Could You Sell Without the Tools and Trappings

What if you didn’t have access to email as a medium available to you as a sales tool? What if you couldn’t send an email as a way to warm yourself up to make an unexpected phone call to your prospect to ask for an appointment? What if you couldn’t email information to your clients, especially the unwanted emails, the ones where you expect your company and product to do all the value-creating you are supposed to be doing?

What if there was no CRM? What if there was no electronic method for storing the information about your dream clients and clients in a way that makes it easy and efficient to communicate with them? Where would you keep your notes? How would you manage your deals (let’s say there is no Excel spreadsheet either)?

If LinkedIn disappeared and you could no longer research the contacts inside your dream clients, how would you go about learning something about them? How would you discover what they believe is important enough to share with the world if there was nowhere to share it?

As cruel as it might seem, pretend that the entire $999 a month per person worth of sales tools that make up your tech stack disintegrated. No more technological tools to manage your sequence, to find your contact information, to dial your phone, to record and transcribe your call, and to track the clicks on your collateral and your slide decks? How well would you sell without the tool?

What if you had no marketing? What if there was no lead generation? What if the word “Inbound” was a way to describe your sales manager tossing a phone book onto your desk? What if those phone numbers were your “leads,” and what if they were as warm as they would ever be without you taking action? How would you create opportunities?

How about eliminating demos? What would you do if there was literally no way to demonstrate your product, service, or solution to your prospective client? What if you had to sell something truly intangible? Could you get ink on paper sight unseen?

What if you had to sell? What if you were the value proposition? What if you were responsible for creating opportunities without any of these things? Could you do it? What if you had to win deals with a pen, a legal pad, a business card, and your wits?

The salesperson who has developed themselves to be able to win without any of these things will be even more effective with the tools. The salesperson who cannot sell with without them will be no better with them.

Put the mindset and skill sets before tool kits.