{"id":408,"date":"2010-11-09T08:16:53","date_gmt":"2010-11-09T08:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/randfishkin.com\/blog\/?p=408"},"modified":"2010-11-09T09:04:09","modified_gmt":"2010-11-09T09:04:09","slug":"you-earned-that-bump-like-a-motherf-er","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/you-earned-that-bump-like-a-motherf-er\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;You Earned that Bump Like a MotherF&#8212;er&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not partial to expletives in my writing, but I&#8217;m making an exception with the embedded video below, which you should watch before reading the rest of the post (don&#8217;t worry, it&#8217;s enjoyable as well as instructive):<!--more--><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><object classid=\"clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" codebase=\"http:\/\/download.macromedia.com\/pub\/shockwave\/cabs\/flash\/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0\"><param name=\"allowFullScreen\" value=\"true\" \/><param name=\"allowscriptaccess\" value=\"always\" \/><param name=\"src\" value=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gE-uY7P3pe4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" \/><param name=\"allowfullscreen\" value=\"true\" \/><embed type=\"application\/x-shockwave-flash\" width=\"480\" height=\"385\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/v\/gE-uY7P3pe4?fs=1&amp;hl=en_US\" allowscriptaccess=\"always\" allowfullscreen=\"true\"><\/embed><\/object><\/p>\n<p>Now let&#8217;s do a breakdown of the salesperson&#8217;s interaction with Snoop (the female assassin):<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&bull; Our friend at Home Depot opens the interaction casually, unobtrusively and in a manner that suggests he&nbsp;\u00a0genuinely&nbsp;\u00a0wants to help, not sell.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&bull; He assesses Snoop&#8217;s needs in terms of features, functionality, application, frequency of use, etc. with open, unbiased, and non-leading questions.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&bull; When describing the options, he gives genuine, personal opinions about his favorites and backs them up with data.<\/p>\n<p style=\"padding-left: 30px;\">&bull; He&#8217;s surprised and grateful when the transaction occurs, suggesting there was no expectation or greed on his part in helping Snoop choose the tool.<\/p>\n<p>This is, in microcosm, the way sales is moving &#8211; both in-person and on the web. Historically, sales was a job for the tenacious, aggressive, never-take-no-for-an-answer, never-show-weakness, make-the-sale-no-matter-what personality. And it still does exist, even in high-tech software sales (I love a story our new VP of Marketing tells of a high pressure sales guy who tried to sell him an enterprise SEO software package at his previous company).<\/p>\n<p>We&#8217;re shifting to a world where the less a salesperson tries to sell you, the more interested you are. When I sold consulting on behalf of SEOmoz, I closed deals with an incredible success rate &#8211; something over 90% of the customers I got introduced to or on the phone with (who fit our sweet spot and whom we wanted as customers) became clients. And it&#8217;s not because I was great at sales &#8211; I&#8217;d never taken a course or read a book on the topic. In fact, I abhor selling.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s because the demand was created long before I picked up the phone, and my job was simply to assess the potential client&#8217;s problems, explain how we could help (if we could) and then ask if they&#8217;d like a quote. Much like the salesperson at Home Depot in the video, the client was already in the aisle, browsing the selection, with money in her pocket.<\/p>\n<p>Such is the power of the organic, reputation and demand-driven environment that&#8217;s evolving around us. I&#8217;d argue that in most high-tech companies today, even those that thrive on high-value, enterprise sales made by dedicated, cash-incented sales teams, 2\/3rds to 9\/10ths of the &#8220;selling&#8221; is done before the &#8220;rep&#8221; ever gets on the phone. The new salesperson doesn&#8217;t sell &#8211; they help. They facilitate. They explain and offer insight. And they leave the selling to the product and the marketing.<\/p>\n<p>p.s. The clip comes from the television program, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0306414\/\">The Wire<\/a>, which I also recommend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m not partial to expletives in my writing, but I&#8217;m making an exception with the embedded video below, which you should watch before reading the rest of the post (don&#8217;t worry, it&#8217;s enjoyable as well as instructive):<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>&quot;You Earned that Bump Like a MotherF-er&quot; - SparkToro<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I&#039;m not partial to expletives in my writing, but I&#039;m making an exception with the embedded video below, which you should watch before reading the rest of\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/sparktoro.com\/blog\/you-earned-that-bump-like-a-motherf-er\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"&quot;You Earned that Bump Like a MotherF-er&quot; - 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