To the sales people – a true story!
More than a decade years ago, I was working for a telecom software company. We had the yearly company meeting in a big hall, and there were probably close to 200 employees attending the event. I would say majority of them were ‘techies’ (from product development, customer services, QA etc).
Different company leaders went to the stage and presented their business area/function in front of the audience.
Then the VP of Sales went to the stage, and before he started his presentation, he asked a question from the audience (mostly techies):
“How many of you think sales is important?” (I believe he was probably expecting a large number of people to raise their hands)
Unfortunately, only 4 to 5 people including me from this large gathering raised their hands to the shock, horror and apparent disappointment of the VP of Sales.
How could that be?
Didn’t they know:
Sales is the engine of growth for the company?
Without sales people’ tireless efforts, sales funnels will dry out? Consequently, leaving the tech guys out of projects and work?
Before the ‘work/project’ comes to techies, someone in sales has already done the hard work of bringing that project/client to your company. So for the techies, projects just come from ‘somewhere’, and naive belief that they will keep coming for ever. Not really!
Without the efforts of sales champion at your company, a consulting project from a client could have went to another company or a customer might have bought the product from your competitor even if your product was superior.
Just a top notch product or service is not enough specially in the B2B world. Sales stars at your company need to sell that product/service as a nicely wrapped solution that matches the clients specific needs in its own industry.
So next time, you see the sales stars at your company, give them high fives for the new deals they have won and be friends with them. You will learn and start to appreciate the ’other’ side of business as well.
To the sales people, you are awesome!
From a techie