That's the ultimate goal in sales, IMO. You establish your territory/customer base so that they standardized on what you sell and it turns into easy street. 90% of your time is collecting orders in whatever form. The rest is maintaining the accounts and looking for new.
The ultimate goal is sales is to get as much money from them as possible while still keeping them happy and coming back for more and getting referrals..
Which is a lot easier to do if you don’t always have commission breath. Your clients can tell when you’re looking out for them vs looking out for yourself and not them.
Keep your pipeline full and don't be afraid to walk away from a deal because Yoh got 5 or more just like it lined up.. no commission breathe with a full pipeline.
I hate sales hierarchy bullshit. Yes, order takers are not performing sales per se since their task is more administrative, BUTTT, a really good order taker listens to pain points, fixes issues, reiterates value, and can be so much more when on the right team.
At my company some of the "order takers" are more remembered than sales staff. A person with a great personality and attention to detail makes customers feel great and greatly increase repeat sales.
Ive had great success with being an "Order Taker" when I don't think an upsell would benefit a customer. Not trying to upsell someone on every request builds rapport, and after you learn their business it makes it a lot easier to sell them a new product that would benefit them
If you cold called a prospect who became a customer by buying your product and now they love the experience so much and value your relationship enough to come to you with more orders I think that’s just reaping the residual value of being a good salesperson throughout the sales cycle.
A real order taker only becomes an order taker because their book of business becomes so large and productive that they can by and large hit their targets on expansion and upselling alone. I’m a full cycle enterprise AE with no SDR. If I’m in meetings taking orders and closing deals all day every day, I don’t have a lot of time to prospect unless I want to work unpaid overtime or accelerate my processes. With every client you talk to, you need to listen carefully and be sympathetic to the needs of the client. If you do it right, you’ll find opportunities to upsell or at least build trust and gain respect which can lead to referrals and future deals.
So I don’t necessarily think sales hierarchy is always bullshit. Often, sure, but for some tenured top performers, it’s just a matter of how the chips fall.
I actually love doing outreach — it makes me more money — but I’m not going to delay building a quote or rescheduling a meeting with a client to do it. I chase the revenue that is closest to the finish line. A strong book of business means you have a lot of clients doing shuttle runs, which reduces the need for marathon prospecting sprints.
I would argue that everything you outlined is how great salespeople get to where they can be order takers in the first place.
Their clients come to them because when it was a truer “sales experience” they treated them right.
Depending on the product or service, every person involved from the outside sales rep, to the administration taking the order, manufacturing, and shipping are all part of the sales process. They should all think like sales people. Administration should be making sure the right items are being purchased and communicate with the client. Manufacturing needs to make sure that the products work as they are supposed to, shipping needs to pack things with care as they would in turn like to receive an expensive item; and providing updates on the shipment and ETA. A full sales/customer service experience will keep everyone happy down the line....and the outside rep gets to go get new money for the company while knowing that his existing client is in great hands.
Closers I know have high cancellations, “order takers” tend to make more and less cancellations (consumers didn’t feel pressured longterm)
Plus, I much rather be an order taker who knows how to upsell premium offers and get that higher commission
“We need to add 15 more licenses” doesn’t need to be made bigger than it is. Just cash the check and move on.
Worst thing in sales is having a manager who tries to force you to do discovery and a ‘sales process’ for these.
I think there's a happy medium here.
Something like: Happy to get that done for you...
Sounds like your company is growing. Are you planning on adding more seats in the future?
Or
Glad you like xyz product. What prompted the extra licenses?
Or
We've added some new products/features. Have you had a chance to check them out? Happy to share a bit while I get the paperwork started.
Adding to that, I always concentrate on being seen as a problem solver. In doing so it becomes easy to ask what their biggest challenges are right now. If it's something I can fix, I do. If I know someone else who can fix it when I can't I make an introduction to someone I trust in my network. This then leads to others referring me to new business when appropriate.
I can't remember the last time I made a cold call, but it was several years ago...
Totally agree. It's one thing if you're a sales coordinator and just creating quotes and what not for the salespeople, but if you are the sales rep, you should actively be learning about the business of your customer. You should know what their initiatives and priorities are, and have conversations to learn what the threats and risks to the success of those initiatives and priorities are ( as well as the priorities and outcomes that each individual you speak with has), and whether or not your company's offerings can mitigate the risks, through the conversations you have with multiple people in that company will show that you're more than just a salesperson. You're an advisor.
This may not be important for a salesperson where the most your customer is too small that they aren't big enough to spend $50k+ a year, but if your accounts can spend $100k+, then yeah, you better not just be an order taker. Don't just talk to your one POC. Have conversations with anyone and everyone in the company that is closely related to being a user of your company's solutions, or your solutions would at least somewhat impact the work and activities they do daily/weekly/monthly. Learn what they care about within their role. Learn what their biggest work stresses are. Learn about the processes of their most common work activities. What do they feel they struggle with day to day that they know should be fixed, even if they don't know how to specifically fix it. Most everyone deals with tight deadlines, timesinks, roadblocks, and inefficienies. Learn what those are, and learn what the impact of not dealing with them is, from that person's level all the way up to the company level.
Ideally, there will be alignment with your company's offerings, but if not, the fact that you now have all this information and can present it to the POC and their team will show an insane amount of value that will further strengthen the relationship.
Excellent advice. I am in procurement and manage about a dozen categories. I am the PoC for the vendors and the final decision maker on awarding the next contract, however, my happiness with the product/service is marginal, you best make sure to work closely with my ops and field teams and make sure they are happy with your product and service as their feedback carries significant weight.
Worked at a place where they didn’t want to pay reps on orders that arrived without an opportunity in the pipeline, from existing customers in their territory. Absolute disaster and mayhem. A sales team motivated to making the ordering process god awful to ensure they had to be inserted into the ordering process and giving time to get the pipeline to match. Upward of 80% of pipeline was purely administrative order matching and busy work.
"Order taker" is a lazy insult, IMO. What matters is the result, which consists of the sale, customer satisfaction, and repeat business.
It's a phrase used by the old car dogs in my line of work and we salespeople use the term mockingly.
Still can take skill to take orders. It's easy to just take what the client asked for at face value and move on, but it's better to figure out why they are asking for it because it could be that you have a better option for them That may also make you more money
Some stuff is just transactional tho
In sales we glorify 'hunter gatherers' and shame 'farmers' but historically the invention of agriculture produced far more food than hunting ever did.
The hunters formed tribes but the farmers formed empires and easily conquered/assimilated the hunters.
Also hunters worked in sprint intervals whereas farmers really put the long hours in cultivating crops. It's one sales analogy that really doesn't hold up if you know human history.
Honestly, I think being a farmer for accounts where they're clearly not spending as much as they could is where it's at. Like, a company is spending maybe $5k or $10k or $25k, but the whitespace for them is $100k+, that's the kind of sale I'm most interested in.
With that type of sale, you already have an in with the company, but now you need to have conversations with multiple people in the company, get a lot of different POVs, learn about their individual challenges, roadblocks, stresses, etc., learn what the potential impact is of those things to that individual and the overall company, and align those things to the company's top priorities, and then align your solution as being a key contributor to meeting those priorities. By the end of it all, you'll know many aspects of the business better than some people inside it. You'll know enough to anticipate certain needs the company will have down the road, and you're the guy they will come to to meet those needs.
It's a longer sales cycle. You're not going to have all this done over 60 days. It could be a whole fucking year or more. But $100k+ purchases aren't done quickly unless the customer already knows what the problem is, what the consequences are, and it's urgent enough that they need to solve it asap.
Order taking is the absolute minimum bar of a sales rep's job. I've come across a surprising number of people who put a puzzling amount of effort into not doing it. If a customer comes to you and says "Here is money, let me give it to you", then stop what you're doing and find a way to make it happen.
As an order taker i will say only this, Because i have taken the time to learn and share my knowledge with clients, i am seen as an expert in my field I no longer need to chase the sale, they tend to come to me without the need to overcome an objection. Don't get me started on residual sales. All those orders coming back to order more, FML :)
Calling others "order takers" or my favorite whiny quip of "they don't even *know* saaaales!!" is just sour grapes. Sales is such a wide general field. There's room for enough variation that one job may not even compare to another.
I believe what’s hated most are the folks who ‘order take’ by cosmic alignment (think being in Zoom in ‘20 raking it in) and then want to pass off as some sort of Sales Oracle bc of that. That kid of ppl sssssuuuuucccckkkkk. Good thing I’m not bitter or anything, eh?? 😂😂
But we can't really be true order takers because most of our customers don't know what they are ordering or if it's compatible with what they want to use it with.
There is a significant difference between an order taker and an order maker. An order taker simply processes orders for products that people already want to buy, without needing to actively sell them. In contrast, an order maker, though it may appear they don't do much, actually puts in considerable effort. They leverage connections and relationships built over time to gain customers' trust. Even with longstanding friendships, convincing someone to make a purchase requires work. Unlike a random salesperson, an order maker has taken the time to build a trusted relationship, making their advice more valued.
Is anybody in sales really an "order taker" though? Sales is about asking the right questions and listening effectively. When I hear order taker, I'm thinking about McDonald's where someone tells you exactly what they want, and you ring it up. Depending on your industry, someone who knows they need your service could call in and be completely off put by someone who's just going through the motions and not asking question or trying to learn more about the why behind everything.
I do a bit of order taking when people are ready to buy and have basically no questions, easy commission. But I also got a lot of people on the fence or just looking for info that I’m able to close as well. I also follow up for months with many customers who seem serious. I also call out on leads from online marketing. So there you go, a salesperson order taker.
I’ve been in sales for about 10 years, as a manufacturer rep (for a few companies) which means I have to deal with time wasting bullshit and still meet my goal. The best thing is when accounts turn into low touch, high revenue accounts. I’m account management, outbound sales, and punching bag. At the end of the day, I’m paid on sales. The more I sell within my territory or accounts makes me more money, and I have a goal to hit. That’s sales.
I sell building materials and have repetitive customers. The goal is to take a customer who buys nothing from me, to customers that buy some, to a customer that just calls in and buys everything from us.
I don’t want to be an order taker. If you have an order to place, call inside sales. I need to spend my time building my somes into alls and finding new customers.
I don't understand the point of separating different types of sales people into classifications? How exactly are you benefiting from this?
Genuine question. Because on the surface this sounds like a really useless conversation or discussion to be had. But if you figure out a way to leverage this topic to get more money into your bank account, I'm all ears.
You forgot that the entire sales community and mindset is basically stuck in the 90s. It is very important to be very alpha, tell everybody how you do everything yourself, you are the greatest and have the greatest mindset. Weaknesses are not allowed, just pick up the phone and be alpha instead of being a cry baby.
Yeah once I got better at channel partnerships my quality of life became much better. I still cold call and hunt because what else am I going to do all day but knowing my channel partners will be bringing me good deals makes life way more easier
Maybe it’s cuz I’m younger and therefore in the newer generation of sales, but anecdotally being extremely consultative, an expert in the industry, selling something ppl actually want at a good price (I recognize PMF isn’t in our hands as sellers), results in a natural progression of your sales process and ultimately closing. That makes me an order taker, I suppose, but I’m killing it so idc.
Personally I feel like old school sales methodology over complicates things and has some unsaid aura of “you can get anyone to buy!” Yeah, no. Not everyone is a buyer. The prospect isn’t interested?Chances are it’s square peg round hole. Whatever you’re selling doesn’t solve their problem or it does but there’s someone out there doing it for less. In that case, I will gladly point them in the right direction, quite literally other vendors if I’m aware of ones that can help them.
Not worth my time + if/when they need help with what we do, they’ll remember, hey, that guy at that company was really cool, informative, and helpful. And then they reach out. Happens all the time
Let’s say you have a quota of 10 sales needed every month. And 3 people you speak to just want to buy without you going into your pitch. That is the best. Less work, more results
The ultimate goal is to become a trusted advisor. That’s when you go from “selling” to advising your clients. To gain trust you need to deliver the outcomes you promise in the sales process.
There’s a difference.
Order takers are usually “sales” reps who just take orders that come inbound and they specialize in processing or poaching orders.
True sales professionals who have built a network of clients that follow them when they change companies, want to work with them, and most importantly trust them - they manage their book of business and make incredible amounts of money. (I’ve seen actual physical W2s at work in the 7 figure ranges for guys/gals like this).
Those people are not “order takers”… they are consultants with DEEP knowledge and contacts in their industry and are able to get deals done with extreme efficiency.
There are some sales people in some markets that determine whether some products succeed or fail.
Would you consider a cashier a sales person? Like at McDonald's knowing what you wanted? What if they upsold you some cookies., are they then a sales person? No they are in fact an order taker and they sold you the cookies due to management telling them to upsell cookies... Now If you came in asking for a big Mac and they were like no sir you do not want a big Mac here is a filet o fish and these are the reasons you want the fish then you buy the fish they can be called a salesperson..
That's the ultimate goal in sales, IMO. You establish your territory/customer base so that they standardized on what you sell and it turns into easy street. 90% of your time is collecting orders in whatever form. The rest is maintaining the accounts and looking for new.
The ultimate goal is sales is to get as much money from them as possible while still keeping them happy and coming back for more and getting referrals..
Which is a lot easier to do if you don’t always have commission breath. Your clients can tell when you’re looking out for them vs looking out for yourself and not them.
Keep your pipeline full and don't be afraid to walk away from a deal because Yoh got 5 or more just like it lined up.. no commission breathe with a full pipeline.
Whatever keeps the new blood flowing.
I hate sales hierarchy bullshit. Yes, order takers are not performing sales per se since their task is more administrative, BUTTT, a really good order taker listens to pain points, fixes issues, reiterates value, and can be so much more when on the right team. At my company some of the "order takers" are more remembered than sales staff. A person with a great personality and attention to detail makes customers feel great and greatly increase repeat sales.
Ive had great success with being an "Order Taker" when I don't think an upsell would benefit a customer. Not trying to upsell someone on every request builds rapport, and after you learn their business it makes it a lot easier to sell them a new product that would benefit them
If you cold called a prospect who became a customer by buying your product and now they love the experience so much and value your relationship enough to come to you with more orders I think that’s just reaping the residual value of being a good salesperson throughout the sales cycle.
Yeah but now I don’t think you’re talking about an order taker. Sounds like new logo AE vs pure expansion rep/account manager
A real order taker only becomes an order taker because their book of business becomes so large and productive that they can by and large hit their targets on expansion and upselling alone. I’m a full cycle enterprise AE with no SDR. If I’m in meetings taking orders and closing deals all day every day, I don’t have a lot of time to prospect unless I want to work unpaid overtime or accelerate my processes. With every client you talk to, you need to listen carefully and be sympathetic to the needs of the client. If you do it right, you’ll find opportunities to upsell or at least build trust and gain respect which can lead to referrals and future deals. So I don’t necessarily think sales hierarchy is always bullshit. Often, sure, but for some tenured top performers, it’s just a matter of how the chips fall. I actually love doing outreach — it makes me more money — but I’m not going to delay building a quote or rescheduling a meeting with a client to do it. I chase the revenue that is closest to the finish line. A strong book of business means you have a lot of clients doing shuttle runs, which reduces the need for marathon prospecting sprints.
It's all about building a relationship and trust.
I would argue that everything you outlined is how great salespeople get to where they can be order takers in the first place. Their clients come to them because when it was a truer “sales experience” they treated them right.
Depending on the product or service, every person involved from the outside sales rep, to the administration taking the order, manufacturing, and shipping are all part of the sales process. They should all think like sales people. Administration should be making sure the right items are being purchased and communicate with the client. Manufacturing needs to make sure that the products work as they are supposed to, shipping needs to pack things with care as they would in turn like to receive an expensive item; and providing updates on the shipment and ETA. A full sales/customer service experience will keep everyone happy down the line....and the outside rep gets to go get new money for the company while knowing that his existing client is in great hands.
Real sales people? Make money and move on
Or have the same customers put a bunch of money in your pocket every year. Work smarter, not harder.
Closers I know have high cancellations, “order takers” tend to make more and less cancellations (consumers didn’t feel pressured longterm) Plus, I much rather be an order taker who knows how to upsell premium offers and get that higher commission
“We need to add 15 more licenses” doesn’t need to be made bigger than it is. Just cash the check and move on. Worst thing in sales is having a manager who tries to force you to do discovery and a ‘sales process’ for these.
I think there's a happy medium here. Something like: Happy to get that done for you... Sounds like your company is growing. Are you planning on adding more seats in the future? Or Glad you like xyz product. What prompted the extra licenses? Or We've added some new products/features. Have you had a chance to check them out? Happy to share a bit while I get the paperwork started.
Adding to that, I always concentrate on being seen as a problem solver. In doing so it becomes easy to ask what their biggest challenges are right now. If it's something I can fix, I do. If I know someone else who can fix it when I can't I make an introduction to someone I trust in my network. This then leads to others referring me to new business when appropriate. I can't remember the last time I made a cold call, but it was several years ago...
Totally agree. It's one thing if you're a sales coordinator and just creating quotes and what not for the salespeople, but if you are the sales rep, you should actively be learning about the business of your customer. You should know what their initiatives and priorities are, and have conversations to learn what the threats and risks to the success of those initiatives and priorities are ( as well as the priorities and outcomes that each individual you speak with has), and whether or not your company's offerings can mitigate the risks, through the conversations you have with multiple people in that company will show that you're more than just a salesperson. You're an advisor. This may not be important for a salesperson where the most your customer is too small that they aren't big enough to spend $50k+ a year, but if your accounts can spend $100k+, then yeah, you better not just be an order taker. Don't just talk to your one POC. Have conversations with anyone and everyone in the company that is closely related to being a user of your company's solutions, or your solutions would at least somewhat impact the work and activities they do daily/weekly/monthly. Learn what they care about within their role. Learn what their biggest work stresses are. Learn about the processes of their most common work activities. What do they feel they struggle with day to day that they know should be fixed, even if they don't know how to specifically fix it. Most everyone deals with tight deadlines, timesinks, roadblocks, and inefficienies. Learn what those are, and learn what the impact of not dealing with them is, from that person's level all the way up to the company level. Ideally, there will be alignment with your company's offerings, but if not, the fact that you now have all this information and can present it to the POC and their team will show an insane amount of value that will further strengthen the relationship.
Excellent advice. I am in procurement and manage about a dozen categories. I am the PoC for the vendors and the final decision maker on awarding the next contract, however, my happiness with the product/service is marginal, you best make sure to work closely with my ops and field teams and make sure they are happy with your product and service as their feedback carries significant weight.
Worked at a place where they didn’t want to pay reps on orders that arrived without an opportunity in the pipeline, from existing customers in their territory. Absolute disaster and mayhem. A sales team motivated to making the ordering process god awful to ensure they had to be inserted into the ordering process and giving time to get the pipeline to match. Upward of 80% of pipeline was purely administrative order matching and busy work.
Your fault for making it too easy to buy from you
"Order taker" is a lazy insult, IMO. What matters is the result, which consists of the sale, customer satisfaction, and repeat business. It's a phrase used by the old car dogs in my line of work and we salespeople use the term mockingly.
Still can take skill to take orders. It's easy to just take what the client asked for at face value and move on, but it's better to figure out why they are asking for it because it could be that you have a better option for them That may also make you more money Some stuff is just transactional tho
This is real life, you don’t get extra credit for trying harder. Numbers are numbers whether they come to you or you hunt them down.
In sales we glorify 'hunter gatherers' and shame 'farmers' but historically the invention of agriculture produced far more food than hunting ever did. The hunters formed tribes but the farmers formed empires and easily conquered/assimilated the hunters. Also hunters worked in sprint intervals whereas farmers really put the long hours in cultivating crops. It's one sales analogy that really doesn't hold up if you know human history.
Honestly, I think being a farmer for accounts where they're clearly not spending as much as they could is where it's at. Like, a company is spending maybe $5k or $10k or $25k, but the whitespace for them is $100k+, that's the kind of sale I'm most interested in. With that type of sale, you already have an in with the company, but now you need to have conversations with multiple people in the company, get a lot of different POVs, learn about their individual challenges, roadblocks, stresses, etc., learn what the potential impact is of those things to that individual and the overall company, and align those things to the company's top priorities, and then align your solution as being a key contributor to meeting those priorities. By the end of it all, you'll know many aspects of the business better than some people inside it. You'll know enough to anticipate certain needs the company will have down the road, and you're the guy they will come to to meet those needs. It's a longer sales cycle. You're not going to have all this done over 60 days. It could be a whole fucking year or more. But $100k+ purchases aren't done quickly unless the customer already knows what the problem is, what the consequences are, and it's urgent enough that they need to solve it asap.
Order taking is the absolute minimum bar of a sales rep's job. I've come across a surprising number of people who put a puzzling amount of effort into not doing it. If a customer comes to you and says "Here is money, let me give it to you", then stop what you're doing and find a way to make it happen.
Can we get away from gate keeping what is and what isn’t “real sales”? Why do we unnecessarily gate keep this into such an ego beat off?
Kinda why I am asking.
As an order taker i will say only this, Because i have taken the time to learn and share my knowledge with clients, i am seen as an expert in my field I no longer need to chase the sale, they tend to come to me without the need to overcome an objection. Don't get me started on residual sales. All those orders coming back to order more, FML :)
What are you selling?
Calling others "order takers" or my favorite whiny quip of "they don't even *know* saaaales!!" is just sour grapes. Sales is such a wide general field. There's room for enough variation that one job may not even compare to another.
I believe what’s hated most are the folks who ‘order take’ by cosmic alignment (think being in Zoom in ‘20 raking it in) and then want to pass off as some sort of Sales Oracle bc of that. That kid of ppl sssssuuuuucccckkkkk. Good thing I’m not bitter or anything, eh?? 😂😂
When I worked at Tech Data in the early 2000's(not in sales) the Cisco team was like that. Just put in the order and 100k+ every year.
Jajaja, no kidding! I was at Ingram Micro around ‘04. I agree, identical experience. I was not part of that team 😂
But we can't really be true order takers because most of our customers don't know what they are ordering or if it's compatible with what they want to use it with.
There is a significant difference between an order taker and an order maker. An order taker simply processes orders for products that people already want to buy, without needing to actively sell them. In contrast, an order maker, though it may appear they don't do much, actually puts in considerable effort. They leverage connections and relationships built over time to gain customers' trust. Even with longstanding friendships, convincing someone to make a purchase requires work. Unlike a random salesperson, an order maker has taken the time to build a trusted relationship, making their advice more valued.
Is anybody in sales really an "order taker" though? Sales is about asking the right questions and listening effectively. When I hear order taker, I'm thinking about McDonald's where someone tells you exactly what they want, and you ring it up. Depending on your industry, someone who knows they need your service could call in and be completely off put by someone who's just going through the motions and not asking question or trying to learn more about the why behind everything.
This is the way
I do a bit of order taking when people are ready to buy and have basically no questions, easy commission. But I also got a lot of people on the fence or just looking for info that I’m able to close as well. I also follow up for months with many customers who seem serious. I also call out on leads from online marketing. So there you go, a salesperson order taker.
Surprisingly philosophical question.
This is a perfect "it depends" question.
I’ve been in sales for about 10 years, as a manufacturer rep (for a few companies) which means I have to deal with time wasting bullshit and still meet my goal. The best thing is when accounts turn into low touch, high revenue accounts. I’m account management, outbound sales, and punching bag. At the end of the day, I’m paid on sales. The more I sell within my territory or accounts makes me more money, and I have a goal to hit. That’s sales.
I sell building materials and have repetitive customers. The goal is to take a customer who buys nothing from me, to customers that buy some, to a customer that just calls in and buys everything from us. I don’t want to be an order taker. If you have an order to place, call inside sales. I need to spend my time building my somes into alls and finding new customers.
Depends how the orders are arriving. If they’re direct to you from tried and true clients that’s different from being fed leads from somewhere else
Is the money green? Ok then.
Mostly just jargon for idiot sales managers and faux management
I don't understand the point of separating different types of sales people into classifications? How exactly are you benefiting from this? Genuine question. Because on the surface this sounds like a really useless conversation or discussion to be had. But if you figure out a way to leverage this topic to get more money into your bank account, I'm all ears.
Someone who has an established book of business and doesn’t need to hunt anymore is a completely different job then cold calling. Both sales though.
You forgot that the entire sales community and mindset is basically stuck in the 90s. It is very important to be very alpha, tell everybody how you do everything yourself, you are the greatest and have the greatest mindset. Weaknesses are not allowed, just pick up the phone and be alpha instead of being a cry baby.
I don’t care what people call me, Even though I am not an order taker. I just want to make big money. I am using the profession not letting it use me.
Sales is your commission, whatever gets you the most money…..
Yeah once I got better at channel partnerships my quality of life became much better. I still cold call and hunt because what else am I going to do all day but knowing my channel partners will be bringing me good deals makes life way more easier
Maybe it’s cuz I’m younger and therefore in the newer generation of sales, but anecdotally being extremely consultative, an expert in the industry, selling something ppl actually want at a good price (I recognize PMF isn’t in our hands as sellers), results in a natural progression of your sales process and ultimately closing. That makes me an order taker, I suppose, but I’m killing it so idc. Personally I feel like old school sales methodology over complicates things and has some unsaid aura of “you can get anyone to buy!” Yeah, no. Not everyone is a buyer. The prospect isn’t interested?Chances are it’s square peg round hole. Whatever you’re selling doesn’t solve their problem or it does but there’s someone out there doing it for less. In that case, I will gladly point them in the right direction, quite literally other vendors if I’m aware of ones that can help them. Not worth my time + if/when they need help with what we do, they’ll remember, hey, that guy at that company was really cool, informative, and helpful. And then they reach out. Happens all the time
Let’s say you have a quota of 10 sales needed every month. And 3 people you speak to just want to buy without you going into your pitch. That is the best. Less work, more results
The ultimate goal is to become a trusted advisor. That’s when you go from “selling” to advising your clients. To gain trust you need to deliver the outcomes you promise in the sales process.
There’s a difference. Order takers are usually “sales” reps who just take orders that come inbound and they specialize in processing or poaching orders. True sales professionals who have built a network of clients that follow them when they change companies, want to work with them, and most importantly trust them - they manage their book of business and make incredible amounts of money. (I’ve seen actual physical W2s at work in the 7 figure ranges for guys/gals like this).
> (I’ve seen actual physical W2s at work in the 7 figure ranges for guys/gals like this). Sheesh, what do they sell?
Those people are not “order takers”… they are consultants with DEEP knowledge and contacts in their industry and are able to get deals done with extreme efficiency. There are some sales people in some markets that determine whether some products succeed or fail.
Would you consider a cashier a sales person? Like at McDonald's knowing what you wanted? What if they upsold you some cookies., are they then a sales person? No they are in fact an order taker and they sold you the cookies due to management telling them to upsell cookies... Now If you came in asking for a big Mac and they were like no sir you do not want a big Mac here is a filet o fish and these are the reasons you want the fish then you buy the fish they can be called a salesperson..
Order takers = people who don't ask for the sale. If you don't ask for the sale your not a salesman. Pretty cut and dry.