You walk into a Wal-Mart to buy something and you are just a customer. As a customer you feel you are entitled to certain things. Generally a quality product and quality service at a price you are willing to pay. If something doesn’t go right, many of us ask for a manager to voice our concern. I do this often, and generally to some level of success with a red vested middle manager (all other employees at Wal-Mart wear blue vests). Many times by the end of the conversation I have the manager laughing, engaged and ready to do almost anything I ask to keep ME as a customer. The reason for this is simple; She is also a customer and she knows how it feels to be treated poorly or have something she bought be defective and not up to par. I end up getting what I want, as long as I being it to her attention with finesse, understanding and compassion.
Let us take that one step further, not only is this manager also a customer, she is a person, a normal human being. Someone who pays bills, gets parking tickets, eats, sleeps, cries, laughs and fights with her husband. Imagine that! A middle manager who is also a human being. The truth is when you are wearing your ‘customer hat’ you are very comfortable talking to this middle manager. Now, let’s look at what happens when you talk to a middle manager wearing your ‘salesperson hat’. You are over polite, meek, dry, boring, uncreative, and nervous. You don’t engage, you’re not funny and you sound just like the last salesperson who they talked to. You product puke and data dump all the while making it nearly impossible to establish a real human to human relationship. The words, “I’m not interested at this time.” simply means, “You’re not interesting to me bucko!”
All your niceties about your product and company history, all your insincere manners and all the boring banter you had, got you nothing. You’re a kiss ass salesperson who walked out of an appointment with no signature, no cheque and no real connection with the decision maker. Sound familiar?For some reason when salespeople are trying to make a sale, they forget that managers, decision makers and business owners are all just regular people. What do regular people like to do? Have a laugh with other regular people. They like to golf or garden, eat and drink, have sex and travel. They want to be engaged. They want to be heard. They want to feel alive and real. They want to deal with people who are real. If they wanted to talk to salespeople all day they would not have a no-soliciting sign, a receptionist who acts as a gatekeeper and they would go to timeshare presentations every night.
Want to start kicking ass in the sales world? Stop kissing the prospects ass and be real. Every single day I walk the line with my customers and I push my sales team to do the same. When was the last time you had a prospect talk to you about something real? I have had customers rant to me for twenty minutes about ex-wives, taxes, family members and sex lives. The rants I remember the best though are the ones where they tell me stories about some pathetic salesperson they’ve dealt with. Imagine that, they start putting down some other salesperson because I’ve made them feel comfortable and they no longer see me as just a salesperson.
Do you want to be the butt of a salesperson joke your prospects are telling or do you want to kick butt?
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