It was recently pointed out to me that I have been somewhat negative sounding towards "salespersons". AND I had not noted that the opinions were just that, opinions, not any sort of "fact".
Upon only a few moments of introspection, I have to admit this seems to me to be somewhat hypocritical of me, since I also believe that everyone in business -should- be "selling". Techs sell themselves and their services and skills, and tie wearing salesmen are selling "capital goods", but it's all still -sales-, and almost no one I know is in this business for the fun of it.
That said, I would love to hear others opinions of the difference between technical selling and advertising selling (both in service selling and capital good selling), and tips on how each of you do each type of selling and what works for long term customer satisfaction, or if, in your opinion, the long term is a worthless, and only the next week, hour, month or whatever time frame is worth paying attention towards.

I feel that a capital good salesperson who "technical sells" rather than the "advertising sell" will be the one who gets the big fleet orders, and who will also get the order next time the commodity is needed.
What is the difference, as I see it?
A "technical sales person" (not the same as service sales) will spend the time and effort to know what the customer's needs and wants really are, not just try and get the customer to agree that the customer needs what the salesman has to offer.
SO a technical capital goods salesperson will be the one doing an inventory of what the customer wants to do and move and how, and will be trying to help the customer to spend less to do more work (what customer would not welcome that?),
The advertising salesperson is busy trying to convince the customer that ONLY their hammer can hit the nail on the head, and that all the customer's worries are the nail that only his hammer can hit, and will be trying to sell as many units as the customer can afford (of whatever kind of units the sales person has).