• January 20, 2015

Sales Wisdom from Jessica Hagy

Jessica Hagy is an artist, writer, and former concept director who is most famous for her Webby award winning blog Indexed. Her art and content are deceptively simple, but offer a lot of commentary on business practices and the like. Although she doesn’t focus exclusively on sales in her work, her content offers insight and sales wisdom regardless, and a great deal of it is very useful to salespeople. Here are a few of the best tips that she’s given which apply to sales.

Sales People Can Often Improve Their Listening Skills

The following image is one of Jessica Hagy’s most on-point statements ever, and probably is also one of the most intelligent things anyone has ever said about sales. It’s simple, charming, smart, and absolutely true.

This image appeared with the title, “How are sales made?” As salespeople, we’re often very focused on the “what we have” portion; but as the image points out, that’s only half of making a sale.

We like focusing on what we have because that information is easily available, and it’s the kind of stuff we know already. What a lot of salespeople could use is experience listening and understanding their potential customers’ needs, and then adapting the sales pitch to suit those needs. Listening is a component of sales that often goes unremarked on, but is still very important.

Sales People Combine Confidence and Skill

There’s an unfortunate stereotype that salespeople can be somewhat arrogant. Part of this comes from the fact that having lots of confidence is a big part of job, since people lacking in it won’t sell much of anything. Jessica Hagy created this image on the topic under the title, “Who knows what he’s talking about?”

As the graph suggests, very successful salespeople are both confident and skilled. People respect confidence in our culture, which makes sense. But as the graph points out, someone without expertise and with a lot of confidence, is dangerous. Salespeople have enough stereotypes about them without adding “dangerous” to the list.

Similarly, while it’s good to be a wise person as we established earlier, people who aren’t confident about themselves and their work aren’t as able to successfully sell things. The takeaway point from all this is to establish both confidence and expertise in balance. Know what you’re doing, how to do it, and how to confidently practice your expertise.

Focus on What The Customer Needs

Like the first graphic points out, knowing your product is only half of a sale. But knowing what your customer wants is more than just listening. You have to ask the right questions, too: research your customers’ goals, plans, and structure. Learn all you can and establish a deeper understanding of how they work and, ultimately, what they want. This will let you pitch your sales tailored to their goals and objectives.

Traits Of The Best Sales People

This final image from Jessica Hagy isn’t exclusive to salespeople at all.

It shows the traits of successful people in all walks of life. It’s titled, “A nourishing pie.” It’s a little more on the nose than a lot of her work, but the point she’s making here is important. It might not seem obvious, but traits like empathy – putting yourself in someone else’s shoes – are essentially what we’ve been talking about with points like understanding a customer’s needs.

Jessica Hagy has a lot to share, and I find her very inspiring. She’s published several books and regularly speaks about what she’s written. Her insight into business and sales are especially useful, and her ultimate message to salespeople is to take inspiration where you find it – don’t be a robot, and take in what you can from the outside world to improve your sales every day.

Images from Jessica Hagy’s Indexed blog and Forbes blog. Photo courtesy of Flickr user kris krüg.