How Technical Should A Sales Person be?
Today I talked to a person that is responsible the technical aspects of the sales process within a high-tech company here in the Netherlands. I had the opportunity to talk to Luigi and he emphasized that its important that a sales person has enough technical awareness and knowledge to understand the full extent of the value proposition around the product being sold.
So why is that, Luigi?
The value proposition is build to respond to a customer’s need. And its during the sales process that the needs of the client is put into perspective. This almost always involves going into the technicalities relevant to the domain in which the customer’s business operates in. This is easy for someone that has a strong technical background but it becomes exponentially more difficult and that’s where the value proposition comes into play.
How would you manage complexities in regards project management?
The main complexities within our domain are often times hardware related complexities. When hardware needs to be changed to accommodate new features, this almost always involves going through a lengthy hardware modification process with a bunch of third-party safety, regulatory checks and approvals. In situations like this, our approach is to figure out how to ‘dampen’ or ‘bridge’ shortcomings through software, until the hardware is modified and approved.
Has there been moments that this approach failed?
Yes. The approach isn’t perfect, in fact, that was never the intention. We want to get the customer going. We don’t need to tackle 100% of the client’s needs, as long as they get their results.
To conclude, the customer’s identified needs involve making hardware modifications within the product they use. By approaching the need from a software perspective, the issue could be tackle through software until the hardware modifications are made. This is especially effective if this approach, even though not perfect, would still allow the client get their results, than the customer could still be served.