Dear SaaStr: Is “I Don’t Want to Sell you Something You Don’t Need” a Good Sales Strategy?
- For some sales reps, yes.
- For some, no.
Importantly, you’ll find as you scale is different reps have different strengths, and you’ll learn to play to those strengths:
- Some are ferocious closers.
- Some play a numbers and volume game, and play it well.
- Some are particularly good at building relationships quickly (here, the “I don’t want to sell you something …” strategy can work >>if<< it’s authentic).
- Some are really good at the product, really good, and focus on creative uses of your product. They’ll often use variants of the line above, only wanting to sell you something if they can solve your problem.
- Some are really good at solving the decision-maker issues.
- Some are simply really good at building trust, quickly. They’ll also often use variants of the line above, only wanting to sell you something if they can solve your problem.
- The best reps do qualify their prospects in similar ways. But not in identical ways.
All great AEs are pretty good at most, but not all, of these. But you’ll end up seeing your Top 25% AEs have pretty different #1 strengths from this list. Help them cater to those strengths.
This isn’t to say you don’t need good training and scripts. You absolutely do; it’s critical.
But in building on that, some great AEs may well find an authentic approach to both building trust and qualifying leads is quickly de-qualifying folks that can’t benefit enough today from your product.
It’s not as crazy as it sounds.
(Note: an updated SaaStr Classic answer)
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