He Sells Seashells on the Seashore

Puri is a small and bustling city on the Eastern coast of India, lesser known than the tech hubs like Bangalore or Hyderabad. Since ancient times, Puri has been a religious and cultural center.  Today, people come from around the world to partake in its history, pray at its famous temple, and enjoy activities along its coastline.  I got the chance to spend a couple of days in Puri for the first time ever as part of a recent trip to India.

I stayed close to Puri’s famous Golden Beach and decided to enjoy a sunset by the waves.  As can be common in India, beaches in towns like this attract tourists from the world over, and consequently, many local vendors peddling their wares.

Within a few minutes of sitting down, I was approached by one such peddler selling seashells.  Truth be told, I was a bit irritated.  I wanted to enjoy the evening and solitude, not deal with a salesman. I acknowledged his greeting and told him very quickly that I was not interested in buying anything. What happened next was such a stellar display of salesmanship that I decided it was worth sharing.

First, I expected the guy to walk away and move on to the next prospective customer, given my lack of interest in buying.  But the man was unfazed. I detected not a shred of disappointment. He stood right there and continued as if the bullet of rejection I had fired at him had just ricocheted without doing any harm. I later reflected on the parallels to prospecting. When sales reps or SDRs prospect, their biggest fear is rejection. The inertia of picking up that phone and getting rejected again and again is much talked about.  When you think about it logically, rejection should be the expected outcome. This peddler interrupted my evening at an inopportune moment when I was not looking for seashells. In fact, I was never in the market for seashells. This is exactly what happens when we prospect. Why should we expect anything but rejection when we catch someone amid their busy day and expect them to be interested in our software. 

What happened next is even more interesting. The peddler acknowledges my desire to not purchase anything but insists on showing me his wares should I change my mind or want to tell my friends. If I am to believe him, this is the most incredible long-term view a salesperson could take. I found it even more compelling, considering that the chances he would see me after that evening were near zero.  Not so in our tech business, where we can continue to engage our prospects digitally or through events after an initial call. From his long experience, he knew that when he approached someone like me, he was simply looking to plant a seed, not to pluck a ripe and juicy fruit instantly.  How and when these seeds yielded fruit was not something he could control, and he acted with ostensible disregard for the outcome.

Then again, what other choice does the salesperson have?  Walk away, conclude the conversation, and you are none the wiser, nor is your prospect.  Your chances of any future sales are zero. So, the man persisted with cool aplomb. 

By now, the student in me was really intrigued and I decided to indulge his request.  He sits down on the sand next to me and opens a big bag containing all manner of shells.  First, he proudly displays a big grand shell and blows into it like a trumpet.  It packed an incredible acoustic punch. I tell him it’s very nice but that I am traveling light and don’t have a lot of space in my bags. In hindsight, I have no idea why I volunteered that information, but I guess I did. He immediately pivots and shows me shells that are much smaller, making the case to me that they are easier to pack. I stay stern on the fact that I don’t want to buy anything. He pivots again to show me pearls and educates me that each one has its own unique signature and that they make great gifts. As this conversation is unfolding, he subtly does a couple of other things. He asks me short questions between displays of different shells, such as “How long you are here for?” and “Where are you from?”.  He intersperses this with a few bits about himself: that he is a local fisherman, that he also sells his fish to local companies, and so on. There was an authenticity about him that made me continue the conversation for about 15-20 min. 

When I reflected on this entire interaction later, I realized he was intuitively practicing some of the fundamental ideas we try and coach salespeople on. 

First, withstand and respectfully overcome the blunt force trauma of rejection. Nothing good happens if you cannot.

Second, engage your customer in a dialog.  Learn about them and discover their needs.  This is not easy to do and is an art, especially during a first interaction. Every human has a desire to solve their challenges, but they must get over a trust barrier with a stranger, especially one who is trying to sell them something. Prospects are no different. However, once you scale that barrier, you will get somewhere.  The very act of engaging in a dialog allows you to discover more. It is almost guaranteed that a prospect, once engaged, will share valuable information (such as my admission that I was traveling with limited baggage space).  However, it must be done in a sincere and authentic manner. There is nothing deceitful about this effort because this is the foundation for how you can solve a customer's need.

Third, the vendor didn’t just vomit information about his products or try to dazzle me with their technical characteristics.  He sold their outcomes and educated me about seashells.  Shells that sound like trumpets if you are into music, or ornamental shells, or gifts for friends … all use cases his product solved.  Remember, this guy had no online intent signals to go after (e.g., analytics on white-paper downloads or webinar registrations). He had sincerity of purpose, strong engagement skills, and knew the value of his products extremely well.

Finally, he humanized himself and built credibility. In the business of enterprise software, people buy from people. Yes, customers are buying your product, but they are really buying the people they interact with. Therefore, building trust and credibility by humanizing yourself is critical. You are the face of the product and the company when you are talking to a customer.

I felt compelled to share these observations because they came from a place I least expected and yet are remarkably consistent with what we do in software sales. I guess this should not be a surprise since ‘sales’ is as old as human civilization. We just happen to be applying it to tech products. We have a lot of tools at our behest to send and track emails, deliver analytics, and so on. It’s easy to get bogged down in all of this and forget that the atomic core of sales is a human-to-human engagement. It’s a dialog that connects need and value. Remembering and perfecting this can never hurt.

As someone who started their career as an engineer, I find sales fascinating. It is inherently non-deterministic in that you can do everything right and still lose a deal. Aspects of sales can be scientific and data-driven, and yet much of it is an art.  It’s like sports, where you can keep getting better every day, both in your individual role and as a team, and yet there is no state of perfection where you have arrived. The process is its own reward.

Unfortunately, in some circles, salespeople have developed a bad reputation. They are perceived as wanting to make a quick buck and not really caring about the customer.   That’s a view that we as an industry have created. However, I have tremendous respect for people who have taken up a career in sales. It’s a tough job where you start all over after a deal or after a quarter. What you did yesterday is history, and you can’t rest on those laurels. Salespeople can and should be the real stewards of product value and customer delight. Doing so requires salespeople to take their craft seriously and invest in their own growth. Just look at the top performers, and you will find some of these common traits.

Finally, the humbling lesson for me was that there are great salespeople all around us, often in the most unexpected places. They may not sell enterprise software or even technology. The next time you buy something, pay attention, and you may find big rocks or little nuggets from others that you can incorporate into your own repertoire. If you remain an ardent student of your craft, you will enjoy the process, and success will follow.  It has no choice but to!