Ever wondered why most of the sales people are treated with disdain? Why is that a lot of the sales folks are perceived to be using slimy tactics, while others command a high amount of respect? Having lived the sales life for more than a decade, I have seen all types of people in sales. Some of them have been my colleagues, others competitors, and then some more to who I was the customer. While this trait is not specific only to professional sales, it is more pronounced when you do this for a living. So what is this trait? It is TRUST. It is this simple characteristic that differentiates one salesperson from the other.
Remember I mentioned in my initial commentary, that this is a ‘perceived’ trait. I say this because contrary to the popular belief that most sales people are out to get you, or even worse, ‘rob’ you of your money, a majority of the sales people are good folks trying to make a decent living. They are all trying hard day in and day out to make some money by selling the product and solution they have been asked to sell. And that’s where the problem lies. It’s when the sales guy/gal puts the focus on selling the product rather than focusing on the customer needs, that they are considered disingenuous.
So what do you do when you have to meet your targets, do you still try to put the customer’s interests ahead of yours? You know the answer to that, don’t you.. Of course it’s a Yes. A lot of sales people are not reaching the right audience and that’s why they get into this target underachievement trap and then they start using slimy sales techniques which gives them the ‘untrustworthy’ tag. It’s a downhill slope from there on.
Is there a way you can overcome it? Let me begin by saying, there is a right set of customer base for everything you want to sell. It’s the job of the salesperson to find these folks and reach out to them, and that my friends, is the real job of a salesperson. A lot of the people in this profession, try and sell whatever they have to, to everyone they can find. And what has fuelled this phenomenon are usually titles that say ‘how you can sell anything to anyone’ or ‘Do this and you can sell ice to an eskimo’ etc. etc. Let me break it to you, no matter how good you are at closing, that is just not achievable. Unless there is a need (and this need can be created) for a product, it’s not possible to keep selling something to a customer without getting in cognitive dissonance.
A worth of a sales person is not how you can ‘close’ a customer but how it is that you find the right prospects interested in what you have. Trying to sell anything to everyone will just make you waste a lot of time on people who’ll end up not buying, which is essentially how you get on the ‘downhill slope’ I mentioned earlier.
Now that we know what we shouldn’t do, lets focus on what we should do, in order to be the trustworthy salesperson a lot of the customers would like to talk to. We all know of this sales person who has the ‘midas touch’, so much so that the customers themselves approach them for all their requirements. They have it so easy, don’t they? Well, they don’t. Behind all the easy going ‘midas touch’ sales life is a lot of hard work. These folks have put in the toil and the grind that most of the sales people find excruciating. They have a command on their field, their company, their product/solution and to top it, they always put the customers’ interests foremost, even though it might not lead to a sale. They do this not once or twice but all the time, and then after a period of time, they make it to this ‘trustworthy’ sales category.
Sales is a profession that can either be too frustrating and hard or can be a reason for a lot of money and goodwill. Your habits and behaviour are a big reason why you will or will not make it to the top. But if you are looking at the most basic skill that you need to succeed, it’s trust.
