Are Hybridized Sellers Unicorns?

Hybridized sellers are the future of business, let alone sales. They are rare, like unicorns.

Or are they?

Hybridized sellers are CEOs, business owners, sales leaders and sales reps. Hybridized sellers are systems engineers, attorneys, accountants, customer service reps and project managers.

Hybridized sellers reside in all areas of your organization. They are current employees as well as your future hires.

These sellers are team-based professionals who expertly combine technical and non-technical resources to grow, expand and sustain your business and your clients’ businesses. Hybridized sellers are business people of worth.

Are you a hybridized seller?

Andy Paul and I sat down, as part of his Accelerate! podcast series, to discuss how the future of sales is firmly in the hands of individuals who are able to develop and leverage their sales and technical strengths to assist decision makers in achieving their objectives. You can listen here: http://bit.ly/1I9YwwH .

We know individuals in our networks who are hybridized sellers. We consider them to be “naturals” at this approach. They effortlessly and effectively traverse the interface between right brain and left brain thinking, the sales-engineering interface®. During the course of their business-building conversations, they combine right- and left- brain analytics and insights, peppered with outstanding listening abilities and emotional intelligence.

Are they too good to be true, like those unicorns?

When you talk with hybridized sellers, you discover that they work extremely hard to refine their perspectives. Your conversation with these sellers has a different “feel” to it, compared to your own conversations with customers. Speaking with hybridized sellers is more like talking with a subject-matter expert: except your conversation doesn’t sound like a lecture or a sales pitch. You have a dialogue which flows naturally and organically from right- to left- brain topics.

Hybridized sellers are characterized by three key attributes.

• Hybridized sellers are continuously curious. They ask questions. They seek clarity. They focus on establishing context: the conditions in which an event occurred or circumstances in which an idea arose or statement was made in order for everyone to understand its significance and analyze its implications. The quality of their conversations is distinctive and a point of differentiation. As a result, colleagues and customers seek out these sellers as go-to resources to catalyze their own creativity and innovation.
• These sellers take risks. They give themselves permission to not know. They identify resources to find answers. They dig deeper to identify more than one answer to a question. They determine whether the answer to that question is industry-specific (context again) or is generally applicable. As they dig for answers, because they are curious, hybridized sellers gain industry-expertise. This growing expertise becomes part of their engaging conversations and fuels their continuous curiosity.
• Hybridized sellers invest in themselves. They are lifelong learners. They make a daily habit of reading about the economy and industry trends. They read at least one professionally-related book each month. Hybridized sellers don’t take short-cuts. They read the surveys and source material in reports, instead of relying on infographics and marketing communications pieces for their “knowledge.” These sellers are comfortable with data and analytics. These sellers invest at least 1 – 5% of their own income each year in their education, instead of waiting for their employers to underwrite it.

There are specific steps you can take, easily within your reach, to develop yourself as a hybridized seller. Take your first step: invest in yourself by listening to our Accelerate! conversation.

You can listen to the podcast in its entirety at http://bit.ly/1I9YwwH.

Babette N. Ten Haken builds innovative, productive and profitable teams focused on excellence in the execution of strategy. Her Playbook on collaboration hacks, including tools, Do YOU Mean Business?  is available on Amazon.com. 

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