My coworker and I were discussing our sales approaches. I came from the services world and was the #1 global rep on a 300 rep team. He came from the product world and was a top rep at a publicly traded company. He's in year two doing 140% and I'm in year one and just finished at 70%, but have a great pipeline going into year 2. I asked him why he thinks I didn't do better.

He told me I'm too smart with the client.

He thinks that you have to play dumb in products, pretend to know less than the client, not try to prove anything, and make sure they never think you are smarter than they are as they will never trust you if they sense that.

This flies directly in the face of what I learned about leading the client, challenging methodologies, presenting alternatives, and generally providing more information and intel to a client to help them make decisions. Now I am a bit worried that I am playing off the wrong playbook!

So I'm wondering - is there something about product sales that demands you "dumb it down" and play coy? Or can you roll out a consultative methodology and still win in the product game?

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