How To Sell in B2B (If You Hate Sales)

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 show you the path of selling that I found to be the most helpful.

Here goes:

I Respect Salespeople 

Don’t get me wrong: I respect the art of selling immensely. To me, salespeople are her­oes who keep the wheels of our eco­nomy 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 I watched Glengarry Glen Ross on repeat. 

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 again. 

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 on my way home after a day’s 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. 

Teaching, it seemed, was my Ikigai.

Teaching as Ikigai

Ikigai is a Japanese term that trans­lates to “the reas­on for being” or “why to get up in the morn­ing”. Teaching seemed to be at the centre of the Ikigai Venn diagram. 

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 know­ledge and how to present it, and I always felt that 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. 

From all of these books, this quote by Danish exist­en­tial­ist Søren Kierkegaard struck a chord with me:

“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, then my great­er under­stand­ing does not help him at all. 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.”

How To Sell Without Selling

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 some form of com­pens­a­tion first, but to me, 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 sales.