Week 956

Matt Kirkland

It's Week 956! This week in my Brand New Box Book Report series (where Matt reads a dubious biz book so the rest of the team doesn't have to), I covered 'Never Be Closing: How to Sell Better Without Screwing Your Clients, Your Colleagues, or Yourself.' This is a Sales Advice book. A recurring theme here in these weeknotes is that BNB doesn't really do sales in any traditional way, and we're always trying to figure out if we SHOULD. Or how!

The core thesis of this book is: instead of being like a high pressure door-to-door vacuum salesperson, just shoving your product at customers and trying to immediately close the deal - you should treat them like partners, like you're a consultant. You should actually try to learn what problems they have, and think creatively with them as partners to find out if and how you can deliver value to them.

Do salespeople really need to learn this? It's definitely how we already work here at BNB. It feels natural, it's how one curious and empathetic human would normally interact with another. Is this 'sales'? If so, we're doing great here. It's not the 'one weird trick' to make more software sales, that's for sure. But it's nice to read something that's so affirming to the way we already work.