Once upon a time, a frog and a scorpion met at the banks of a river.
"If it's not too much trouble," inquired the scorpion, "might I benefit from a moment of your time?"
Understandably skeptical, the frog took a cautious glance at the scorpion. Still he couldn't help but take note of the scorpion's uncharacteristically polite demeanor. Despite his instincts to the contrary, the frog gave audience to the genteel arachnid.
"I can't help but notice that as a frog, your strong legs and webbed feet make you ideally suited to cross this river. As it happens, I have a personal matter that demands my attention on the opposite riverbank, so this is indeed a serendipitous meeting for me."
"Furthermore," the scorpion continued, "the river is teeming with fish who would just love to take a snap at a scrumptious amphibian like yourself. It appears this is a serendipitous meeting for you as well, as I shall swear myself as your protector for the entirety of the journey."
"On the contrary," the frog rebutted, "I know your ilk. How can I trust that you won't take your first opportunity to sting me?"
"May my tail never curl again if I behave anything short of honorably."
The frog took a long, thoughtful pause and finally acquiesced. Happily, the scorpion crawled atop the frog's back as he slid gracefully into the silvery depths of the river.
"What stories I will have for my family when I get home!" thought the frog as he saw the riverbank come steadily into view.
His thought was interrupted by an excruciating pinch at the base of his spine. His legs grew heavy and numb as he struggled to stay afloat.
"What did you do that for?" the frog asked. "Soon my legs will be rendered useless, and we will both sink to the bottom of this river and drown."
"I couldn't help myself," the scorpion replied. "I'm a scorpion. It's what I do. I sting things."
Oftentimes the parable of the Frog and the Scorpion is presented as a cautionary tale against naivete. The foolish frog trusted the smooth-talking scorpion over his own instincts, and suffered dire consequences.
As sales and presales professionals, we can appreciate the parable on a more nuanced level, when we consider its message in light of our roles and our relationship with our customer.
The most successful among us have realized that effective selling involves understanding our customer and painting a vision for how our product or service will help them to make money, save money, or improve their quality of life. In that regard it's easy to envision us as the frog, helping our client cross from where they are to where they need to be, and recognizing the symbiotic nature of our mutual trip across the metaphorical river.
This perspective is likely closest to the canonical interpretation of the story. I once had a business partner abide by the adage, "never trust a client." Ultimately, your client will operate in their own best interest, and unless we're sociopaths we generally don't enjoy giving people bad news. This means you can expect your client to lie to you, withhold information, and stick to their own assumptions in spite of your best efforts to convince them otherwise.
To counter this, pay close attention during the qualification and discovery processes. Did the client admit that they don't have budget or authority to make the purchase? You can choose to proceed as usual and count on your killer personality and finely honed persuasive skills to win them over, or you can choose to take on the sales process with the cool calculation of a surgeon: focusing on the mechanics of the sales process rather than injecting your individual or corporate ego into the process.
Ironically, over the last 20 years I have seen that that the most successful sales and presales professionals also tend to be the most humble. True humility is not expressed in the veneer of trite or self-deprecating sense that some see as a strategic move, but in an awareness of one's own strengths and weaknesses that supersedes any need for pretense. As the author and theologian C.S. Lewis wrote:
"Do not imagine that if you meet a really humble man he will be what most people call 'humble' nowadays: he will not be a sort of greasy, smarmy person, who is always telling you that, of course, he is nobody. Probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him. If you do dislike him it will be because you feel a little envious of anyone who seems to enjoy life so easily. He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking of himself at all."
As he made his way across the river, the scorpion faced a dilemma: would he do what comes naturally, to "sting things," or would he recognize the symbiotic demands of the situation and exercise self-control? As sales and presales professionals, we face a similar decision in our team selling situations: how will we balance our need to build and maintain our own credibility against our need to maintain clear and efficient role play within the team?
Several years ago I stepped away from my consulting practice to take a chance on a mid-market company specializing in Marketing Automation. My friends and family saw it as a "step back," moving from a sales leadership position into a presales, individual contributor role. I saw it as an opportunity to apply my entrepreneurial experience within a growth industry, and I had a plan in place to grow into presales leadership.
Eventually I caught the attention of Susan, the company's most successful sales rep. In our first opportunity together, I eagerly anticipated every customer question and ran the meeting just as I had in my previous days as a business owner and Chief Revenue Officer. The customer loved us, and I walked out of the meeting with my head held high.
"How did you think we did?" I asked her on the way out of the meeting.
Susan had a tendency to speak softly and intentionally, a great counter-balance to my own amped-up delivery style. "I thought you delivered your content well, but we will need to make a few changes if we're going to be successful," she replied. "You answered all of the customer's questions about our pricing structure and their service contracts." She went on to explain that, in my enthusiasm to create the Ultimate Sales / Presales Super-Team, I hadn't given her any room to sell.
Eventually we indeed became that ultimate team, but we were only able to do so when we respected and supported one another's role in the sales process. My natural inclination was to act like I still carried the weight of the company on my shoulders. I needed to humble myself, and to recognize that even if pure selling was my role (which is wasn't), Susan was a much stronger salesperson than I was. Likewise, as strong a presenter as she was, she wouldn't have been as effective at proving the vision she was trying to create.
Regardless of our role in the sales process, we can take away a few practical applications from this cautionary tale.
First, your client will always operate first in their own self-interest, and second in their company's self-interest. Your interests are not their concern. It's what comes naturally, and unlike us, they have no incentive to behave otherwise. Because of this, our first concern should be to make a genuine effort to sell in light of the customer's self-interest.
Second, insecure people will always find it harder to operate in someone else's self-interest. Our own need for self-preservation and protection blinds us to the needs of others. We do not need to deceive ourselves, or to equate humility with self deprecation or weakness. Humility involves setting our own ego aside so that we can approach each engagement clearly and strategically.
Finally, clear strategy involves unequivocal attention to the roles we play in that strategy. I typically advise teams to break the sales process down into "vision points" and "proof points." The salesperson is responsible for presenting a vision as to how our product or service will serve the customer's best interest. The presales professional is responsible for proving that vision.
Sales and presales teams are notorious for rallying behind the philosophy du jour in a vacuum, and selling accordingly. For sales, this might mean subscribing verbatim to SPIN / SNAP selling, the Challenger Sale, or the latest sales framework. For presales this often means formulaic approaches to limbic openings, tell-show-tell tactics, and so forth. While both situations have their share of tactical as well as strategic benefits, we must not lose sight of the fact that in the end we are just people, getting together with other people, trying to prove that we really can make their tomorrow look better than today.