Why Sales?

Selling is an exchange of value. Two parties reach an understanding, then make the exchange that acknowledges it. In the enterprise, what gets exchanged isn’t only money. It’s reputation and risk. That’s why an enterprise deal has so many steps - every party is working to protect something.

A closed deal represents an opportunity to deliver on the promise. That’s the good part. It’s an endorsement: the customer believes in what you’re about, how you solve problems and the benefit you can create. When someone signs and decides to give you money, they’re vouching for you before you’ve proven them right.

Revenue is also a signal. Within your organisation, you have a hypothesis - who has the problem, what it costs them, when it bites, and how you solve it. Revenue is the lifeblood of an organisation that funds the next move and tells you whether the market believes in your offering.

Revenue doesn’t lie

Every other source of feedback lets you keep believing your version. Revenue doesn’t. A signed contract is the one piece of feedback the buyer paid to give you.

To capture revenue, there are two approaches: capturing demand and creating demand. Capturing demand is a set of activities that draw in people already interested in what you do. Creating demand is the other side - you engage directly with the market via your ideal customer profile to gauge how you can conduct an exchange of value. This is where salespeople come in.

We picture salespeople in a very specific way: slick talkers with expensive cars who probably spend half a day in the office before heading out to play golf. In reality, salespeople come in different shapes and sizes, and the good ones operate akin to elite athletes. What separates elite athletes from amateurs is the ability to work in a system. That’s why you see naturally gifted people not live up to their potential, and someone else who worked extremely hard live up to the little potential they had.

Enterprises already run on systems. They constantly evaluate risk, protect reputation and approve spend into the millions. Sales is the system that meets those systems at the same cadence. That’s why it can be taught. Not as a personality to imitate or a culture to hustle, but as a system to learn and then make your own. This is why I came up with this approach to systemising sales into three layers. Here’s where it starts.