Last week Martin Desrosiers and I stopped at a nice little restaurant in Belgrade. We had a few hours before a meeting with our new local partner. Hungry and sleep-deprived from four days on tour across Europe, we just wanted some comfort food. What happened next was definitely unexpected...
A friendly waiter approached.
“Hello, sir, you must be from Australia, right?”
It was a wild guess on his part, and it was wrong.
“Nope, I’m from Quebec, Canada,” Martin said.
There was an awkward moment, and I figured our conversation with the waiter was over.
Boy, was I wrong!
For the next hour, Goran, the waiter in this lovely Italian restaurant in the middle of the picturesque city of Belgrade, gave us a lunch-time masterclass of top-notch sales techniques. The exact techniques I’m looking for in candidates applying for positions on our worldwide sales teams at Brand Embassy.
Goran was happy to ask questions, take guesses, make jokes, and devotedly take care of us. I was amazed that someone like him wasn’t making a six-figure salary in London or Palo Alto. Let me share some of this guy’s quotes and why I believe they can serve as a cookbook of best practices for any aspiring software sales super(wo)men.
“Forget the menu, what would you like to eat today?”
Identify the customer’s challenges and plans rather than spitting out the featured offer. Forget “we have this model for startup companies and this one for enterprises.” Approach the customer by asking what makes their job difficult, what they’d like to achieve immediately, and what they want to accomplish in the long term.
“Where are you from? What good restaurants do you have there?”
Identifying customer preferences and successfully assessing the competition doesn’t have to be difficult. Just ask the right questions and listen carefully to get a holistic view of the prospect. How advanced in the industry is your local market? Who are the best players? Do you aspire to become one of them? Engage the customer by asking questions that matter to both of you.
“You said ‘something cute to eat,’ so I’m bringing you something cute.”
Using customer terminology and seeking individual opinions to form a customized offering makes all the difference when you’re preparing a proposal. Provide a customized offer at the right moment (generally as late as possible in the sales process), after you’ve mapped out the customer’s preferences and expected results. This makes the win rate much more predictable than when you just email a standard price proposal right after the demo.
“Don’t have time for steak? I’ll show you one anyway, just in case you come again tomorrow.”
Focus on building a long-term relationship rather than getting a quick sale. This gives you credibility in the customer’s eyes. Plus, you never know what the future will bring for business. Approaching an existing contact that respects you makes things a whole lot easier.
“You’re from Canada and you’re from Czechia? How do Canadians feel about inventing ice hockey, only to have the Czechs master it?”
This is a perfect example of using knowledge of the local market to build human connections through humor. The result is a relationship that’s bigger than business as usual. Gaining general knowledge of different cultures and what’s going on in the world is never a waste of time. It requires a bit of courage, but using the right knowledge to have some fun will melt the heart of even the most bored manager.
“Come tomorrow, drinks on me!”
Getting a customer excited about the next purchase so they actually look forward to your next upsell opportunity? That’s sales perfection in practice. How about offering a free new feature in advanced beta to a selected customer? That would make them feel pretty special, right?
Goran was a rockstar. But nobody is born sales rockstar. Learning and failing forward is what makes a salesperson a future king of sales and a very wealthy (wo)man.
“Join us if you’re ready to fail forward.” (This is me speaking.)
At Brand Embassy, we’ve recently started a global partnership with NICE inContact, the $2bn Gartner Magic Quadrant Leader, and we’ve opened sales representations in Argentina and Mexico. No, our journey hasn’t always been fun. We fail sometimes, but we always come out stronger than ever. And now, we’re expanding our Spain & Latin America Team to help thousands of enterprises digitally transform their customer service to take better care of customers like you and me.
Want to become Brand Embassy’s new Enterprise Account Manager and Enterprise Sales Manager for Spain & Latin America? Apply here and next time it might be you and I going for lunch together.
Because you must be from Australia, right?
