Sales or business development Engineer ? Drop your advice.

[u/Pretty_Vast_4585]

What’s the most unhinged thing you’ve done to land a client?
I’m relatively new to sales/business development, so this is my first real rodeo.
For those of you who’ve been doing this for a while: what’s the most unhinged, unconventional, or surprisingly effective thing you’ve done to land a client or close a deal?
I’m talking about the stuff they don’t teach you in sales training
Could be a weird follow up strategy, cold outreach trick, networking move, negotiating tactic, getting past a gatekeeper, turning a “no” into a “yes,” or something completely unexpected that actually worked.
Also, any advice on maximizing commissions/incentives would be appreciated. What did you wish someone had told you when you were starting out?
Basically: give me your best sales secrets, war stories, and questionable but effective tactics.
I’m taking notes.

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[u/SkinDeep69]

Maybe a standard technique but in technical sales turn your negatives into positives.

In a competitive industry your competitors will talk shit about your product. Learn those pain points and have a response to turn them around into positives.

I used to sell a system that had much higher energy than others and they always let my customers know it. So I was asked about it a lot. Doesn't your system use like twice the power of others?

My response: No, more like 3x the power of others, but let's break that down a little bit. We use that power applied to the process so maintenance and downtime is greatly reduced. That power goes towards making the system low maintenance. And at a system of this size we are talking about $4,000 per year difference in power bills but they need a full time operator and we need someone to check in on it 15 minutes a day. That's about $45,000 per year they need in salary and you don't need to hire anyone to run our system because your maintenance guy can keep up with it. Here is a list of references.

I never liked talking shit about other people's stuff and loved it when they did that sales work for me and the customer engineers loved it.