Many people who belong to the creative field, including UX professionals, tend to believe that there is a great difference between them and the salespeople. However, this is not entirely the case. In fact, there are a lot of commonalties present between the job of a UX researcher and that of the sales professionals. But before diving into that, it is important to get the concept of sales clear in our heads.

Most people feel that selling just involves asking for money in exchange for a particular service or product. However, sales can also be defined as the transfer of confidence and enthusiasm about a product or service to the client.

Now to get a better insight into how the process of sales enjoys commonalities with UX research, it is better that we ask two individuals having in-depth information about both these domains. Here, Person 1 is a UX expert, while Person 2 deals with sales.

Person 1: Now, we all know that UX largely deals with understanding the problems faced by the users and developing an effective solution for those concerns in order to augment the experience of the user. To better understand the perspective of the users, UX professionals quite often create user personas for their design projects. These user personas can be helpful in the sales process as well, as my friend can tell you.

Person 2: Yes, definitely. The user personas often come as a huge aid in the sales process. Before selling an item, it is imperative to understand who would have the highest value for that particular product, and creating user personas often help in finding the target audience. In fact, even if you or any other UX professional desires to sell your services directly to a client, you can use this technique. Focusing on a niche can make it much easier for you to sell your UX solutions effectively. However, you should also remember that while UX professionals can ideally find their customers just about anywhere, you should also have to be bold enough to approach them. I would recommend that you approach customers in a manner similar to how you deal with users in case of a user interview. Unlike UX designing, you do have to meet customers directly when it comes to sales, and you must always have the confidence to converse with them.

Person 1: I would definitely keep that in mind when trying to sell my UX solutions directly. Now coming back to the topic, subsequent to identifying the target audience, we typically search for ideal users to interview; based on whose feedback they would design their project. Do you have any similar system in sales?

Person 2: Yes, we do. Much like your ideal uses, we deal with people who have the potential to buy a product from the company , and they are called leads in the sales language. Like UX researchers only interview the best-qualified users, salespeople also tend to qualify a lead before chasing it. When selling their own solutions, UX people would have to go out and position themselves near their leads to engage them

Person 2: How you engage your customers is also a point that you must carefully remember. Subsequent to finding qualified leads, you have to ask them questions in order to understand their requirements, as well as to build a positive relationship and trust. Rather than talking about the price, the salespeople firstly ask customers about the major problems they face and how it affects them.

Person 1: Yes, I understand that. Quite a similar approach is held by us when conducting UX research. Identifying the problem

Person 1: My friend Henry, a professional working in the creative design community, says that sales are a lot about helping people to identify their problems and solve them when talking about the common points between UX researching and sales. Is it true?

Person 2: To an extent, it definitely is. People will only buy an item if it is of any use to them. So we should focus on how our product can provide them with the best value. See, after you have built a good relationship with the client or users, you would be able to understand their problem and subsequently offer or sell the perfect solution for it. You should carefully think about your product or service, its characteristics and try to find the features in it that enables it to solve the problem of the clients.

Person 1: I totally get your point. After that process, we come to the closing of sales. This, however, is also is the point that majorly differentiates UX designers from the salespeople. While salespeople are experts in selling solutions, UX professionals majorly work on developing solutions. Hence, we tend to be quite apprehensive when it comes to selling items.

Person 2: But that is not the right approach at all. In the modern competitive world, it is important that you try to learn a few sales-related skills in able to sell your solutions efficiently. As a UX professional, you would be the one best aware of the product you are developing, and would be passionate about it. You subsequently would have to try to transfer this enthusiasm to the customers, when selling your solutions, and by doing this, you can easily close your sales.

Through this insightful conversation, we can learn a lot about both sales and UX, as well as the importance of learning certain sales techniques for UX professionals.

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