What A Solutions Specialist At IBM Wishes They Had Known Before Entering Sales
While IBM's Global Sales School provided valuable mock sales call experience, the interviewee learned that effective sales "is much less about pitching your solution and more about understanding the client's goals and issues." This crucial lesson emphasizes the importance of needs analysis before presenting any solution, a skill the interviewee wishes they had grasped earlier in their career.
Sales, Client Communication, Needs Analysis, Solution Selling, IBM
Advizer Information
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Job Title
Company
Undergrad
Grad Programs
Majors
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Dylan Evans
Solutions Specialist
IBM
Lehigh University Class of 2010
UCLA Anderson MBA
Computer Science
Technology
Sales and Client Management
Worked 20+ Hours in School, Student Athlete
Video Highlights
1. Sales is less about pitching and more about understanding client needs and aligning resources to present a relevant solution.
2. Effective sales involves asking the right questions upfront to understand the client's situation and issues before pitching any solution.
3. IBM's Global Sales School provides valuable training through mock sales calls, offering practical experience in understanding client needs and developing effective sales strategies.
Transcript
What have you learned about this role that you wish someone would have told you before you started?
One of the things IBM did for us upfront was something called Global Sales School. This was a new hire training program where we spent six months doing mock sales calls.
We worked with IBM sales or former IBM sales managers who acted as clients. These mock calls were about 20 to 30 minutes long, and I think we did around 20 of them. It provided a lot of good experience.
What I learned through that, and wish I had known even before sales school, is that sales is much less about pitching your solution. It's more about understanding the client's goals and issues. Then, you align the right resources to present a solution that will be relevant to them.
I observed many people struggle in these sales calls. They didn't ask enough questions upfront to understand the client's situation and issues. Instead, they immediately started pitching the software.
Almost inevitably, they didn't get the detail needed to create a relevant pitch. I believe spending more time upfront understanding the client's needs and issues, and how you can solve them, before trying to pitch software, is something I wish I'd learned earlier.