My Sales Conversation with Sweet

This past Monday I had my sales conversation with professor Sweet. The conversation was insightful to be a part of and made me look at sales in a different way. I took the role of a salesperson for Catapult Sports, which is a sports technology company that tracks athlete data, and I was selling to the Athletic Director at W&J College. When the conversation started, the prospective client was immediately in defensive mode, citing the fact that they prefer human-to-human interaction and trust their staff to handle statistics. This caught me off guard, so I immediately followed up with questions about why that is. Another subject that was brought up was the success of their sports teams, which the client was very proud of. This made it hard to find a clear need for adding an additional expense to a program that is already winning. Looking back on the conversation, one of the biggest lessons I took away was the importance of truly knowing your product. Obviously, I don’t actually work for Catapult Sports, but I should’ve taken more time to know what I was actually selling. I realized that simply understanding surface level features is not enough. If I had a better understanding of Catapult’s capabilities, I could have better positioned the product not as a replacement for their staff, but as a tool to enhance that they are already doing well. Knowing your product also allows you to adapt in real time. Instead of feeling stuck when the client pushed back, I could have redirected the conversation toward areas where the product adds value, even to already successful teams. Winning programs are often the ones looking for these kinds of small advantages, that is where a product like Catapult could fit in.