When I spend any time on our Brightpearl sales and support floor, one thing really strikes me: it is hard to tell who is on support and who is on sales. Listening to the calls, all I can hear are conversations helping customers understand and get the best from the system.

When people sign up to the free trial, the sales team do phone to introduce themselves and to offer help, but it’s not really a sales call. It is important for people on the trial to know that if they do get stuck, there is someone they can call to get an answer, and it is easier if they have spoken before.

In this age of “on demand” SaaS software there is no point in a hard sell. If you force someone to sign up, they can cancel after a month or even after a day, so there is no point in pushing them. Even worse, when people feel conned or pressured by a company they shout about it on the social web. Any company still using the aggressive tactics isn’t going to do well in the long run.

Any good sales person will tell you that selling is actually all about communication anyway.   As the old adage goes, “you have two ears and one mouth and you should use them proportionally”.

And in a way that is just what the guys and gals in sales and support are doing. They are listening to the customer and then giving the specific answers that help people to not only understand how to use Brightpearl, they allow the customer to feel the real benefits from the system. Once that happens, there is no need to sell, people just want to sign up.

In a recent post Filiberto Selvas of Social CRM was discussing the objectives of sales and support and concluding that traditionally although the objectives are aligned the compensation incentives diverge which can hinder a good customer experience. And Alan Stein at LiveLogic was recently talking about how the “customer thing” seems to elude many companies and is really down to making sure customer facing staff care about the customers’ needs and have the incentives and authority to help.

In a company like Brightpearl where everyone is either customer facing or talks on a daily basis to other staff members who are, the focus remains with the customer. When a company knows its customers and the customers can know the company, really the traditional salesman is unnecessary.