Conrey is for Closers

There is a world of difference as a consumer buying things you can touch/taste/see/smell versus things you can only mentally see. It is an instant gratification to take home that new car/tv/widget while buying a life insurance policy or long term investment may not have that same fulfillment. You can’t “use” those ghostly items and feel like you’re getting your money’s worth out of them right away.

Now look at it from the Sales side – how do you convince someone to buy something they can’t instantly feel rewarded for?

In my sales life before Integrum I sold cars – the epitome of the tangible sell. The “new car smell” is real, and intoxicating. It was very easy to use the “feel of the wheel to seal the deal” as the car guys are very fond of saying. Now that I’m selling Integrum’s Ruby on Rails development services, I don’t have that same fallback – plus I don’t think anyone wants that “new code smell” to take home with them. So I have to do things a little differently, but some things are very much the same.

The first thing that is exactly the same is to sell yourself first. People buy from people they feel like they can trust and that know what they are talking about. You must sell yourself as the expert on your product whether that is a car, a candy bar, or web development. Secondly you still have to do the same methods of follow up and client maintenance to make sure that your client is well taken care of throughout the sales process – if anything you have to spend more time making sure that the client is happy since they don’t have a shiny new toy to bounce around with.

The differences though are what this is about. You aren’t test driving or showing off a car when you’re selling software development – You’re selling a process and You’re selling not only your expertise but your team’s expertise. This is directly related to Rule of Sales #3 – “You’re only as good as your product”. I am thankful to have no doubt in my team at Integrum that they can meet our clients’ expectations and that they trust me not to overextend them. It can be difficult to show a potential client how awesome my team is directly. If I can convey my trust in the Integrum team through my words and actions AND they can trust me as a salesperson – then my trust is going to be carried over to them. It is most imperative that I never say a negative thing, or even marginally neutral thing, about my team to a client – they have no other way to initially know how good they are except through my view.

The other big difference in my sales method from cars to software is the pace. Cars are (or were until the economy took a left turn) a high pace, high pressure field. The average person walking on to the lot for the first time only buys a car 12% of the time. So it was imperative not to miss yours if you had someone on the lot. Additionally you had to grind the follow up daily after they were in since most people bought within 3 weeks of their first visit. Software projects don’t follow the same pace at all – and there are much fewer stats and studies. When someone is writing checks for a software project that will take 6 weeks to see completed, they tend to do a good bit more research and spend more time feeling out the developing group behind their work. There are some big names out there to choose from in the web development sphere, and several different languages to choose from. My follow up pace is slower, but more consistent than selling cars. Again I have to spend the time as a salesman to build their trust in me and my team. When it is something they are taking home right away they don’t feel the same need for research – but when it’s a 6-week, 12-week or 2-year development project that they’re only seeing code samples, demos and screenshots of, lets just say that they’re going to be more careful with their money.