I ran into a discussion yesterday about salespeople where some people had a bad experienced and generalized about all salespeople everywhere. Has this happened to you?
There are indeed some interesting characters out there giving a bad rap to the art of sales. But this is not “everyone.” It is usually a specific individual bent on the greed of the sale. Despite this, salespeople are the main cog in the movement of production through our economies. Without salespeople, we would not have a smidgen of the goodies and luxuries we have today. The economy would stall and collapse without good salespeople. Like a clock, there are many moving parts to bolster our economy, and the salesperson is a vital component of that.
There is a right way to represent a product and help someone get that product. It can be done, and it makes for better relationships and easier sales. We all need salespeople, and the companies we work for would not exist without them. So what’s the fine line to make a good salesperson?
To sum it up it is caring, and the responsibility to ensure the prospect gets a good product at a good price that is the backbone of a good salesperson. Having that in place makes everyone win, and everyone happy. The salesperson gets his commission, the customer gets his product or service at a good price, the company continues to grow and is able to provide more products and services to more customers. Everyone wins.
A full detail of the basics of good salesmanship can be found in The Black Book of Sales Secrets. Following these points, one can avoid the trappings of bad salesmanship. Doing so, only strengthens the ability of that salesman, helps his or her company continue to grow, and builds a growing and happy customer base for the salesman for future sales and referrals. Wouldn’t that be nice? Check it out.
There s a difference between a good salesperson and one who gets to the top rung.
Isn’t that like the tortoise and the hare story? I think a good salesperson, who persists and stays at it, eventually gets to the top, sooner or later.
TYVM you’ve solved all my problems
Great delivery. Great arguments. Keep up the amazing effort.
I was terrible at senillg cars because, honestly, I would never had made the deals people were looking to make in order to get the cars I was senillg. Most people I dealt with were upside-down (the usual term then was underwater) on their current vehicle and simply wanted to roll the difference between their debt and the trade-in into the new loan. As long as the payment didn’t go up by too much, they were ok with it. I never found a way to live with helping people to do that or advising them how. I knew it was their decision, but it *felt* like I was running a con and I think it always showed.Selling computers and the like for Best Buy was a lot easier, but senillg the dreaded Protection Racket Plans was a lot harder–again, those things are not good deals for most people, in my opinion, but it wasn’t an option to tell anyone that. I simply told the truth about what was covered and what they cost and let the chips fall where they may, which meant that I was constantly being reminded that didn’t sell enough of them. They only kept me on because I was reliable and did a lot more work than most.I’d like to be better at senillg, because one of these days the dream retirement is to “semi-retire” as a bladesmith . . . but I won’t be trying to sell things I don’t believe in, and I won’t be trying to convince broke people to borrow large sums to buy a hunting knife. That’s not the real world for most people in sales, who have influence on their sales approach ranging from complete to zero.