is not buying, then he or she should stop selling and start listening.

I suspect the problem with this discussion group is that they are all classically trained salespeople. They are mostly selling and not listening.

JB