It's no secret that companies are always looking for a way to increase revenue. So when Kendra Lee realized the potential of technical and customer service staff as salespeople, she had to share it with someone. Working together with David Livingston, they managed to implement a training program at Xerox that would enable them to successfully extend sales using their technical experts.
We sat down with Kendra and David to discuss the challenges of training technical staff in sales and the differences between technical and sales staff.
Getting out of the comfort zone
By far, the largest challenge with training selling skills to technical staff is comfort. Kendra had this to say:
"Many technical people don't feel like selling is a part of their job, or don't want to harm their customer relationships by being perceived as "selling too hard." What I try to get them to understand is that this process isn't about trying to sell customers on something they don't want -- it's about doing a better job of meeting their needs."
In other words, technical staff need to learn consultative selling just as much as salespeople do. Technical staff at least have an advantage there, as they've already built relationships with their customers by helping them with their technical issues.
Two sides of the same coin?
In addition to making selling more comfortable to technical staff, there also has to be some "soft skill" development. This includes rapport-building, stronger questioning techniques, and getting a customer's agreement to move to the next step. These aren't techniques usually associated with non-sales jobs, so there's a bit of a learning curve for technical staff.
On the other hand, salespeople can definitely learn a few things from the technical staff. Ironically, while salespeople typically have the questioning skills necessary to sell, they don't always have the listening skills that technical staff do.
So while selling may always think of itself as its own unique field, the day-to-day customer interaction that technical staff encounter definitely relates well.
Is Training Different?
If salespeople and technical staff bring different skills to the table, does that mean that they learn differently too? Here's Kendra's take on it:
" There are more similarities than differences. That's because technical staff, like salespeople, are always on the go. To get them to sit in on a training session -- much less put the lessons they learn into play -- it's important to show them the immediate real-world benefits. If you don't, they won't bother to show up and buy in, so we focus heavily on giving tools they can use right away in the real world."
In other words, because the issues that sales and technical staff face are more concrete than abstract, they learn the same way through real, applied training methods.
Main takeaways
"There are a lot of people in an organization who can help to identify, or even further, a new sales opportunity. You don't have to be a salesperson or marketer; you just have to know what to ask and listen for. It's up to each individual company or department to decide how far they want the employee to take it before they turn things over to a salesperson (if at all), but there are a huge number of potential sales out there."
We couldn't have said it better ourselves.
