One of the parts of selling I’ve always enjoyed most is learning

Learning about a company

Listening to real business issues

Walking the floor

Going on a site tour

Because it’s often there, not in the boardroom or the pitch deck, that the truth shows up

A company tour will tell you things no one ever says out loud

Culture leaks everywhere if you pay attention

And if you’re naturally curious and ask the right questions, you start to see what really matters

I remember visiting Hilti, the Liechtenstein-based tools company

My contact pointed out that the CEO doesn’t eat lunch in a private dining room or a special executive canteen

He eats with everyone else

No entourage

No “yes people.” 

He walks into the restaurant, sits down with whoever is there, and has lunch

The employees love it

That told me more about Hilti’s culture than any brochure ever could

Another time, in Dubai, I asked what looked like an innocent question:
Why were deliveries of tyres sitting outside in 40-degree heat?

That single question uncovered a much bigger operational issue

What should have been a lost £200k deal turned into a multi-million-pound win, simply because someone bothered to notice and ask

That came back to me recently when we went to see a play in Lambeth, London

Years earlier, I’d sold into the London Borough of Lambeth

One of their major issues was theft

Building materials were being stolen after delivery to council sites

They knew it was an inside job but couldn’t prove who was involved

In that case, we chose to “no bid.”

Why?
Because this was the period when Oracle Financials had become the number one accounting system across London boroughs

Lambeth had hired an “independent” consultant to run the selection process

A quick look on LinkedIn (still new back then) showed the consultant had implemented SAP, the competitor, three times already

At the bid review, we concluded the decision had effectively already been made

Lambeth bought SAP. We were right

Conclusion

Social selling isn’t about posting more content or sending more messages

It’s about paying attention

Culture
Incentives
Behaviour
Power dynamics

When you show up, ask better questions, and connect the dots, often using information hiding in plain sight, you make better decisions

Sometimes that means winning bigger deals

Sometimes it means knowing when to walk away

Both are signs of good selling