With all its unexpected objections, aborted meetings and painful rejections, selling can be very frustrating…but blaming your customers for your inability to sell is the beginning of your end.
Today I wish to share and interpret some of my favourite quotes in a bid to spur your selling in 2018.
“You are serving a customer, not a life sentence. Learn how to enjoy your work.” ~ Laurie McIntosh
With all its unexpected objections, aborted meetings and painful rejections, selling can be very frustrating. The frustration, for instance, of being avoided by a client because they find this easier than telling you they don’t want to buy, say, insurance, if unchecked, can breed a negative attitude; a feeling that the customers are to blame.
And blaming your customers for your inability to sell is the beginning of your end. If in doubt, ask the National Transport and Safety Authority (NTSA) who, in my view soundest their loudest death knell when they claimed that Kenyans, not NTSA, are to blame for the continual road carnage that continues to ravage us. Snap out of the negative attitude and learn how to enjoy your work; you are serving a customer, not a life sentence.
Spend a lot of time talking to customers face to face. You’d be amazed how many companies don’t listen to their customers. ~Ross Perot
A CEO I know chose to accompany his sales team to see a client. He did this for two reasons; he had just let go of his sales manager and in his absence had been advised by the sales team that the client was about to make a sizeable purchase. Along the way, he persuaded, probed and prodded the sales people about the client and selling in general. With every unfolding response his mood moved further from ecstatic and closer to concerned.
It turned out that the real reason why they wanted him to accompany them was because the client was going to cancel their contract following continual poor service. And so, when they got to the client, the presentation was largely an apology and request to resolve the matter with assurances from the CEO himself. They salvaged the account. Now, though inadvertently, if he had not done this face-to-face, do you suppose he would have gotten the same result? Customers don’t expect you to be perfect. They do expect you to fix things when they go wrong. (Donald Porter)
The customers perception is your reality- Kate Zabriskie
This is perhaps the most difficult to swallow. Customers buy what they think the product can do for them, not what you say it will. So profound is this that doctors say that the correct medicine will not work on the patient if he firmly believes he can’t be cured. To mitigate this, the challenge for the salesperson is to align his objectives to that of the buyer. At the sales interview, focus on finding out more about the buyer ahead of sharing how you see your service or product solving his problem-if at all it does.
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