Visipix.com
I received a most interesting email from a salesman of one of the cellular carriers my company uses to provide Location Based Services to our customers. We had been experiencing some technical difficulties that resulted in several of our customers not being able to communicate to our LBS devices. All LBS devices operate using the cellular networks, usually GSM although CDMA has a strong presence in the US because it is used by Verizon and Sprint. Our carrier has always been helpful and technically capable, good traits when dealing with problems that result from complex cellular issues such as SIM activation, roaming or HLR/VLR problems. Only after forming a task force with one of our most important distributors, the device manufacturer, the carrier and technical expertise within our organization, were we able to isolate the problem as an easy-to-resolve hardware issue and nothing to do with the carrier.
What caught my attention about the salesman's email was that he had attached a research paper from the Journal of Information Science and Engineering titled The Evaluation of Distributed and Replicated HLR for Location Management in PCS Network by Guan-Chi Chen and Suh-Yin Lee. I am certain that I was the only cc on that email who gave any consideration to this document. Although this salesman is technically savvy and always willing to get involved in the technical aspects of his job, sending that document was a clear indication that he had literally thrown in the towel. He was now reaching for any possible explanation, the more technically convoluted the better.
It reminded me of years past when I used to sell Alpha Micro mini-computers as part of "turn-key solutions" bundled with software I developed for the Field Service Management industry. I remember a specific incident when I made the same mistake that all technical salespersons make sooner or later: Over-reaching for far-fetched technical explanations that just do not make any sense, leaving the customer disconcerted and jeopardizing the trust the customer has placed on you: I had sold a new system with about fifty terminals that were attached to the computer system via RS-232 connections. My customer had a large building and we had pushed the limits of the RS-232 specification causing their brand new, and very expensive system, to crash almost on an hourly basis. I contracted wiring and electrical specialists to check for any electrical interferences which have always been a source of problems for RS-232 connections. I rewired my customers systems with special insulated cabling. I convinced them to upgrade their electrical systems; Nothing worked! Their new system still kept crashing with hourly regularity. In frustration, I explained to my customer that their system's problems could be caused by "cosmic rays" I had not pulled that explanation out of a hat. This was something that Alpha Micro had actually suggested as a possible problem. But the minute, I presented this possibility to the customer, it was obvious that I had run out of ideas and possible solutions, risking the hard-earned relationship of trust I had with my customer Luckily, Alpha Micro engineers got involved because this happened to be one of the first machines of their new product line. A little tweaking with the I/O interface provided the ability of using more robust RS-422 connections and that along with serial repeaters finally resolved the problem.
Owning a small software development company for many years taught me to wear many hats. Wearing the hat of a technical salesman was easy because I developed the software I sold, I picked the hardware and O/S that it ran on and I even picked the accounting system that my software integrated with. When you believe in what you sell and you understand the technical aspects of the product you are selling, you easily gain a level of trust from prospects. If one can hit the prospect's "hot buttons" and provide solutions to the prospect's problems, those prospects soon become trusting, long-term customers.
As an Alpha Micro Value Added Reseller, I had to take part in several sales training courses. Some of the most interesting courses had to do with selling leasing services. In my opinion, most sales courses make use of gimmicky techniques that eventually backfire. And most salespeople think that their success can be attributed to a special personal trait or a specific technique they have developed to "close the deal." This may be true for some types of sales but the most interesting and straight-forward facts I learned about salesmanship came from a small gem of a book titled The Lacy Techniques of Salesmanship by Paul J. Micali. Among the many salesmanship nuggets this little book contains, there are the following:
THREE THINGS [THAT] DETERMINE YOUR VALUE AS A SALESPERSON
- Technical knowledge.
- How much work you are willing to do (this along with technical knowledge controls the quality of your salesmanship).
- Personality (this element controls quality).
When technical problems arise, Micali's three things also apply, except in the reverse order: (1) A salesperson must have a strong personality to resist offering esoteric explanations to technical problems. (2) He must work hard to trouble-shoot the problems or to assemble and assist a technical team that can troubleshoot the technical problems and (3) He must have enough technical knowledge to be able to understand the possible causes of the problems and how to go about resolving them.
