WHY SALES NEEDS MORE DIVERSITY

When you close your eyes and think of a “salesman,” you probably think of either a greasy guy at a car lot, or a guy knocking on your door to sell you the best knives you’ve ever seen. 

Tech Sales is an incredibly popular field for business-minded individuals, who want to work in a fast-paced and cutting edge environment. 

I had a college Sales professor, who had mentioned very quickly that more women should be in sales. I didn’t think much about it until much further in life, when I was in Sales myself. 

In my opinion, tech sales requires a high level of empathy. All the sales methodologies like Sander and MEDDPICC won’t teach you about relating to people, on a human level. Before you qualify the person, you need to be like-able for somebody to want to do business with you. 

I’ve shadowed, seen, and overheard many sellers who ask questions like “how are you?” “how are the kids?” “how was your weekend?” and immediately move on once they hear the answer! What that tells their prospect is that they’re really only asking the questions at a surface level, and now that they’ve asked the question, they can move onto the topic that’s more important to them, as a seller. 

I tried for quite some time to fit myself into a mold of the salesmen I saw around me. I told myself to deepen my voice, be more direct, keep things to business only, and ask and answer questions the way they do. That’s when my imposter syndrome kicked in, bad! One of the reasons we experience imposter syndrome is that we try to sit in the seat of someone who never looked, sounded, or thought like us. As an Indian-American woman with feminine thoughts and traits, I was never going to fit into the mold of an older American male salesman. Even trying to do so would set me up for failure, and ultimately make me feel like I can never be “good enough.” 

After quarters and quarters of trying to make the template work, I decided to make the switch and lean into my strengths, connecting with people. I didn’t stop myself from asking more questions to get to know partners, customers, and prospects more. I leaned into learning more about what makes them tick, and I quickly realized that was my superpower. I’ve found that the empathy that I generally call a “fatal flaw” can actually be a huge strength of mine in sales. I’m naturally empathetic, so when I listen and care, I’m not faking it. I really DO care about how your kid’s recital was! I really DO want to hear about your famous BBQ recipe that you tweaked a bit over the weekend; and I really do see you as more than a robot that has to sign the dotted line. 

After a bit of leaning into my natural traits, I realized that this was probably true for several women. I noticed the few women in sales around me all had great relationships with the field sellers, their Ops folks, their customers, their partners. Finally, it clicked. My college professor was totally right! Women naturally are more empathetic, and caring, and therefore can be strong sales people. Yet, there are so few women in sales, especially tech sales! 

I remember having this conversation with my husband, who’s a straight-shooter. In one of his roles, he’s had to be more of a sales person, and I could tell he lit up when he could get past the small talk, and get to the brass tacks of the product or solution he represented. I’m quite the opposite. The better the small talk and relationship building goes, the easier it is to understand your customer and why they buy, and what they want to buy. 

Now, does this mean I crushed each and every sale?! Nope. However, if I did lose a deal, I noticed my customer was a lot more upfront and honest with me behind the why. I didn’t have to play much of a guessing game about what went wrong. They also usually seemed upset when things didn’t go well for me and my solution. I really felt like leaning into empathy and the characteristics that were natural for me, helped me build better relationships with my Champions.