Albert Einstein once said that being curious is much more important than being smart. If you’re curious about something you are going to spend a lot of time and effort finding out everything you can about it. You are going to focus as much as you can on that subject. You are going to read books and magazines, watch documentaries, go on-line, and do research in short do everything that you can to learn all that you can on that subject.
If you think about it some of the biggest contributors to society have been people who were curious; Thomas Alva Edison was curious about everything from finding the right filament to make a light bulb work for longer than ten seconds to how to save sound on a wax disc to how to play that sound with a needle and a giant speaker horn. Henry Ford was curious enough to try to figure out how to make an affordable car by inventing the assembly line. Newton was curious enough to figure out why an apple fell on his head…or so they say, I have my doubts about that one. But anyway, he was curious enough to find out why things fell that he figured out gravity and how it works. Okay you get it curious people are people who move that great tin foil ball of civilization down the road to progress.
Now let’s apply it to our profession, let’s apply the quality of curiosity to sales. How can being curious help you to be a great sales person? How does being curious help you to win and keep customers? I just read a book where the author said that when he hires sales people the number one thing he looks for in those sales people is curiosity, their level of curiosity and if he sees that in a candidate he will hire that candidate whether or not that person knows anything at all about the product he is going to be selling. Because of course that person’s curiosity will drive him to find out everything he can about that product without anyone having to urge him to do so.
A curious person will want to know everything about the product she is selling. Not just what her company is selling today but everything else about the product from how it was developed in the first place which includes the history of the product, to how it is used, to who uses it, to why they use it. In the end that curious person will know much more about her product than people who have been dealing with the product for decades.
That person will be curious about the companies who use his product. The customers. He will study his customer base. He will, get this, ask his customers why they use this product, which type of product they prefer and how he can make his product or service so good that they will buy more from him than anyone else.
He will also talk to those people who are building the product he sells. Not only to find out what they are working on now but what they will be working on tomorrow. In short, he will be looking into the future of the product.
But even better than that her curiosity will drive her back to her customers to find out where their business is today and also where it is going in the future so that she can have her customer literally telling her what kinds of products they will need in the future so that she can go back to her own company and advise them on the types of products they should be developing in the future that will be the most useful and appealing to their customers.
And that curious person will also be constantly analyzing the way he does things, seeking a better way to do them. He will always be trying to find a better and more effective way to grow his customer base. He will always be developing new and innovative ways to make his customer sales calls more productive. He will invent better reports and matrices and he will be finding better strategies to sell his products.
The curious sales person will use her curiosity to find ways to be the best sales person in the industry. She will study other successful people to find out what makes them successful. And thus, she will use her curiosity to become as successful as they are.
A curious sales person will do everything, study everything and learn everything to be the best he can be. He just can’t help himself because he is driven by is overwhelming curiosity. Are you curious enough to be successful? Are you smart enough to hire curious people? You should be. It’s only common sense.
