The Importance of Clarity in Sales

In today’s class lecture, I thought there were some very key takeaways that a salesperson must have in their toolbox in order to help out the client to the best of their ability. First, professor Sweet really harped on the importance of clarity in the sales process, for both the buyer and the seller. Clarity is best defined as the capacity to help others see their situations in fresh and more revealing ways, and to identify problems they didn’t realize they had. So, there is an opportunity for conventional wisdom in the sales process, where good salespeople are the problem solvers for their client. Also, due to the rise of the digital age, there has been even more opportunities for information symmetry and self-serve solutions. So, problem-solving is now less important due to the rise of the digital age. Overall, the real value of sales intermediaries is problem-finding, especially in situations where the client is confused, mistaken, or clueless. As with entrepreneurship, selling today depends on more creative, heuristic, problem-finding skills than on the reductive, algorithmic, problem-solving skills of technicians. So, sales are now seen as a creative discovery process. Furthermore, where you have to learn to brainstorm, and you can learn to sell. In other words, the modern-day salespeople should be skillful at hacking their client pain. Identifying problems then becomes a methodology for moving others and to sell. In order for salespeople to be successful in moder-day sales, they must flip the two traditional sales styles. The first traditional style they must flip is that sales is all about accessing information but should be flipped to curating information – relevant and clarifying. The second traditional style they must flip, is that sales is all about answering questions. Where it should be flipped to sales is about asking the right questions and uncovering the possibilities. The reason for this is that people need a clear path to action. The clarity of understanding and thought alone is never enough. So, make sure to be make clear, action-oriented recommendations which resonate with the prospect are more likely to generate a sale than any kind of fuzziness in the fulfillment process.