Stop Waiting to Feel Ready to Sell
🕒 3 min read
By Frank Hurtte
Early in the research for my
book, The New Sales Guy Project, a new seller (sales guy, salesperson...) asked me a question I’ve now
heard a hundred times since.
"How much do I need to know before I start calling on customers?"
It's a reasonable question.
Every new salesperson worries about making a fool of themselves. Nobody wants
to stand in front of an important maintenance manager, a techno-centric
engineer, or a busy plant manager and discover halfway through the conversation
that they've forgotten the one specification that really matters. The fear is
real, maybe even excruciating for some. Unfortunately, the answer isn't all
that soothing.
"You’ll never know enough."
For someone fresh out of a
grueling engineering program, that thought was, shall we say, discouraging. But
it's the reality of selling technical products.
Forty-eight years later, I still
learn something almost every day. New products arrive like a firehose spray.
Existing products improve. Engineers discover applications I never would have
imagined. Standards change. Regulations change. The finish line keeps moving.
If you're waiting for the day
when you know everything before making another sales call, I've got some bad
news for you. That day ain't coming, ever.
The funny thing is, this isn't
the only form of perfection sales guys chase. Some wait until they catch up on
their paperwork. Others wait for their customer service team to become
flawless, for suppliers to build the perfect product, or for customers to have
the perfect opportunity to discuss something new. It sounds responsible, but
every one of these habits delays progress.
I'm convinced some salespeople
unknowingly sabotage their careers on what I call the Six Perfect Pillars of
Failure. None of these habits is malicious. In fact, they usually come from
good intentions. Unfortunately, good intentions have never generated much
revenue.
Over the next six weeks, we'll
walk through each pillar, one at a time, starting with the one that trips up
new salespeople the most.
Pillar One: Wait Until You
Know Everything
This is where the disease
usually begins. I've watched countless new salespeople spend months trying to
memorize product catalogs before they ever felt comfortable talking with
customers. They treat product knowledge like a college final exam. Once they pass
the test, they'll be ready to sell. The problem is, technical selling doesn't
work that way. There isn't a final exam, because the material keeps changing.
Early in my career, I finally
realized something that should have been obvious. Customers weren't hiring me
because I'd memorized every catalog number. They were hiring me because I could
help them solve problems, or knew who could. Two very different skills.
Ironically, one of the most
confidence-building phrases I’ve ever used with a customer begins with three
words most salespeople are terrified to say: "I don’t know," followed
by, "...but I’ll find out."
Customers appreciate honesty.
They don't expect you to know everything. What they expect is that you'll care
enough to get them the right answer.
To Be Perfectly Frank...
Knowledge builds confidence.
Honesty builds trust.
Trust builds business.
If you're building a ramp-up plan for new hires, River Heights Consulting can help turn a stack of product catalogs into an actual onboarding path your new salespeople can follow with confidence. Reach out to Frank to talk through it.
Next week, Part 2: Why the “someday I’ll be caught up” fantasy is quietly costing
you business.
TL;DR
New salespeople often wait to
feel fully “ready” before making calls, but technical selling never stops
changing, so that day never comes. The real skill isn't knowing everything,
it's being honest about what you don't know and following through when you find
the answer.
Frank Hurtte has spent 48 years
in industrial distribution, first as a distributor, now as founder of River
Heights Consulting, where he helps distributors and manufacturers sell smarter.
He still learns something new almost every day, which either makes him
remarkably humble or means he's just really bad at keeping up with product
catalogs. You decide.
If you want a shortcut to understanding where AI fits in distribution, this is a great start.
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