Hey, 👋 Scott from The Sales Mastermind here.

Today’s edition only takes 4 minutes.

Selling is best when kept simple; buyers want their pain solved, not to learn inputs and complexities.

Today we’ll cover:

• Storytime
• Order Takers
• The Message

Storytime

In 1899, Elbert Hubbard's essay "A Message to Garcia" went as viral as any writing could for the late 19th century.

The essay centres on the assignment given to US intelligence officer Andrew Summers Rowan (in the essay "Rowan") by US President William McKinley at the outbreak of the Spanish-American War:

Finding, let alone communicating with Garcia, was seen as an impossible task until Rowan took the message, disappeared into the jungle, and got it done.

Hubbard proceeds to use this as an example of certain employees only being good at their jobs when a manager/supervisor is consistently watching, but otherwise unreliable.

Whereas a few highly sought-after employees can operate independently to complete the assignment. These employees are "so rare that no employer can afford to let (them) go." And Hubbard describes only these employees as worthy to:

​If you want to read the essay yourself, it's about a 10-minute read.​

Order Takers

Most sellers are not message carriers; they are product experts who can explain:

• Exactly what their product does
• Enough about how it does it, and
• Very little about why a buyer should become a customer.

Sales trainers call these people Order Takers.

And with a good-enough marketing engine and a good-enough product, Order Takers are enough to keep a business going (without thriving).

Order Takers get better by becoming excellent at asking the right questions to elicit the right answers from perfect-fit buyers. And they can eck out a good living this way.

But if you're reading this newsletter, you're almost certainly in a business that needs to thrive to survive, doesn't have a good enough marketing engine, and/or a good enough product.

You either want, or have, to become better than an Order Taker to survive.

That's where you have to learn what it means to become an Elite Seller who is trusted to carry the message for Garcia.

The Message

In a sales context, Elite Sellers have three traits that are simple, but not easy, to learn.

Elite Sellers are simultaneously sellers and:

• Translators
• Industry Experts
• Challengers

Translator

Buyers aren't talking to you unless they have a pain to solve.

However, that pain rarely maps perfectly to your product or service.

Elite sellers need to learn how to translate the pain from an abstract concept into a quantified solution. 

And understand that there are many solutions, at different price points, that roughly solve the same pain.

For example, pretend your buyer has an issue with a key supplier threatening to cut them off if another invoice goes past due by more than 90 days. This problem could be solved by:

• The CEO personally pays every invoice
• A training course on Accounts Payable best practices
• Implementing a business-wide software to manage all invoices 

Each option might solve the pain; they each have benefits and costs, and Elite Sellers learn how to subtly shift the conversation towards the solution they're selling by translating the pain into their solution.

Industry Experts

Buyers are coming to sellers later and later in the buying journey than ever.

This is because they can do more of the buying journey without salespeople. And they want to be well informed before speaking to seller/s whom they aren't sure whether to trust (or not).

Therefore, buyers are looking for sellers to bridge the gap between public messaging and its application to their business and specific pain.

Industry Experts can discuss the implications of different options with the buyer based on how others are solving the pain. 

To make this real, remember the example above where a key supplier threatens to cut off our buyer. An industry expert can speak to the buyer about:

• Industry norms for credit terms
• Nuanced best practices for a business of their size and scale, and
• Other elements of the Accounts Payable process that might indicate a bigger problem

By becoming industry experts and discussing the nuances of their field, Elite Sellers set themselves apart from Order Takers who only know the product they're selling.

Challengers

Lastly, Elite Sellers challenge their buyer to maintain focus.

Every seller has had a buyer who tells them they want one outcome, then starts asking superfluous questions that do not address the pain at hand.

Order Takers simply answer superfluous questions, and then deals never close because they become too complicated in the buyer's mind.

Elite Sellers will push back on questions that are irrelevant to the outcome to keep focus on the pain.

Let's use our late-invoice-paying example from above. Relevant questions might include:

• How long should it take for a payment to be approved and land in the supplier's bank account?
• Should we track all invoices the same or have different thresholds for review?
• How do we make sure we don't miss any payments?

Whereas superfluous, albeit relevant-sounding questions might be, with challenging responses:

• Q: Should I be paying invoices with cash, credit card or bank transfer?
  A: That's a question for your supplier.
• Q: What about tracking the money my customers owe us?
  A: Let's focus on not losing your main supplier before we look at cash collected.
• Q: Can we use your solution to generate monthly/quarterly/annual tax statements?
  A: Help me understand, is tax reporting more of a priority than losing your suppliers or the other way around?

It is easy for deals to lose focus and become more complicated than they need to be.

By keeping buyers on track, Elite Sellers close more deals, much faster, and with greater buyer satisfaction.

Ultimately, the difference between an Order Taker and an Elite Seller can be summarised as the ability to listen and translate, provide industry-wide expertise, and challenge buyers to maintain focus.

Until next week,
Scott Cowley

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