How To Sell in B2B (If You Hate Selling)

How to sell in B2B — even if you hate selling.

Some people like to sell, but I’m not one of those people. I hate to sell.

Or, to para­phrase Dorothy Parker’s fam­ous say­ing, “I hate to write, but I love hav­ing writ­ten.” That would be, “I hate to sell, but I love hav­ing sold.” ¹As often is the case with fam­ous quotes, many can­not be attrib­uted to the ones who allegedly said or wrote them. According to this art­icle by Jason Kottke, Dorothy Parker prob­ably nev­er said or … Continue read­ing

In this blog art­icle, I’ll explain why I sell by teach­ing and helping.

Here we go:

Always Be Closing 

I respect the art of selling immensely. To me, salespeople are her­oes who keep our eco­nomy’s wheels turn­ing. Public rela­tions is just a lubricant.

But selling isn’t just done by salespeople, much like PR pro­fes­sion­als don’t just do PR. We must all com­mu­nic­ate — and we must all sell, wheth­er it’s our products, ser­vices, or ourselves. Fresh out of uni­ver­sity, I quickly real­ised that my lack of sales chops would be a ser­i­ous problem.

During this peri­od, I listened to many self-help tapes on becom­ing a bet­ter sales­man and watched Glengarry Glen Ross repeatedly.

ABC, you know.
Always. Be Closing.

Selling is a Rough Business

My first years in the industry were spent selling art­icle ideas to journ­al­ists over the phone, over and over.

I remem­ber lock­ing myself in the bath­room to breathe for a few minutes before going at it again. Life as a twenty-some­thing PR juni­or look­ing to make a name for him­self was rough.

I often fan­tas­ised about pur­su­ing anoth­er career when sit­ting in the sub­way home after work. I was sleep-deprived with nose bleeds and bolt­ing headaches. 

Instead, I dreamt of becom­ing a teach­er. “What could be more mean­ing­ful than teach­ing,” I thought. 

I acquired pas­sion­ate opin­ions about teach­ing at an early age. 

Perhaps iron­ic­ally, I was­n’t pop­u­lar amongst my teach­ers in school. I jumped at any chance to pro­voke and chal­lenge. I had ideas about present­ing know­ledge, and I always felt I would do a bet­ter job than my teachers.

During my uni­ver­sity years, my girl­friend stud­ied to be a teach­er in his­tory, polit­ics, and reli­gion. True to form, I read her course lit­er­at­ure, ran­ging from Michel Foucault to Jean Piaget. 

Teaching, it seemed, was part of my Ikigai.

Teaching as a Way To Sell

The Ikigai Test

Have you been pon­der­ing your rais­on d’être? The term iki­gai comes from two Japanese words:

While the Western adapt­a­tion often treats iki­gai like a pro­ductiv­ity hack or a pur­pose-find­ing work­shop, it’s less rigid in its ori­gin­al Japanese con­text. It doesn’t require you to mon­et­ise your pas­sion or save the world — it can simply mean appre­ci­at­ing small joys, like sip­ping tea on a quiet morn­ing or tend­ing to a bon­sai tree. 

It’s more about pro­cess than out­come.

Ikigai is often described as the inter­sec­tion of what you love, what you’re good at, what the world needs, and what you can be paid for — a har­mo­ni­ous con­ver­gence that sup­posedly leads to a ful­filling life.

Here’s the first step of the iki­gai test for the inter­sect­ing middle lay­er, where I would say that:

Then, here’s the second step of my iki­gai test for the out­er lay­er (based on my middle lay­er answers):

1. That which I love (Passion & Mission): Communication & Teaching

2. That which the world needs (Mission + Vocation): Teaching + Learning and Sharing

3. That which I can get paid for (Profession + Vocation): Public Relations + Learning and Sharing

4. That which I’m good at (Passion + Profession): Communication + Public Relations

All good. My answers seem to work well with the out­er lay­er of the Ikigai diagram. 

So, for the third step, and based on my answers, what can I place in the centre (the Ikigai) that works?

Whohoo! That works!
Can you make it work, too?

Nota bene:

I under­stand that turn­ing iki­gai into “find your dream job!” is like using med­it­a­tion to increase pro­ductiv­ity — miss­ing the point entirely.

Life doesn’t have to be per­petu­ally mean­ing­ful or joy­ous. Striving for con­stant align­ment of these circles can some­times add unne­ces­sary pressure.

Learn more: The Ikigai Test

Helping as a Way to Sell

Existentialism: Thought Leadership, Advisory, and Education

Regarding thought lead­er­ship, advis­ory, and edu­ca­tion, I often remind myself of the beau­ti­ful words of the Danish exist­en­tial­ist Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855): ²Søren Kierkegaard. (2023, November 27). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S%C3%B8ren_Kierkegaard

According to Kierkegaard, ser­vitude is the found­a­tion for suc­cess for all aspir­ing thought lead­ers, advisers, salespeople, and educators:

“If one is truly to suc­ceed in lead­ing a per­son to a spe­cif­ic place, one must first and fore­most take care to find him where he is and begin there.

This is the secret in the entire art of help­ing.

Anyone who can­not do this is him­self under a delu­sion if he thinks he is able to help someone else. In order truly to help someone else, I must under­stand more than he — but cer­tainly first and fore­most under­stand what he under­stands.

If I do not do that, my great­er under­stand­ing does not help him. If I nev­er­the­less want to assert my great­er under­stand­ing, then it is because I am vain or proud, then basic­ally instead of bene­fit­ing him I really want to be admired by him.

But all true help­ing begins with a hum­bling.

The help­er must first humble him­self under the per­son he wants to help and thereby under­stand that to help is not to dom­in­ate but to serve, that to help is a not to be the most dom­in­at­ing but the most patient, that to help is a will­ing­ness for the time being to put up with being in the wrong and not under­stand­ing what the oth­er under­stands.”
— Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855)

Learn more: Existentialism for PR Advisers

How To Sell in B2B

Late one night on the sub­way, through yet anoth­er bolt­ing head­ache, I remembered the Søren Kierkegaard quote. 

If I want to teach as a humble ser­vant, maybe I could try to approach selling in the same way. 

Sure, who­ever I’m selling to must agree on com­pens­a­tion first. However, that’s only a minor con­sid­er­a­tion along the much more crit­ic­al road to truly help­ing someone achieve their goals and ful­fil their potential.

And so my Ikigai ended up chan­ging my whole approach to sales. To me, selling is nev­er about the deal. It’s about helping.

Now, I think this mind­set works because I genu­inely think that I have some­thing more valu­able to offer than just the mere exchange of money and time. I offer some­thing that will help.

Put anoth­er way: If you’re hon­est and con­fid­ent about help­ing people and organ­isa­tions, selling does­n’t have to feel like selling.

THANKS FOR READING.
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PR Resource: Public Relations Strategies for B2B

Spin Academy | Online PR Courses

Public Relations Strategies for B2B

Here are my pre­ferred pub­lic rela­tions strategies for B2B organisations:

• Content Themes. Be the best in your industry or niche at organ­ising and pub­lish­ing con­tent in well-researched and stra­tegic­ally chosen themes.
  — Learn more about the con­tent themes PR strategy.
• Deep Content. Be the best in your industry or niche at organ­ising and pub­lish­ing your con­tent in many lay­ers, allow­ing browsers to dig deep­er and deep­er and thus get more value than any­where else.
  — Learn more about the deep con­tent PR strategy.
• Surround Message. Be the best in your industry or niche at con­vey­ing one spe­cif­ic thing only. This will require the dis­cip­line needed to fil­ter out everything else.
  — Learn more about the sur­round mes­sage PR strategy.
• Hidden Arena. Be the best in your industry or niche at con­nect­ing act­iv­ists by sup­ply­ing them with an invite-only plat­form for exchan­ging ideas and coördin­at­ing their efforts. Provide them with resources if needed.
  — Learn more about the hid­den arena PR strategy.
• Thought Leadership. Be the best in your industry or niche at provid­ing expert con­tent and opin­ions that can­not be found any­where else online.
  — Learn more about the thought lead­er­ship PR strategy.
• Easy Street. Be the best in your industry or niche at execut­ing activ­it­ies and cam­paigns that come eas­ily and nat­ur­ally to your organ­isa­tion. “Do more of what works.”
  — Learn more about the easy street PR strategy.
• Stupid Majority. Be the best in your industry or niche at tak­ing a stance against the major­ity. Just ensure this major­ity is fun­da­ment­ally flawed and long-term due for destruc­tion.
  — Learn more about the stu­pid major­ity PR strategy.
• Superhero Solution. Be the best in your industry or niche at offer­ing a plug-and-play solu­tion for a small but wide­spread prob­lem. The solu­tion must have an easy-to-remem­ber name and be free.
  — Learn more about the super­hero solu­tion PR strategy.
• Iceberg Publishing. Be the best in your industry or niche at cre­at­ing high-con­vert­ing land­ing pages with sol­id search intents while keep­ing every page on your site min­im­al.
  — Learn more about the ice­berg pub­lish­ing PR strategy.
• Extra Mile. Be the best in your industry or niche at doing some­thing that does­n’t scale — like going above and bey­ond to provide cus­tom­er ser­vice. To be able to scale, we must some­times do things that don’t.
  — Learn more about the extra mile PR strategy.

Learn more: Public Relations Strategies for B2B

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