Most of you are probably familiar with Jeff Bezos, as he is the CEO and founder of Amazon; however, most of you probably wouldn’t think of him as a typical salesman. To better understand Bezos’s role as a salesman, it’s helpful to review his founding of Amazon. Before Bezos founded Amazon, he graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science. Upon graduation, Bezos worked in various jobs and industries ranging from fintech startup companies to hedge funds. In 1993, Bezos took an entrepreneurial leap of faith and founded an online bookstore, Amazon, which operated out of his garage. Three years after founding Amazon, Bezos took the company public through an IPO. With new funding, Bezos began to expand the company’s product line to include the online sale of music and video and various consumer goods. Essentially, the rest is history. Amazon became one of the most successful businesses globally and Jeff Bezos is recognized as one of the most influential persons internationally. Now, one may ask how Bezos achieved all this success. While researching this question, I stumbled upon an article authored by Michael Ayres. Ayres highlights three key takeaways every sales rep can learn from Jeff Bezos. These include building a customer centric focus, taking realistic risks, and being transparent and honest. With regard to building a customer centric focus, Ayres emphasizes that a salesperson should perform a pre-needs analysis and conduct research regarding the prospect. In this stage, the salesperson should focus specifically on the customer’s value and the problems he or she faces. Ayres then cites the importance of realistic risk taking, suggesting that a salesperson’s focus should be research and perseverance. Essentially, a salesperson should not fear failure, but should have a grasp on what a typical customer needs and develop a sales tactic based on this. Ayres concludes the article by reinforcing the importance of a salesperson being transparent and honest. Ayres cites that it is okay to let the prospect know If you cannot meet or fulfill his or her need because quintessentially sales are a relationship business. In essence, I found this article interesting as Ayres’s assessment of Bezos’s sales tactics align with many of the principles we have learned in class.
Source: https://wideangle.com/3-things-every-sales-rep-can-learn-from-jeff-bezos/
testacr22
It interesting that you were saying how no one typically thinks of Bezos as a salesman. However, you can’t get a business off the ground without doing some serious selling. Intersting article.
You definitely made a good point about Jeff Bezos in this post. He honestly could not have gotten where he is without having some kind of knowledge of how to sell to people.
I think all entrepreneurs look up to Bezos, I know I do. He would’ve gone nowhere if he didn’t sell, acquiring merchandise for his platform, creating good business relationships, it’s really endless. Its really cool to have learned so much in our class to know that selling is this important, and can make you as successful as it has made Jeff Bezos.
This is great, it really emphasizes the idea of bouyancy that pink talks about. The world can be a sea of rejection but perservieance, positivity, and a good dose of reality can give people the right formula to do amazing things.
Bezos is a great example to bring up in this class. He took time to find out exactly what people want, and made a huge business out of it. He also has probably faced some failure or negative times, but, like you said, it is important to not fear that. Bezos had a huge chance of failing, like any entrepreneur, but he took the risk and it turned out well for him.